Over the last three weeks I have been trying to predict the outcome of each of the 650 seats up for grabs at this election. Here is my final seat prediction…

Conservative 392 (62)
Labour 163 (-69)
Liberal Democrats 16 (7)
SNP 53 (-3)
Plaid Cymru 5 (2)
Green 2 (1)
DUP 8 (-)
UUP 1 (-1)
Sinn Fein 5 (+1)
SDLP 3 (-)
Independent 1 (-)
Speaker 1 (-)

In some ways doing these predictions is a fools errand as I cannot possibly know all the local circumstances in each seat. However, I have tried to be as clever as I can by looking at local election results, polling data, other people’s predictions on sites like PoliticalBetting.com and UKPollingReport and anecdotal evidence which I have picked up. However, I have also made one or two assumptions.

The main assumption is that the UKIP vote is going to reduce dramatically. We don’t yet know how many seats UKIP is actually going to put up candidates in. The ITV Wales YouGov poll showed that 64% of the UKIP vote will transfer directly to the Conservatives, and only 2% to Labour. In many Labour held marginals it would only take 25-40% of the UKIP vote to go to the Conservative candidate for him/her to win. If there is no UKIP candidate in a Labour marginal, some very bizarre seats could end up going to the Conservatives – there may be one or two with five figures majorities which fall. I am also assuming a decline in the Labour vote more generally, partly due to an anti-Corbyn phenomenon in many areas, and also because the LibDems have become seen as the party of ‘Remain’.

Although I expect the LibDems to gain seats, I do not expect them to make a major breakthrough. In fact, I’d say it’s almost impossible for them to come back to anything like their previus strength at this election. Matthew Goodwin has written about a ‘blue wall’ which they have to overcome in the South West, one of their previous strongholds. From my analysis I don’t expect them to gain a single seat in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset or Wiltshire. Their 2015 result was so catastrophic, and together with the fact that their decline in local government has yet to be reversed in any meaningful way, it would be a miracle if they managed to win more than 20-25 seats.

In Scotland the SNP will continue to reign supreme and although they will lose a few seats to the Conservatives, and one (possibly two) to the LibDems, I expect them to take Labour’s remaining seat off them to wipe out Labour altogether. Other pundits are predicting the Conservatives could take 8-10 seats. By my reckoning this is unlikely to happen. I predict four.

In Wales, although the local election results weren’t as convincing for the Conservatives as they might have liked, I predict they wil end up with 19 seats, with Labour on 14 and Plaid on 5.

UKIP certainly won’t be represented in the next parliament, but the Greens could win a second seat in Bristol West. I realise most people will think I’ve lost my senses by predicting this, but I think it’s entirely possible.

When I did this exercise last time i came up with a Conservative seat prediction of 323 – only 8 out from what it turned out to be. However, I didn’t publish that because I felt it overestimated the Tory total. So I went back through all 650 seats and cut 33 seats to leave a total of 290. I should have trusted my first instincts. This time I haven’t gone through them again, so what you have here is genuinely my first instincts. During the campaign I may go back to some seats and change the prediction if new information comes to light. In most seats this may be because of the fact that UKIP aren’t standing.

Obviously all this could be thrown into disarray by a very low turnout. I have assumed a turnout of around 63-65%. In terms of vote share I’d have thought it would be something like this:

Con 44%
Lab 28%
Lib 14%
UKIP 5%

Feel free to let me know if you think I have got anything dramatically wrong or you have some new information for me. Either leave a comment or email me via the Contact box at the top of the page.

Here are links to the regional breakdowns, and individual seat predictions.

Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Birmingham
Bristol & Surrounds
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
Cornwall
County Durham
Cumbria
Derbyshire
Devon
Dorset
East Sussex
Essex
Gloucestershire
Hampshire
Herefordshire & Worcestershire
Hertfordshire
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
London Central
London East
London North East
London North West
London South
London South East
London South West
London West
Manchester
Merseyside
Norfolk
Northamptonshire
Northern Ireland
Northumberland
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Scotland: Borders & Ayrshire
Scotland: Central
Scotland: Edinburgh
Scotland: Fife
Scotland: Glasgow
Scotland: Glasgow Surrounds
Scotland: North East
Scotland: Highlands & Islands
Shropshire
Somerset
Staffordshire
Suffolk
Surrey
Teesside
Tyne & Wear
Wales – Clwyd
Wales – Dyfed
Wales – Gwent
Wales – Gwynned & Powys
Wales – Mid Glamorgan
Wales – South Glamorgan
Wales – West Glamorgan
Warwickshire
West Midlands
West Sussex
Wiltshire
Yorkshire: East & Humberside
Yorkshire: North
Yorkshire South
Yorkshire: West