First, right out of the gate, I know I have been wrong at this before … me and just about every other pundit thought that the blue wall would hold in 2016 and Hillary Clinton would get a respectable, if narrow win. (At lot of us did get the popular vote margin right – I predicted a 2% edge in the popular vote – but practically every major prediction did not model a plausible electoral college outcome where one could win with a 2 point popular vote deficit – elections won on comparable or closer margins (i.e. 1968, 1976) were reflected in more states. )

It might at first glance seem crazy to predict the race nearly a year ahead of time, (we don’t even know who the Democratic nominee will be!) this does come with the caveat that this is subject to change – my model’s assumptions are listed below.

Firstly – This model assumes that the incumbent, Donald Trump, will end up running again after handily securing the Republican nomination. This means that even if he is impeached (which seems greater than even chance), that the Senate does not convict and remove him from office.

Secondly – if it isn’t Joe Biden who becomes the Democratic nominee, that the Democrats will nonetheless put someone on the ticket that would lead for a balanced appeal to the industrial heartland and suburban middle class. That might be the biggest ‘if’ – it is safe to say that one of the Republican strategies for 2020 has been to portray the Democrats as a radicalized party out of touch with the American heartland. President Trump has not shied away from attacking members of ‘The Squad’ – those four first term congresswoman – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY); Ilhan Omar (MN); Ayanna Pressley (MA) and Rashida Tlaib (MI) who have been placed to the left end of the spectrum in the Democratic Party. This model’s assumption is that the Republican attempt at portraying the Democratic Party as radical will at best have a limited effect, that if not Biden then one of the other contenders, whether Senators Warren or Sanders, or Mayor Pete Buttigieg, will be able to establish a connection with the electorate independent of any portrayals of particular members of Congress, and any of the aforementioned will be deliberately mindful of the delicate balance between core base enthusiasm/turnout and broader appeals and bigger tents. The assumption also is that Donald Trump is seen by many as such a polarizing figure that his detractors will be more apt to consciously avoid splitting the vote, especially with (liberal-leaning) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, age 86, being in the news with intermittent health issues. (More on that later on.) This will be specifically reinforced by the third factor below.

Third Factor – a greater than 50% chance that there is at least an economic slowdown that will give middle class and mid-western working class voters a reason to seriously consider the Democratic Party. Most analysis of the 2016 election concluded that Trump’s appeal to mid-western blue collar economic anxiety tipped the balance in breaking through the blue wall, the 1992 adage that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ may have worked in Trump’s favour in 2016 but might hurt his re-election prospects in 2020. Already economic analysts have described the current economy as being in the longest economic expansion in the history of the United States – there are probably enough risks between trade conflicts, corporate debt, consumer debt, inverted yield curves, etc. to suggest that if nothing else, the economy is apt to run out of steam. But even if the next economic recession is delayed past next year’s election, see factor number four below regarding approval ratings.

Fourth Factor – approval ratings. Depending on what poll one wants to believe, or if one even believes the polls, the fact is that most scientific, credible polls, in aggregate, are showing a huge disapproval deficit for Donald Trump, unrivaled (at least thus far) by any other President since the end of the Second World War. While some of the approval ratings of Presidents at various times have dipped below Trump’s (i.e. President Carter) the actual number of people who disapprove of his performance has been consistently far stronger, and much more consistent over time than any prior occupant of the Oval Office in the past 70+ years. We know that 3 Presidents with (at times) better approval ratings have gone on to lose re-election (Ford, Carter and Bush senior); we can further note that polling in the Trump area has remained remarkably consistent – his approval numbers have consistently been in the low to mid-40s and his disapproval numbers remain around 50 to 55 percent. Unless there is either some way that he is able to grow support, the opposition is badly split, or there is some unforeseen event that causes the nation to rally around their chief executive (i.e. a major natural disaster or terrorist attack), it is unlikely that he will get more than the approximate 45 percent of the popular vote he received in 2016, and with the exception of that election, no President in recent memory has won an essentially 2 person race (where the top two candidates win 90%+ of the vote combined) with that level of support or less. Further, with most aggregate polling showing all main Democratic contenders leading President Trump by at least 4 points (see RealClear Politics polling averages as of 11/30/19), no recent elections have shown a electoral college-only based win where the winner’s popular vote deficit was greater than 2% (again, 2016 being unprecedented). If the economy still continues to remain strong, the above map will change, with margins growing tighter, but not enough for the Democrats to loose their overall advantage.

