Planning to avidly follow the election results this evening? No? Oh…
Here is a seat-by-seat set of fact sheets for following each subcontest of the election, with 2010 results, predicted probabilities of victory for each party (taken from electionforecast.co.uk, updated after their final forecast) and any prominent candidates that I could think of. There’s also a little box for you to fill in the victors in each seat. I haven’t included any safe seats (unless they are interesting for some other reason) or Northern Ireland.
On the sheets, I have highlighted the 131 seats that I think Labour, Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Greens need to add to Labour’s further 188 safe seats in England to build a left-leaning parliamentary majority (the so-called “Anti-Tory Block”). Of course, they could win seats elsewhere on the sheets, in which case they could lose a few of the highlighted ones. See the bottom of this post for an explanation of how I made this calculation.
GE2015 – English LAB-CON Targets 1 (Labour need 30 out of 30)
GE2015 – English LAB-CON Targets 2 (Labour need 3 out of 30)
GE2015 – English LAB-CON Targets 3 (Labour need 0 out of 30)
GE2015 – English LAB-LIB Battlegrounds PLUS OTHER (Labour/Greens need 11 out of 16)
GE2015 – Scotland (Labour/SNP need 57 out of 59)
GE2015 – Wales (Labour/PC need 30 out of 40)
GE2015 – English CON LIB UKP Battlegrounds
On the basis of these figures, the tipping point seat – that is, the 323rd most difficult seat for the left block to win and therefore the seat that would take them over the line* – is either Ealing and Central Acton or Finchley and Golder’s Green (Margaret Thatcher’s old constituency). Labour is given a 58% chance of winning each of these seats by electionforecast.co.uk.
ANALYSIS
Other than the seats in these documents, by my count, Labour can count on 188 safe seats (see below). Add the 88 seats that probability suggests will go to Labour, the SNP or Plaid Cymru on the Wales (31) and Scotland (57) sheets; 4 more for Labour or the Greens in the section at the bottom of the LAB-LIB sheet; 3 for the SDLP and 1 for left-leaning Independent Unionist Sylvia Hermon in Northern Ireland… and you get to an “Anti-Tory Alliance” of 283. 323 is the magic number, which means that Labour need to win about 40 of the 102 seats on the LAB-CON and LAB-LIB battleground sheets to prevent a potential Conservative-Liberal Democrat-DUP-UKIP bloc from having a parliamentary majority.
If instead, we look at what Labour would need to get an overall majority, the same calculations suggest that they can expect to add 4 seats in Scotland, 27 in Wales and 3 from the section at the bottom of the LAB-LIB sheet to their 188 safe seats, giving a total of 222. That would mean that Labour would need practically every one of the 102 seats of the LAB-CON and LAB-LIB battleground sheets to gain an overall majority. This seems pretty unlikely.
188 SAFE LABOUR SEATS IN ENGLAND
For the record, the 188 safe Labour seats that are not included on the sheets are:
Ashfield
Ashton-Under-Lyne
Barking
Barnsley Central
Barnsley East
Barrow & Furness
Bassetlaw
Batley & Spen
Bethnal Green & Bow
Birkenhead
Birmingham, Edgbaston
Birmingham, Erdington
Birmingham, Hall Green
Birmingham, Hodge Hill
Birmingham, Ladywood
Birmingham, Northfield
Birmingham, Perry Barr
Birmingham, Selly Oak
Bishop Auckland
Blackburn
Blackley & Broughton
Blackpool South
Blaydon
Blyth Valley
Bolsover
Bolton North East
Bolton South East
Bolton West
Bootle
Bradford South
Brent North
Bristol East
Bristol South
Bury South
Camberwell & Peckham
Chesterfield
Chorley
City of Durham
Copeland
Coventry North East
Coventry North West
Coventry South
Croydon North
Dagenham & Rainham
Darlington
Denton & Reddish
Derby North
Derby South
Don Valley
Doncaster Central
Doncaster North
Dudley North
Dulwich & West Norwood
Ealing North
Ealing, Southall
Easington
East Ham
Edmonton
Ellesmere Port & Neston
Eltham
Erith & Thamesmead
Exeter
Feltham & Heston
Garston & Halewood
Gateshead
Gedling
Great Grimsby
Greenwich & Woolwich
Hackney North & Stoke Newington
Hackney South & Shoreditch
Halifax
Halton
Hammersmith
Hampstead & Kilburn
Harrow West
Hartlepool
Hayes & Harlington
Hemsworth
Heywood & Middleton
Houghton & Sunderland South
Huddersfield
Hyndburn
Ilford South
Islington North
Islington South & Finsbury
Jarrow
Kingston Upon Hull East
Kingston Upon Hull North
Kingston Upon Hull West & Hessle
Knowsley
Leeds Central
Leeds East
Leeds North East
Leeds West
Leicester East
Leicester South
Leicester West
Leigh
Lewisham East
Lewisham West & Penge
Lewisham, Deptford
Leyton & Wanstead
Liverpool, Riverside
Liverpool, Walton
Liverpool, Wavertree
Liverpool, West Derby
Luton North
Luton South
Makerfield
Manchester Central
Manchester, Gorton
Mansfield
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland
Mitcham & Morden
Newcastle upon Tyne Central
Newcastle upon Tyne East
Newcastle upon Tyne North
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford
North Durham
North East Derbyshire
North Tyneside
North West Durham
Nottingham East
Nottingham North
Nottingham South
Oldham East & Saddleworth
Oldham West & Royton
Oxford East
Penistone & Stocksbridge
Plymouth, Moor View
Poplar & Limehouse
Preston
Rochdale
Rother Valley
Rotherham
Salford & Eccles
Scunthorpe
Sedgefield
Sefton Central
Sheffield Central
Sheffield South East
Sheffield, Brightside & Hillsborough
Sheffield, Heeley
Slough
South Shields
Southampton, Itchen
Southampton, Test
St Helens North
St Helens South & Whiston
Stalybridge & Hyde
Stockport
Stockton North
Stoke-on-Trent Central
Stoke-on-Trent North
Stoke-on-Trent South
Streatham
Stretford & Urmston
Sunderland Central
Telford
Tooting
Tottenham
Tynemouth
Vauxhall
Wakefield
Wallasey
Walsall North
Walsall South
Walthamstow
Wansbeck
Warley
Warrington North
Washington & Sunderland West
Wentworth & Dearne
West Bromwich East
West Bromwich West
West Ham
West Lancashire
Westminster North
Wigan
Wirral South
Wolverhampton North East
Wolverhampton South East
Workington
Worsley & Eccles South
Wythenshawe & Sale East
York Central
* 323 is just over half of the seats in parliament, once 5 likely Sinn Fein MPs (who don’t take their seats) have been subtracted.