Liberal Democrats now predicted to win some seats!

Following a revision of the predictive model, the Electoral Calculus site has revised its election prediction to Conservative 267, Labour 334, Liberal Democrat 16; giving Labour an 18 seat majority. This is based on the most recent opinion polls and takes the Liberal Democrats from a prediction of no seats to merely having their parliamentary representation cut by nearly three quarters.

Locally this prediction yields:

Basildon and Billericay

MP John Baron (CON)

Electorate	64,873	Turnout	60.20%
	2005 Votes	2005 Share	Prediction
CON	16,454	42.13%		46.60%
LAB	12,867	32.95%		34.47%
LIB	4,830	12.37%		5.26%
OTH	3,096	7.93%		9.04%
MIN	1,805	4.62%		4.62%
CON Majority	3,587	9.19%	Pred Maj	12.12%
Basildon South and East Thurrock MP Angela Smith (LAB) Electorate 71,108 Turnout 58.95% 2005 Votes 2005 Share Prediction LAB 17,363 41.42% 42.88% CON 16,902 40.32% 44.59% LIB 4,960 11.83% 5.04% OTH 2,446 5.83% 6.90% MIN 250 0.60% 0.60% LAB Majority 461 1.10% Pred Maj 1.71% CON Gain Of course, there is probably a long way to go to the actual election, though with 'decisive' Gordon in charge who knows, but if I were Angela Smith I would be a little worried. This particular contest is marked by an incumbent who is actually a pretty good MP and a challenger in Stephen Metcalfe who will make an excellent MP. The people of Basildon and East Thurrock are lucky to have such high quality candidates for the next general election.