Fifth Factor – Over the course of 230 years of Presidential history, there has not been a time where the two main parties have consistently traded off holding the White House after 2 terms, with each executive serving both full terms. The closest thing might be the period between 1952 and 1976 – a period of 24 years, if tumultuous at times then at least relatively prosperous – and even then where in two of those instances – Kennedy and Nixon – those initially elected did not serve the full 8 years. That the current trend of 8 years D, then 8 R, and then back to D, then R has continued since 1992, which will be 28 years, an unheard of amount of time for such a methodical rotation of power. Given increased polarization and less economic stability, it is likely that this cycle will be disrupted, sooner than later.

Final Factor – the United States Supreme Court. The fact that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, at 86, is experiencing periodic health issues and the court already has a conservative majority, liberals, and pro-choice voters in general, will likely be more motivated to show up to the polls than pro-life voters, who are not as apt to see a conservative majority change anytime soon. Add to this the fact of the age of the other President Clinton appointee, Stephen Breyer (confirmed back in 1994, now aged 81), it is not out of the question that the President elected in 2020 could possibly appoint 2 justices, both replacing justices seen as more liberal that is currently 5-4 conservative-leaning. The oldest conservative-leaning member, Justice Clarence Thomas, is currently 71. Thus in 2020 social moderates and liberals who might be concerned about abortion and gay marriage will see themselves having more to lose, and much more on defense, even as the the Supreme Court will remain in a conservative leaning direction for sometime to come. One might take issue with the labels of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ leaning justices, or believe that the essential threat to such rulings as Roe v. Wade (abortion) and Obergefell v. Hodges (the landmark same-sex marriage case) on a 5-4, or 6-3, or even a 7-2 conservative leaning court are grossly over-stated, but for predictive purposes for elections, perception matters. My overall model is predicting that the liberals will perceive a greater threat to their values than conservatives in the ongoing fight over Supreme Court composition, which could fuel Democratic pickups in such states as Florida, Arizona and North Carolina, where at least 2/3rds of voters do NOT identify as evangelical Christian (65% in North Carolina, 74% in Arizona and 76% in Florida), according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

In conclusion, this is not to say that the dynamics of the race can’t change, or that President Trump couldn’t win re-election, that is certainly possible. This model basically incorporates what I believe will be the most significant factors (economy, high disapproval, Democrats/liberals more united and more on defensive with Supreme Court) and projects the most likely outcome with each of those factors weighted appropriately. While recent elections have been more predictably unpredictable, and other factors could emerge that could significantly change my projections, any potential new factors will need to be very significant to change the underlying dynamics as outlined here.

November 3, 2020

Democrats – 55 % in popular vote and 358 electoral votes

Republicans – 42.5% and 180

Others – 2.5% and no electoral votes

Current predictions are showing the potential of the UK Conservatives to take 370 seats with 41.22% of the vote; Labour in second place, though significantly lower than 2 years ago with 187 seats and 29.57% of the vote; the Scottish Nationalists are the third largest party with 48 seats and 3.35% of the overall vote (roughly 40% in Scotland); the Liberal Democrats get just under 15% of the vote at 14.86% and 23 seats.

While I am predicting a tightening of the polls, probably a 7 point margin and 345 seats for the Conservatives (not too different than today’s widely anticipated MRP poll showing 359 seats for the Conservatives to 211 for Labour); if the current polling of a 12 point margin holds, and the Conservatives do win 370 seats, that would be their best showing in 32 years, while Labour, below 200 seats, would not have had a worse result since 1935.

The MRP poll does bear special mention since it accurately predicted the Conservative loss of majority in 2017; almost the only poll to do so, some time in advance of the vote. The methodology, including much more extensive interviewing (50,000 interviews instead of the couple of thousand or so for most other polls) samples on a number of factors that can help with constituency projections (the most widely cited examples include high income finance workers voting leave and university students voting remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum.)

The problem with the poll so far out in advance of the election, in addition to the attention it receives for it’s predictive abilities, is that the MRP poll may in turn influence voting behavior. Tony Blair once said that he didn’t think the UK was a landslide country, and the statistics bear this out, with few elections since 1945 having a margin of more than 10 points between the victor and the second place party. People on the Conservative side may become less motivated to vote if they believe their party will win big (although the additional stakes with Brexit will likely make any potential decline in turnout negligible.) Alternatively, Labour and Liberal Democrats may coalesce around the party more apt to beat the Conservatives in a given riding, and there may be a foreboding sense of their part that they have to at least cut Johnson’s majority down to size. That sense of foreboding could also motivate many Labour voters to simply not show up, especially as Jeremy Corbyn continues to deal with rifts in his party.

