Prediction: Greens will out-perform nationwide polls, win 4 seats

As Labour and the Conservatives take a tumble in the opinion polls, it becomes harder and harder to predict the outcome of the upcoming general election. So hard in fact, that we’re stopping our series of seat prediction posts.

MRP polls from major reputable pollsters and producing wildly different results, and are almost completely based on guesswork at this point without any consideration for the facts on the ground.

It’s this lack of consideration for strong local campaigns which led us to predict far lower vote shares for Labour & Reform, and much higher vote shares for the Lib Dems & the Greens, in our previous two election predictions.

Now it appears that the Green Party are indeed out-performing national polls and may be on course to win at least 4 seats on July 4th. Two constituency-level polls by Omnisis, where the polling company actually asked people in a target constituency how they are going to vote, show The Green Party winning their target seats in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, as reported in The Guardian. It’s widely predicted by most other pollsters and commentators that The Greens will also gain Bristol Central from Labour and retain Brighton Pavilion.

These figures, from actual polls taken in the constituencies in question, paint a wildly different picture to other prediction models. Electoral Calculus has the Tories in first in both seats, with Labour in second and the Green Party a distant third in Waveney Valley and fourth behind the Liberal Democrats in North Herefordshire.

Meanwhile, an Ipsos MRP released the other day showed the Green Party winning Waveney Valley on 33% of the vote (so far so good) but with Reform UK in second on 28% – which seems like a drastic overestimate.

Why is this happening? Why do the national polls seem to be so inaccurate and why are they also saying wildly different things? This is a highly unusual election, where we are seeing the opposite of a “squeeze” in vote share for the smaller parties. The longer the campaign goes on, the more voters are switching from Labour and the Conservatives to the Greens, Reform UK and the Lib Dems.

The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats have long histories and incredibly strong networks of activists on the ground, which makes it possible for them to do well in targeted seats. Reform UK are polling well nationally because they get a disproportionately large amount of media coverage, and are therefore gaining a kind of “15 minutes of fame”, but they don’t have the members on the ground to deliver victories under First Past The Post voting.

If the Green Party and its network of activists can continue their good work on the ground, we may well be looking at a significant upset in the polls nationally as well as 4 well-earned seats in Parliament. Only time will tell.