LONDON. I’m over in Britain this week for the election—the fourth British election I’ve covered, starting in 1997, and the first one which the Labour party doesn’t seem sure to win. I’ve been here less than 24 hours, so let me just share a few observations. I’ll have more in my Wednesday Examiner column.
First, the polls continue to show Conservatives leading, with the Liberal Democrats and Labour vying for second place. As I’ve written before, if you translate the percentages for each party in national polls into seats won by assuming a uniform swing in each district, Conservatives are currently falling short of a 326-seat majority. But if you assume that the uniform swing models are inadequate—as they probably are, given the big swings in opinion since the 2005 election—then Conservatives are right about at the cusp of winning a majority. And this, I gather from what I read and am told, is what both Conservative and Labour party insiders expect. In addition, since the Sinn Fein members elected in Northern Ireland do not take their seats (they don’t want to concede that they’re rightfully in the United Kingdom) and since the Ulster Unionists are likely to vote with the Conservatives, David Cameron and his party do not need quite 326 seats for a majority.