Ultimately, however, while polls suggestive of a large win can cut both ways, both for the leading party as well as the trailing one, the fact that the Conservatives have already been in power for 9 years, the existence of a core opposition to Conservative policies such as austerity and the relatively rare occurrences of landslides suggest that some tightening is more likely than not. In addition to Brexit, the state of the National Health Service (NHS) is also figuring as a major campaign issue, with Corbyn accusing Conservative policy as providing for the privatization of the decade’s old publicly funded health insurance program through any prospective post-Brexit trade agreements with the United States. Those sections of the electorate more concerned with the NHS could effectively put a floor under Labour support.

This isn’t to say that the Conservatives are at this point in danger of losing the election, however. As witness the polls showing spikes in support at various times for the Brexit Party and Liberal Democrats in the last parliament, there does appear to be a general malaise with inaction on Brexit and the uncertainty that brings. For many, that may mean the Conservatives by default – Johnson’s approval ratings are, while not stratospheric, on the whole much stronger than Corbyn’s; Labour has done their fair share of struggling in the campaign (most recently on charges of not doing enough to combat antisemitism); the Liberal Democrats, while up from 2017 on an unequivocal Remain stance, are not going moving past 15% in the polls.

While Corbyn is seen as an effective campaigner (to some extent, at least), his subterranean net approval ratings ranging from negative 35 to negative 60, in contrast with Johnson’s negative 10 to positive 5, is likely sufficient by itself, barring some major unforeseen event, to keep Corbyn out of Number 10. Arguably another Labour leader other than Corbyn could have given Johnson’s Conservatives a much stronger challenge in their bid for a fourth term, although a different leader would still need to navigate the various divisions in the party (i.e. between the moderate Blair and Brown Labour supporters and those of the Corbyn and his Momentum movement; between those who are solid remainers and the Euro-skeptics, etc.)

In addition, while the map above shows Labour hanging on in the predominantly large urban areas, less evident is the migration of many blue collar workers in the heavy pro-Brexit (and Labour-voting) areas towards the Conservatives, which appears to be in line with the emergence of the overall Conservative populist movement in many democracies today.

Thus in conclusion, the race is the Conservatives’ to lose. Labour may close the gap, but internal divisions and an unpopular leader (with the country at large) suggest it will not be enough. Both Conservative and Labour parties have experienced significant fractures during the Brexit vote, the win for Labour in losing is that they may possibly be forced to deal with those fractures first. A Conservative win may ultimately be hard to top in the next election in 2023/2024 – not only will they still have fractures that they may or may not deal with, but any disruption or Brexit shocks will likely be laid at their feet, especially with a majority larger than any they have had in the last seven elections.

Next post will deal with Northern Ireland, then Scotland/Wales, and finally all three major parties.

Although the polls up to today’s runoff election are showing the Governor’s race as a dead heat, within the margin of error, I predict that the incumbent Democratic Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, will win in a closely fought race. To a large extent the race is not just Republican versus Democrat, but there is also a national versus local dynamic (the GOP favouring the former, the Democrats emphasizing the latter); as well as a potential urban versus rural divide. The more traditional Louisiana divisions between the northern and southern sections of the state (the more Republican Protestant as opposed to the Catholic Democrat sections, respectively) will, similar to recent election cycles, not be the main point of divergence between the two candidates. That said, Governor Edwards has two paths forward to victory, both heavily dependent on urban votes, but one more reliant on politically marginal parishes in the north, the other, more likely scenario seeing a stronger showing in the south.

The first map shows the 2015 Governor’s race. A number of observers believe that the relatively unpopularity of the Republican finalist, David Vitter, heavily contributed to Governor Edwards’ win, with a 16% + vote swing between the jungle primary (where all candidates are on the same primary ballot for all voters) and the runoff election (where the top two candidates from the primary advance if no one receives 50% support in the first vote.) Governor Edwards received at least some support in each major geographic region of the state, even as it was concentrated in the more urban and southern areas of the state.

In the U.S. Presidential race in 2016, the following year, Democratic support was nearly 20 points lower than Governor Edward’s level of support. As can be seen on the map, Democratic support was reduced to urban strongholds in New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge; majority African-American parishes and a few remaining parishes around the lower Mississippi River valley.

