UK General Election Results Map 2017 vs 2015 vs Opinion Polls

By: Nadeem_Walayat

The UK General Election result of 2017 surprised all just as had the election result of 2015 when every polls based analyst had been expecting a hung parliament with the most probable outcome being for a Labour led coalition government. Instead David Cameron's Tories in 2015 eeked out a small outright majority government that gave the Conservatives the false confidence to go ahead with the EU referendum again based on the opinion polls that REMAIN could not lose, but they did and so did Cameron and Osborne. Now it was the turn of Theresa May to get it very badly wrong, lulled into a false sense of BrExit security as the pollsters this time forecast a certain landslide, when instead the impossible Hung Parliament materialised literally forcing Theresa May into doing a deal with Northern Irelands Protestant fundamentalists.

The electoral map of 2015 saw vast swathes of England voting for the Tories, punctuated by inner city Labour pockets with an unprecedented Scottish Nationalists Independence inducing victory in Scotland. Whilst the Liberal Democrats were all but wiped out.

Whilst the electoral map of 2017 sees Labour breaking out of their densely populated inner city enclaves by taking a wide spread of seats that included many former safe Tory seats such as Kensington. The only saving grace for the Conservatives was that the Scottish Nationalists received a bloody nose in Scotland, that actually saved the Conservative's from losing power to a Labour / SNP alliance had the Tories not done so well in Scotland.

UK General Election 2017 Result

The following table further illustrates the unexpected nature of the election result that no one saw coming, as the pollsters once more were not just wrong but floating off into a fantasy land of a Conservative Landslide election victory where early on the consensus was for Theresa May's government winning over 400 seats! Similarly expectations were widespread for a Labour bloodbath loss resulting in an error of 87 seats against that which subsequently transpired.

	GE 2017	GE 2015		*Pollsters Av	error
Conservatives	318	331	-13	394	+76
Labour	262	232	+30	175	-87
SNP	35	56	-21	51	+16
Lib Dem	12	8	+4	10	-2
Other	24	23	+1

*Polls based early to mid May 2017 seats forecasts

Worthless Opinion Polls Fooled Theresa May into Calling a Snap General Election

The 2017 General Election has proved to be one of the most volatile elections in terms of the opinion polls for some time, which has seen the opinion polls based forecasters literally playing pin the tail on the donkey that convinced Theresa May to call a BrExit snap general election. The pollsters forecasting a Tory landslide election victory of over 400 seats mostly persisted until barely to 2 weeks before polling day as the following table illustrates:

UK General Election Forecasts - May 2017

Whilst I repeatedly warned that the pollsters had been consistently wrong for every major election since 2010 and that it was highly probable that they were very wrong again as illustrated by my following video:

And where subsequently the pollsters did exhibit extreme volatility in their poll numbers that translated into a forecast of seats range for the Tories from 302 to 420. Whilst here are the final seat forecasts just prior to Thursdays vote, including my own based on the sum of my analysis of the preceding 6 weeks and separately based on my house prices based forecast which proved by far the most reliable forecaster for the outcome of the 2015 General Election, and once turned out to be the closest to the actual outcome.

UK General Election Final Forecasts

*YouGov forecast two opposite outcomes so that they could claim to have called the election outcome correctly whatever the result.

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By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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