Prediction

Today is the day of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. I realise that most people are bored senseless by this, but actually it's scheduled to be a good day for everyone except the Labour party. The election has been caused by the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, a Labour MP for decades. She managed to secure a 7,000 vote majority there in the last election.

Here's the thing; her daughter is taking her place as the labour candidate, and is currently polling so far behind the Conservative candidate, she is but a dim speck in rear-view mirror. That is significant. Crewe is a Labour Party stronghold, and they are about to lose it. The results come in early tomorrow morning, but the bookies have already paid out on a conservative win.

The Conservative candidate is Edward Timpson, the shoe magnate. If he also sold horses, he'd be a horse shoe magnate, but sadly that joke won't work, because he has nothing to do with horses as far as I know.

I've been doing some hard sums. The Conservatives are playing down their chances of a huge majority in Crewe and Nantwich. They are publicly suggesting that a majority of a few hundred would be a good result for them. But turnout is expected to be high, around 60%, because this is a key election. The electorate is about 72,000, so that means probably 43,200 votes up for grabs. Labour is hoping to do better today than they did in the local elections earlier this month. They polled about 24% that day. Lets be generous and give them 30%, that's 12,960 votes. The Conservatives are hoping to do better than their 44% in the local elections, but lets assume they don't. That 44% would give them 19,008 votes. That would be a Conservative majority of 6,048.

So my prediction is a conservative win with a majority of over 6,000. If they get a majority of over 7,000, that would be greater than the previous Labour majority and that would be pretty embarrassing. I'm posting this around 10.00pm, which is four hours before results are due.

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My project manager just gave me a bottle of Bollinger. I'd like to think it was because I was the bestest writer on the project. In fact I was the only writer on the project, and all the other people working on the project got bottles too. Still, my work was well received and I should be grateful.