One of the advantage of a jungle primary is voters effectively choose their candidates in the primary, which likely leads to a clearer discernment of final votes than a conventional primary, where people can vote in one party’s primary and vote for another party in the general. As can be seen, the Democrats are clearly stronger in Governor’s race this year than the Presidential election, which suggests that a number of Louisiana voters are considering the gubernatorial race independent of national considerations. Particularly pivotal are some of the ‘Florida’ parishes north of New Orleans, the environs around Baton Rouge as well as some of the delta/coastal parishes closer to New Orleans. The primary breakdown was nearly 52% for the Republicans and just over 47% for the Democrats (one independent also ran receiving less than a percentage point).

The other important factor is the actual breakdown of support between the candidates – Republican candidate (and businessman) Eddie Rispone won 27% over Republican Congressman Ralph Abraham’s 24%. Abraham, as the above map shows, did well in his 5th Congressional district, which comprises the north eastern and central portions of the state, including a number of ‘Florida’ parishes north of New Orleans. While no one expects a repeat of 2015, where then Senator David Vitter, hit with a prostitution scandal, had a great deal of difficulty securing the support of Republicans who did not support him in first round of voting, it would only take a small portion of the Abraham supporters to either back Edwards and/or abstain from voting in the runoff to secure Edwards’ lock on a second term. (Senator Vitter only won 40% of all Republican votes in the first round of voting in 2015, or 23% of the entire vote share, with one of his GOP first round opponents openly endorsing the Democrat in the runoff, while the other one opting not to endorse anyone. In the runoff Vitter ended up with only 44% of the vote, despite his party having won 60% overall vote share in the first round. This roughly translates to Vitter getting barely over half (!) of the Republican votes in the first round who did not vote for him initially.)

The fact that the combined Abraham/Rispone vote may be much more cohesive than the Vitter/GOP field in 2015, much higher than 50% but maybe not at 100% (that is, 100% of Abraham supporters vote for Rispone), makes the final two maps particularly insightful. If over 92% of Abraham supporters opt to vote Rispone, (which is certainly plausible) then Edwards will be saved by turnout from the heavily urban, largely southern parishes (all runoff elections in the past 40+ years have had a higher turnout in Louisiana). If Risponse gets less than 92% of Abraham supports, however, Governor Edwards is that much more likely assured of a win. Thus we will show the less likely scenario of what an Edwards victory may look like, showing more blue in north – not necessarily in Abraham’s 5th district but in the areas where Abraham votes would be very critical in determining whether particular parishes are coloured red or blue. (Note this map’s modelling is independent of a delta/south eastern increased turnout.)

The more likely path to Edward’s victory is through places like Jefferson Parish in the south, (ref. #13 on map) – a parish that may have at one point served as a genesis of sorts of the modern Louisiana GOP, but with population growth, demographic shifts and a decline in suburban GOP support, have trended more Democratic in recent elections. Jefferson actually is the second most populous parish in Louisiana after East Baton Rouge, and has almost 100,000 more people than Orleans (New Orleans), which suffered a marked decline after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Thus my final prediction of a 51-49% win for Governor Edwards assumes a high level of cohesion of the Abraham/Rispone vote (roughly 95%) from the first round. In addition to Jefferson, a number of other coastal/delta parishes in the ‘Florida’ and New Orleans regions are expected to turn a light shade of blue, sufficient enough for Governor Edwards to keep his job.

Three final thoughts:

• If Governor Edwards does win, it would be slightly ironic that the critical factor may not have been localizing the race so much as the Democrats’ keeping the race sufficiently local for the crossover voters; while the GOP’s aim to nationalize the race might have backfired for a certain number of voters, motivating a more urban/south eastern turnout in favour of the Democrats
• The quest to understand a key interest of mine, namely any potential revitalization of the old yellow dog/blue dog rural southern Democrat vote, remains elusive … Alabama in 2017 and Tennessee in 2018 decisively showed Democratic growth to be more urban/suburban rather than rural vote recapture, using that as a basis for Kentucky earlier this month I predicted that incumbent Republican governor Matt Bevin would be saved by the erstwhile Democratic eastern coal counties staying red, enough of them surprisingly flipped and gave the Democrat Andy Beshear a 5,000 vote margin for the win … so for Louisiana I am going slightly more nuanced than to predict in binary terms if Democrats can or can not recapture their former rural constituencies, and I am splitting the difference by regions, ironically along lines similar to the older divisions of southern and northern
• In all my predictions of elections in the US, UK and Canada, between Newfoundland and Labrador, Northern Ireland and Louisiana, these have to be some of the more complex regions where locality and history make a very decisive difference in predicting an outcome … if it truly can be predicted … perhaps Louisiana is less complex and byzantine than when it was described by A.J. Liebling decades ago (see recent article in New York Times) it goes without saying that I do not presume to know anywhere near all of the local dynamics, personalities and histories, but rather I use this as a broad basis point to move ahead in furthering my understanding of these truly fascinating regions. If Louisiana is not as complex in it’s conglomerations of political allegiances, it certainly is no less interesting today.

