My final predictions for the 2017 general election

Just one day to go now, everyone.

Labour are still edging close to the Conservatives in opinion polls-but that depends on whether enough young people will turn out to vote tomorrow. An ICM poll puts the Conservatives on 45% and Labour on 34%, but a YouGov poll puts the Conservatives on 41% and Labour on as high as 40%. The key difference between these polls is that ICM assumes that the higher youth turnout will not occur in the end, whereas YouGov assumes it will actually happen.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are still stuck on 8%-the same percentage they polled in 2015. UKIP are on 5%, with the Green Party on 3% even though they have far more candidates to vote for than UKIP do in this general election. The SNP are still comfortably ahead in Scotland, this time with the Conservatives as the main challengers to them instead of Labour, and Plaid Cymru are not having nearly the same level of success in Wales.

Earlier, I made many predictions for this election, which were made when the Conservatives were dramatically ahead of Labour, always by more than 10%, and were often polling as high as 48%, a figure last bettered by the late great Harold MacMillan in 1959. This time, the Conservative lead over Labour has dropped considerably, particularly due to gaffes and refusals to participate in televised debates by Prime Minister Theresa May, to the point where there is an outside chance of Theresa May losing her small majority of 10 despite the inevitable transfer of large numbers of UKIP votes to the Conservatives (dependent on constituency, of course).

It remains true nonetheless that the Liberal Democrats are recovering best in Greater London and that the Green Party will perform much better south of the line flowing from The Wash to the Bristol Channel than north of it.

After considerable thought and recalculation, these are the seats that will or should change hands in this election (note that gains are compared to the 2015 general election):

Conservative gains from Labour (21)*:

Newcastle-under-Lyme
North East Derbyshire
Walsall North
Wolverhampton South West
Birmingham Northfield
Halifax
Dewsbury
Wakefield
Stoke-on-Trent South
Stoke-on-Trent North
Coventry South
Bridgend
Wrexham
Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland
Bishop Auckland
Lancaster & Fleetwood
Wirral West
Blackpool South
City of Chester
Copeland
Barrow-in-Furness

Conservative gain from UKIP (1):

Clacton

SNP gain from Labour (1):

Edinburgh South

Green gain from Labour (1):

Bristol West

Plaid Cymru gain from Labour (1):

Ynys Mon

Liberal Democrat gains from Conservative (6):

Twickenham
Kingston & Surbiton
Bath
Lewes
Portsmouth South
Eastbourne

Labour gains from Conservative (3):

Croydon Central
Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
Brighton Kemptown

Independent gain from Conservative (1):

East Devon**

Conservative gains from SNP (3):

Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine
Dumfries & Galloway

Liberal Democrat gains from SNP (2):

East Dunbartonshire
Edinburgh West

Sinn Fein gain from UUP (1):

Fermanagh & South Tyrone

Alliance gain from DUP (1):

Belfast East***

*In many of these particular constituencies there is no UKIP candidate standing this year, and in half of them no Green candidate.
**The Independent in question is Claire Wright.
***There is a UUP candidate in Belfast East where there was not one in 2015.

There is also a good chance that the SDLP's Alasdair McDonnell will lose his highly competitive Belfast South seat, but who he could lose it to is a debatable matter due to the unpopularity of the DUP and speculation about how much the Alliance Party can capitalise on this at a Westminster level. Other seats to watch in England include all four of the seats Labour gained from the Conservatives in London in 2015 (i.e. Ealing Central & Acton, Enfield North, Ilford North, and Brentford & Isleworth), Bury North, Hyndburn, Chorley, Leeds North West, Cardiff North, Carshalton & Wallington, Cambridge, North Norfolk, Southport, Richmond Park, Bristol East, Bradford South, and Bradford West; I believe the incumbent party will hold these seats but they all have reasonable chances of changing hands so I advise you to watch these seats as well on election night.

In total this gives: Conservatives 345 (+15), Labour 211 (-21), SNP 52 (-4), Liberal Democrats 16 (+8), DUP 7(-1), Sinn Fein 5 (+1), Plaid Cymru 4 (+1), SDLP 3 (nc), Green 2 (+1), Independent 2 (+1), UUP 1 (-1), Alliance 1 (+1), Speaker 1 (nc), UKIP 0 (-1). I therefore predict that the Conservative majority will rise to 40.