June 7, 2001

12:18 PM

Vote early, vote often.(With apologies for sticking this on the front page.) Using your skill and judgement, predict the winning party in the UK general election, size of the majority, and the number of seats won by the Lib Dems. Closest to the actual result gets a gift subscription to Private Eye, the fortnightly antidote to British politics and media, or the equivalent value in that international currency: Amazon vouchers. (And if you've emailed me already, there's no need to post a prediction.)
posted by holgate (16 comments total)

And to give myself a chance of getting out of this without having to pay out, here's my own prediction... Labour to win, with an overall majority of 115; Lib Dems to get 63 seats.
posted by holgate at 12:27 PM on June 7, 2001

How about: Labour to win with a majority of 221; Lib Dems to get 59 seats.
posted by binkin at 12:38 PM on June 7, 2001

Um... why did you apologize for posting this? Seems like a great link! Am I missing something?
posted by silusGROK at 12:41 PM on June 7, 2001

[ Just that turning comments into posts isn't that de rigeur... but where's your prediction? ;) ]
posted by holgate at 12:48 PM on June 7, 2001

Vis10n: it’s that British guilt.

Obviously, I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going to happen, but anything to get me closer to the The Young Ones I’ll jump on.

Labour wins, majority of 293 seats, LD gains 41 seats, Hague is trounced so convincingly he freaks out and is found at a rave in Brixton massaging vapo-rub into his shiny head.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 12:50 PM on June 7, 2001

Labour seats cut to 144 - most of the 35 lost will turn Lib Dem. (I'm a 17 year old wannabe Peter Snow)
posted by williamtry at 1:11 PM on June 7, 2001

Labour to win with majority of 180, Lib Dems will have 60 seats in total.
posted by adrianhon at 1:34 PM on June 7, 2001

Hmmm, The turnout seems to be lower this year.

Labour Maj - 117
Lib Dems - 54

I have a weird feeling the conservatives are going to pick up a few seats - must be the british anti-authority thing.

I'm just stocking up on Coffee ready to watch through the night. There's no way it could be as good as the last election though. "...let's just go back to Michael Portillo's old constiuency and see the result once again..." priceless.
posted by fullerine at 2:02 PM on June 7, 2001

(exit polls are in, predicting "not much change": I'm going to give it another couple of hours, at least, since percentages don't necessarily correspond to seats.)
posted by holgate at 2:06 PM on June 7, 2001

The BBC's online coverge is v.impressive.
That's what good socialist funding does for you ;)
posted by fullerine at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2001

The Declaration channel is like a big brother for politics geeks. "...look look they're counting in Selby West..."
posted by fullerine at 2:39 PM on June 7, 2001

Ooh: Estelle Morris's seat in Birmingham is apparently "too close to call"; now, since she's widely expected to be given David Blunkett's job at Education in the reshuffle, that could be a bit of fun.
posted by holgate at 3:30 PM on June 7, 2001

Those who want to watch live BBC election coverage (and are running Win[x] with Media Player can either do so on TV (duh), or online at:

http://windowsmedia.com/preview/asx/BBCworld350k.asx

It's a very high quality MPEG-4 encoded stream from BBC World.
posted by danhon at 5:00 PM on June 7, 2001

Hmmm, right about the Tories there. "hands in the air" Hague

Holgate, have you got the morning off or something.
You lightweight.
posted by fullerine at 1:51 AM on June 8, 2001

(the wonders of freelance hours: two 14-hour days == morning off.)

and I think I can now announce adrianhon the winner of the real poll: congrats!
posted by holgate at 6:23 AM on June 8, 2001

Yay! I'd like to thank the Labour party for doing marginally worse and the Lib Dems for doing marginally better - and most of all, Nick for setting up this competition.
posted by adrianhon at 6:30 AM on June 8, 2001