A number of polls at the beginning of the campaign showed some fairly divergent poll results, with as much as a 16 point Tory lead over Labour and as little as a 7 point lead.  A week into the campaign has shown a more consistent lead of around 12 points in numerous polls, not overly different than the first projections shown on ericvotes, which continues to base projections on a final narrowing of the margin to 9-10 percentage points.  Thus with perhaps a few modifications, changes in shading and a about a dozen change of seats, the projected electoral map is essentially unchanged, with a respectable Conservative majority of 354 total seats projected.

What is perhaps more critical are the swings in the underlying dynamic – in 2017 the two main parties had the highest combined total vote share in some time at 82.4%.  With noted gains with both the new Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats, that combined vote share for the Tories and Labour is likely to collapse below 70% and may end up in the mid-60s on election day.

Polls vary to some extent in terms of who is gaining support from whom, but in comparing 2017 versus 2019 voting intentions, a few trends are very apparent:

• Labour is struggling more than the other two parties in retaining their levels of support, with as much as a forty percent of their 2017 vote indicating gravitation towards other parties.  Roughly 5% of that support  is going to the Brexit Party , comparable to the same level of support going to the Greens and minor parties.  As much as 10% of their support is headed towards the Conservatives (which might be the most significant swing in the campaign – if it holds, giving the Tories a 20-30 seat majority); more support, perhaps 12-15% is headed towards the Remain supporting Liberal Democrats, although this may not be as decisive if, in a given constituency, the initial Liberal Democrat support and/or the 2017 Labour support was too small to overtake Conservative leads.  This is especially the case in southern parts of the country where the Liberal Democrats are projected to outpace their national gain in vote share.

• The Conservatives are looking at retaining 3 out of 4 of their 2017 voters, while they lose 10% of their vote to the Brexit Party, they off set this with a smaller gain from Labour, (6-8%) and run 2-3% greater than even with the Liberal Democrats in terms of vote swapping, for an overall net decrease of around 3-5% of national vote share.

• The Liberal Democrats, oddly enough, while making significant gains to over 15% of the national vote share, (more than double from 2017), they are actually retaining the same 3 out of 4 voters as their Conservative counterparts.  I suspect that some of this is attributable to vote swapping, or some Liberal Democrats less than enthusiastic for an unequivocal Remain stance.  As noted above, they are 2-3% points worse for vote swapping in relation to the Conservatives, but that might end up at being even or 2-3% to the better in the Southwestern and London regions of the country (which might be the second most significant swing in the campaign, and the one that keeps the Conservatives closer to 350 than 400 seats).  Labour, according to recent surveys, is bleeding more support to the Liberal Democrats than any other party.  It remains to be seen if that is sufficient to put more LD tan/orange on the map, given that both Liberal Democrat and Labour support in large parts of the southern England were low to begin with, especially outside of London and the Southwest.  The swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats might be more limited in the industrial north and Western Midlands of England, given that the Remain Liberal Democrats are more out of step with the stronger Leave sentiment in those regions.  The reduced likelihood for LD gains from Labour in the northern/heavier Leave regions is also a key component in limiting overall Tory gains, keeping Labour closer to 200 rather than 150-160 seats.

• The Scottish Nationalists are likely to gain in seats and vote share north of the English border.  While they and the Liberal Democrats share essentially the same Remain message, their hand is strengthened both with established incumbencies in a majority of Scottish seats, in addition to the pro-independence stance that has gain further traction in the wake of 2016’s Leave vote.  The main causality of any resurgence of the SNP will be the Conservatives, simply because they have the seats to lose, whereas Labour and the Liberal Democrats are scarcely on the board.

