Cameron “will lose seats but win Downing Street”, says expert

The Conservatives will win more MPs than Labour in May, but David Cameron will face an immediate vote of no confidence, according to analysis by Professor Richard Rose, one of the UK’s most senior election experts.

The research, commissioned by asset managers Toscafund, states the rise of the SNP in Scotland and votes for UKIP turning many seats into three-way marginals will mean both the Conservative and Labour parties will lose and win seats at the General Election.
However, Conservative gains from the Liberal Democrats will give them an advantage over the Labour Party which faces losses in Scotland to the SNP.
“Asking which party is ahead in the public opinion polls is meaningless in this close-fought election because seats in the House of Commons are awarded at the constituency level not the national level,” writes Rose. 
According to the research, a collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats will benefit the Conservatives more than the Labour Party because the Tories are in second place in more than two-thirds of the 57 seats the Lib Dems now hold.  
Rose calculates that collectively, third parties will once again take one-third of the national vote, but will be underrepresented in Parliament. “With the support of one in six of the electorate, the British first-past-the-post system will cut UKIP down to size, giving it less than one per cent of the seats in Parliament,” forecasts Rose.
However, the surge in SNP support will make the Labour Party pay a price of being British, Rose says, predicting that the 45 per cent who voted Yes in the independence referendum will back the SNP, winning them up to 45 seats. "At the May election, most Scots will not be voting for which Englishman should be in Downing Street but who can best represent Scotland’s interests in Parliament," he predicts.
However, Willie Sullivan, Electoral Reform Society Scotland director, tells Holyrood there will be Yes voters who didn’t necessarily identify with the party, and are unlikely to return to the ballot box in May. “I doubt you’ll get anywhere near that turnout at the General Election because people know their vote doesn’t really count for anything in a lot of places,” he said.

You can read the whole discussion paper here 

For a full analysis and General Election preview, see the next issue of Holyrood Magazine - out on Monday