European Election Predictions

I love election nights. I tend to view them as a World Cup Final, just spread over many hours. Unfortunately, as it’s Europeans, the election coverage won’t quite be as good as the traditional all-nighters, but it’s still something to look forward to. This year, I thought I’d do some predictions on how well the parties will do, so without further ado, read on:

• Conservatives, 24 seats: I’m puzzled as to how well the Conservatives will do. Amazing council results, but a smaller percentage of the vote than you might want, plus I know many Conservatives will switch to UKIP in Europeans. Let’s not forget the expenses scandal either, which will probably determine how many voters switch to UKIP and others as a protest vote. Still, they’ll undoubtedly win and hold their own.
• Liberal Democrats, 15 seats: I can’t imagine the Lib Dems will do as badly as last time. With European issues less prominent and probably the major party least scarred by the expenses scandal, they’ll definitely improve on 2004. However, their poor results in the council elections have surprised me. Will this affect the Europeans too?
• Labour, 11 seats: The one sure fact of this election is that the Labour vote will collapse. However, nobody quite knows by how much, and that will be a major factor on how all the other parties do. I’m predicting a big collapse, with votes going in all directions. But I believe they’ll still get third place, just, and will probably still do better than I’m expecting.
• UKIP, 9 seats: UKIP will probably not do as well as the last Europeans, but will still run Labour tight for fourth places. European issues are less important now, there’s no Robert Kilroy-Silk factor, their own MEPs aren’t exactly whiter than white, plus there’s this odd issue with people not being able to find them on the ballot papers due to the folds…! Still, a good performance though, and could dent the Conservatives with the protest vote factor, especially over expenses.
• Green, 7 seats: The Greens will probably be the biggest winners in this election and rightly so in my opinion. Environmental issues are becoming bigger all the time, and the Green Party always seem to conduct themselves well and are becoming an increasingly credible option.
• SNP, 3 seats: The SNP will probably gain in this election at Labour’s expense, and possibly at the expense of the Liberal Democrats too. The SNP don’t seem to have been caught up in the expenses scandal like the major Westminister parties which will benefit them greatly. How much they benefit will depend on how much the Labour vote collapses though.
• BNP, 2 seats: Very sadly, I believe the BNP will gain a couple of seats in this election. I wish politicians would do more to find out why so many disaffected voters in this country feel that the BNP best represents them, and I’d lay the blame at their feet, not at the voters themselves.
• Plaid Cymru, 1 seat: This Welsh party will surely gain enough votes in Wales to take a seat, and could also gain at the expense of Labour, much like the SNP in Scotland.

All there is to do now is wait until this evening and see whether I’m right or not.

Edit: So it turns out I made some big mistakes. First of all, the UK’s 72 seats include three from Northern Ireland, which I didn’t account for above so I allocated too many. Second, I should have paid attention to the way the seats are allocated per region in the UK, thus it is not full proportional representation. For instance, it was virtually impossible for the SNP to gain the three seats I predicted.

I was also overgenerous to the Greens and to the Lib Dems. I’m especially surprised by the latter – I thought they would be almost immune to the expenses scandal and the pro-European effect would be minimised. That wasn’t the case and they should be very disappointed in the results. I also believed the Greens would get a higher vote share than just 8.6%, and sadly although even that was a fifty percent improvement, it didn’t turn into many more seats. Yet only 5,000 more votes for them in the North West would have meant we returned a Green candidate and not a BNP. Maybe next time.

The big story of the night was how Labour’s vote collapsed. I possibly underestimated the extent of the collapse, but also underestimated how many seats that would turn into. Region after region, Labour were massively down, other parties gained slightly but the biggest winners were the “Others” and sadly also the BNP. I think people next time need to think a little bit more about their protest votes. As mentioned above, 5,000 more votes for the Greens in the North West would have stopped a BNP candidate getting elected. So would have 12,000 more votes for UKIP. So why waste votes on the English Democrats, Socialist Labour Party or Christian Party? But my biggest complaint is to those who didn’t vote: it’s partially because of you that I have Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, representing me at the European Parliament. And that makes me feel very, very ashamed to be British.

Advertisement