This finally leads us to the Brexit Party, which didn’t even exist in 2017 but seems to pick up where the UK Independence Party (UKIP) left off, it’s resurgence attributed to intense discontent over the government’s attempt to execute leaving the European Union and a commitment to seeing the project through.  While they did actually lead some polls in the aftermath of some of the (Theresa) May government’s failures on securing a deal, the more unequivocal position of the Boris Johnson Conservatives have dampened support for the party, which, being led by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, appears set to gain a tenth of the vote share in next month’s vote.

This will likely not lead to any seats, although it may very well limit both Tory gains and Labour loses.  I will expound on both those points in that order.

Firstly, the main basis that I would predict no seats is the fact that UKIP, in 2015 with it’s highest vote share ever, at 12.6%, gained exactly one seat, that of a Conservative incumbent in Clacton who previously quit the party and retained the seat in a subsequent by-election as a UKIP candidate.  As the graphic below shows, Brexit/UKIP candidates are likely to do strongest in the East, at the mouth of the Thames and in the north, northwest. This largely corresponds to the Brexit vote share, having done well in the eastern and northern sections, although the West Midlands region, with the highest share of Brexit votes, only has a couple of seats in the Birmingham area, less than what one might expect. 

There is not a perfect correlation between referendum votes for Leave and UKIP/Brexit support.  A number of the highest UKIP vote constituencies in 2015 did not make the top 10 in the 2016 referendum, and in some cases barely made even the top 100.  It further is apparent that the ratio between UKIP votes and referendum Leave votes and UKIP votes (which we are essentially extrapolating into potential levels of Brexit Party support) is relatively low, averaging just under 1 in 3 for Labour held constituencies (that is, out of 3 Leave votes in 2016, only 1 of those votes backed UKIP the year before), with Conservative-held constituencies only slightly more favourable for UKIP at 2:5 (of 5 Leave voters in 2016, 2 backed UKIP the year previously).  The magic ratio, for any constituency that voted at least 66% for Leave, is around 2:3 for UKIP 2015/Leave 2016 for the Brexit Party to be in serious contention in any given constituency.  There simply is no evidence that is happening, and support would need to be closer towards 20% nationally for the Brexit Party (given a broad distribution of support between England and Wales) before they even are looking at more than a handful of seats.

The other point to consider is who is losing the most with the Brexit Party’s resurgence (even as it has now appeared to have fallen back into the high single digits), and those signs point more to the Conservatives than Labour.  Indeed the most current opinion surveys show that roughly by a 2 to 1 difference, with roughly 10 percent of the 2017 Conservative vote share versus 5 percent of Labour’s for that same year, the Brexit Party is gaining more at the Tories’ expense, even in the Labour held northern constituencies which made a decisive difference in the 2016 referendum vote.  The more obvious point of reference would be to determine which party lost the most vote share to UKIP in 2015, but that is complicated by the fact that the Liberal Democrats suffered huge loses that year, and most of the beneficiaries were not UKIP but Conservatives, Labour and Scottish Nationalists.  Thus a retroactive ‘who gained the most with UKIP’s collapse’ is more instructive – where the overall result of some 170 constituencies (where they still ran candidates and had significant losses over 2017) shows that the Conservatives and Labour gained about evenly, the key Labour-held Brexit strongpoints in the industrial north showed that the Conservatives outpaced Labour gains with UKIP’s collapse. While it is entirely possible that some previously reliable Labour sections of support switched to UKIP in 2015 and moved to the Conservatives in 2017 (perhaps mirroring a more global movement towards right wing, blue collar populism), the fact remains that the current numbers point to more of a downside to the Tories, more of an upside for Labour with any increase in Brexit Party support over UKIP in 2017.

Finally, with the Brexit Party it should be noted that since the beginning of the election campaign the polling has trended downward for their party.  Perhaps wanting to avoid the potential economic impacts of a hard-Brexit, many believe that as the Conservatives have now committed themselves as the party delivering the change that they ultimately seek, namely a clean break from the European Union, many hardliners might be more readily persuaded to support the Tories’ new leadership under Boris Johnson rather than risk electing Labour and Liberal Democratic candidates who could, in their minds, only further delay, if not thwart, the entire Brexit enterprise in a fractious parliament much like the one after the election 2 years earlier.

In sum, the Conservatives are projected to get 354 seats with 37% of the vote; Labour 26.6% and 202 seats; the Scottish Nationalists 3.8% of the vote and 46 seats; Liberal Democrats 15.4% and 26 seats; Brexit takes 9.9% and zero seats, the other parties (Plaid Cymru, Green and Northern Ireland), 22 seats and 7.4% of the vote.

