As a very data rich organisation, with data on every household, here at Sagacity it is always tempting at election time to predict who is going to win. Because our data is so granular we can model the result at constituency level, and then add the results to get the number of seats won by each party.
We predicted an SNP landslide in Scotland in 2015 and no one would believe us. The UK is not one big election, it is 650 or so small elections and looking at who is going to win each one is more valuable. And marketing data is available and useful to help with this.
So this year we set our mega geek analysts, Jack and Daniel, the task of creating those 634 predictions (we ignored NI as the results are between 2 parties and the polls then don’t work) and then looking at the outcomes.
To do this we take as much polling data as we can find, split by as many factors that we can find – age, sex, income band, social class, occupation and more. We then use that to build models at the individual level to see how people are likely to vote and then create a prediction of vote split at the constituency level.
We then check the results in known safe seats and more marginal seats to control the outcomes.
And the results are both surprising and not surprising:
On the less surprising side, Labour are going to win by a landslide. And it is a clear majority as well. So, no hung parliament.
On the more surprising side we are predicting:
- A massive swing away from the Tories to Lib Dems – and not Reform as the polls expect. A lot of these wins are very marginal.
- In fact, for all the strong polling, Reform will only win 2 seats.
- In Scotland, the SNP will be decimated, and Labour once more will be in control there.
- Similarly in Wales, there is no resurgence for Plaid.
- The Greens will double their seats with Bristol added to Brighton.
Will the election pan out this way? At this stage, the massive increase in seats for Lib Dems looks unlikely. But that’s what the data says, and I trust in the data. And I trust in Jack and Daniel, so let’s see!
Scott Logie is chief commercial officer at data solutions experts Sagacity
