General election 2015: There’s a 74 per cent chance Ed Miliband will be the next PM, according to poll
Despite reports of consistent unpopularity among both his supporters and opponents, there's a pretty high chance Ed Miliband will become our next Prime Minister after May's general election.
To be fair, the Populus/Hanover election outcome predictor is not based on just a head-to-head between the Conservatives and Labour – it takes into account all possible coalitions, and the likelihood of each one arising based on the likely distribution of parliamentary seats.
Why such a good chance for Labour? According to Rick Rye, managing director of Populus, it's because more voters are turning to Labour over the Scottish National Party (SNP).
In the FT, he wrote: “These gains for Labour come mainly at the expense of the Scottish National party, which is projected to win 44 seats (down four on last week).”
Over the course of this week, the number of predicted Labour seats has gone up from 273 to 277, while the Conservatives have gone down by one seat to 272.
When all other parties were also taken into account, the calculator came up with the following prediction of outcomes, placing Miliband's chance of being Prime Minister at 74 per cent, compared to Cameron's estimated chance of 26 per cent.
One thing is certain according to the results – a coalition is much more likely than a one-party rule, with the chance of a Labour majority at 2.2 per cent and a Conservative majority at just 1.3 per cent.
The most likely possible outcome is a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats at 17.1 per cent, followed by a Labour/SNP coalition at 17 per cent. The chance of the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition happening again is just 8.2 per cent.
“At a little over 270 seats, the Conservatives have a one-in-four chance of remaining in power — not that much higher than the Greens being in government with just one seat,” said Rye.