Next week will be a special focus on the Scottish and Welsh separatist and Northern Irish political parties.

Louisiana will have their own article before the date of their Governor’s runoff on November 16th, this article will look at the fairly red states of Mississippi and Kentucky as they vote for their respective Governors tomorrow, as well as the blueing state of Virginia where control of the closely divided General Assembly is on the line.

Many will try to assess the races tomorrow in terms of trying to find some portents for next year’s Presidential race, however with each of these states their partisan orientation is fairly established for next year’s race, (normal elections would see Virginia trending Democratic, the other two Republican), there may be some subtle trends below the surface that might point to dynamics that may loom larger in the year ahead. What follows is, in order of certainty, my predictions for tomorrow.

Mississippi – REPUBLICAN HOLD … the state has seen the one Democrat holding elected office, Attorney General Jim Hood, holding the current Lieutenant Governor, Republican Tate Reeves, to a single digit lead in the polls. This may or may not be enough to put Mr. Reeves over the crucial 50% mark. Mississippi is unique in having not only a majority vote requirement but also a majority of the state House Districts in order to become governor. However, unlike neighbouring Louisiana, where runoff elections are quite common, the state constitution provides that should no candidate win the necessary 50% of both votes and state House districts, that the State House will choose a winner. These ‘electoral college-like’ provisions have been controversial and have indeed only been used once, in 1999 when Democratic candidate Ronnie Musgroves won a close plurality (but not a majority) of the votes and was selected by the House on partisan lines. Twenty years ago, however, the Democrats had a strong 86-33 majority in the state House, currently the Republicans have a 74-45 majority and thus the outcome of a Reeves plurality would not be in any serious doubt.

The political dynamics of Mississippi are influenced by demographics, with whites, at 60% of the population, being heavily leaned towards the Republicans, while African Americans, at nearly 40% of the population, trend even more so towards the Democrats. Exit polls consistently show that in recent elections the racial/partisan breakdown as being typically 3 out of 4 whites backing Republicans, while 9 out of 10 African Americans back the Democrats. The end result has been that on the Presidential level, neither party’s support has fell significantly below 40% in the past 30 years, while in most years the same holds true to state wide races for Governor and Senate (except in some instances where popular incumbent Republicans have received a larger vote share). While Attorney General Hood may have some of that cross over appeal as a Democrat incumbent, it is unlikely to be enough to overpower a strong Republican advantage, even if that advantage seldom translates into a landslide.

As far as the overall result is concerned, Mississippi gubernatorial elections are generally not seen as harbingers of the following year’s national trend. At a more local level, however, some of the more affluent, more suburban counties such as Madison and Rankin in the Jackson, Mississippi area, Lamar (more rural but towards the coast) and northern DeSoto county by Memphis have trended slightly away from the Republicans in the last presidential election, even as the state trended slight more in the opposite direction. The Democrat candidate Hood carried none of these counties in his 2015 election for Attorney General, even as he won 55% of the statewide vote, however any discernible trend towards the Democrats in these counties could point to further evidence of suburban/college-educated voters’ discontent, even in the most conservative of states, with the Republican party.

VIRGINIA – likely Democrat gains in the General Assembly.

Unlike Canadian provinces, and UK national assemblies where elections are held separately, with campaigns held on clear partisan lines, state legislative politics is much harder to predict given the sheer volume of seats concurrently up for election in multiple states with very localized contests alongside races with more national import. For this reason, ericvotes currently does not make U.S. state legislature predictions.

It is another thing to argue, however, that it is futile to mention state legislative elections in a politics blog devoted to election predictions, especially as this year’s elections for Virginia’s General Assembly could be pivotal in future national trends.

At one point Virginia was a hold out among southern states as a Republican outlier, being the one southern state in 1976, for instance, that voted Republican even as the rest of the south voted for Jimmy Carter. Beginning in the late 1990s as northern Virginia continued to grow as part of the D.C. metro area, counties such as Fairfax started trending increasingly towards the Democrats, turning blue by 2004, and neighbouring Prince William following along in 2008. Since a good portion of the state’s population now resided in this part of the state, this contributed to an ongoing realignment of the state from red to blue. In 2016, Virginia was the only confederate state to vote for the Democratic Presidential ticket, completely opposite of the alignment 40 years prior.

Virginia and New Jersey each have their Governor’s election the year after the Presidential election, this year Virginia has General Assembly elections where currently the Republicans control the House of Delegates 51 to 48 and the Senate, 20 to 19. With a Democrat, Ralph Northam as Governor, even the slightest shift blue will give the Democrats a lock on the legislative and executive branches of state government, something that has not been the case in 25 years.

There promises to be closely fought races in all major population centers in the states, northern Virginia, Richmond and the Virginia Beach area, where both Democrats and Republicans are defending closely contested seats in both chambers. While many of the races may ultimately hing on local candidates and issues, the underlying dynamic is against the Republicans as President Donald Trump is not as popular in this southern state as elsewhere. This should be sufficient for the Democrats to pick up both legislative chambers.

Kentucky – Republican Hold – by a nose

I couldn’t find a closer horse race picture but that would accurately portray the race between incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin and Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear.

A mid-October Mason Dixon poll showed the race essentially tied, at 46% each. The Governor, originally from New Hampshire, is characterized as a stalwart partisan who is prone to making controversial statements, with one his detractors calling him ‘Scott Walker with Paul LePage’s mouth’. Kentucky has had a more genteel tradition of bipartisanship (at least in recent decades) with Democrats being historically very successful in Governor’s races even as the state has trended increasingly Republican. Governor Bevin is widely seen as unpopular, but has made it a point to tie himself closely with President Donald Trump, who is considerably more popular in the Bluegrass State. Bevin was seen by some educators as particularly hostile to public school teachers and their interests, and in many of the rural counties educators who might otherwise tend Republican are giving the Democrats another look. It is also worth noting that the Bevin campaign advertised a Lexington election eve rally featuring the President as far south as the Cookeville, TN radio market (where the Kentucky Governor election does not seem to have garnered a significant amount of attention, despite the frequent presence of Kentucky shoppers in the Upper Cumberland, Tennessee retail area.)

Attorney General Beshear, whose father Steve was a longtime fixture in state politics and recently served two terms as Governor himself, faces the challenge of either trying to regain traditional, more south eastern/rural sections of Democrat support or making new inroads in the more urban areas around Louisville, Lexington and south of Cincinnati. Twelve years prior when the elder Beshear handily won election over Republican incumbent Ernie Fletcher, most of the state map except for the mid-southern section near the Tennessee border was Democrat blue. Three years ago when Donald Trump won over 62% of the vote here, the only counties remaining blue where Fayette (Lexington) and Jefferson (Louisville), and many of the previous southeastern Democrat stronghold counties now had some of the darkest shades of red.

Recent electoral history in Alabama and Tennessee suggests that Democrat rural vote recapture is not a likely strategy for electoral success. While Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones did gain some votes in the northwestern section of the state (which were previously staunch Democratic counties) the underlying dynamic of his success was winning in any and all urban/suburban areas with no error to spare. The following year when former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, widely liked across partisan lines, ran for U.S. Senate himself, he kept Republican margins in the urban areas, (even Republican urban areas around Knoxville and Chattanooga) very tight, but the swing in many of the rural yellow dog counties was much weaker, even despite having won a full 95 county sweep for his second term as Governor only 12 years prior.

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Thus, in conclusion, Tuesday night will be closely watched for signs of the year to come, but absent any further rigorous analysis below the state aggregate level, it would be futile to try to predict next year’s election on the basis of two contests which historically have not helped predict the winner of the follow year’s presidential election.

My first prediction out of the gate for the December 12th U.K. General Election shows a respectable majority for the incumbent Conservatives, at 351, even as their share of the vote will likely fall to 37% due to the emergent Brexit Party. While the gap between Conservatives and Labour will narrow from a current 10% + lead, finally settling at 9.5%, this will be a recent lowpoint for Labour at 204 seats. The Scottish Nationalist Party will take third place in seats with 45, while the Liberal Democrats will take 28, Plaid Cymru at 3 and the Greens at 1. The 18 Northern Ireland seats will see the Democratic Unionist Party at 10, Sinn Fein at 5, while the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Ulster Unionists and the lone independent get a seat a piece. Much like the United Kingdom Independent Party in 2015, where the party received 12.6% of the vote but only 1 seat, the Brexit Party will have their share of the vote, projected to be roughly 10%, spread fairly evenly throughout England and Wales but where the party may very likely finish with no representation in Parliament.

Stay tuned for weekly analysis each Thursday, where I will make any needed revisions to my predictions and provide more in depth analysis of the latest election trends.