A week ago Electoral Calculus (the gold standard for MRP seat by seat predictions) gave Paul a small lead over the Tories (30% – to 29.2%). Their latest poll shows David Reed, the blow- in Tory, bucking the trend and increasing his vote share to 32.4%, overtaking Paul who also continues to gain ground. Reform in this constituency appears static. Labour has dropped from 17.8% to 11.7% and is now given only a 2% chance of winning. Olly Davey, Green, has increased his vote from 2.8% to 9.5%.
Obviously these seemingly precise numbers are surrounded by substantial uncertainty. We need to read them with caution. In these small sample predictions what usually has statistical significance are consistent trends. So over three polls we have the Conservative vote going up and down, Labour has been falling consistently, Lib Dems and Greens have been rising consistently.
Overall conclusion This is a two horse race, too close to call at the moment, but only Paul Arnott can beat the Tories. Voting Labour or Green is likely to hand the seat to David Reed.
For Comparison here are the previous predictions
Electoral Calculus prediction 14 June
Electoral Calculus prediction 21 June
East Devon Watch 
Vote labour, get Tory!
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Several General Elections ago (when I still lived in East Devon and I was still a local activist), Claire Wright was standing as an Independent with the polls showing clearly that she had a commanding lead over both Labour and Lib Dems and was running very close indeed to the incumbent MP, the odious Huge Swine (who was incidentally literally persona non-grata in many of the independent shops in Ottery St. Mary, the main town of his constituency).
Neither the Labour candidate and the Lib Dem candidate were East Devon people – from memory (and I may have got this wrong a decade later), one lived the other side of Exeter and the other had been parachuted in from somewhere or other. Neither had ANY local presence or voter recognition – local voters literally had no idea who there were or what they stood for as individuals.
By comparison, Claire was on her second attempt, lived locally, had been a vocal and visible local councillor and had massive voter recognition.
All of Claire, the Labour candidate and the Lib Dem candidate had a shared loathing of both the Tories and Huge Swine himself, and could think of nothing better than ousting the Tories from this seat.
In order not to split the vote which might let the Tories win yet again, I approached both the local Labour Party and the local Lib Dem Party to see if they would be willing to drop out in favour of Claire, as a sort of informal progressive alliance.
However, despite professing eternal hate for the Tories as a whole and for Huge Swine as an individual, in a triumph (??!!) of selfishness over common sense, neither party or candidate would drop out to allow Claire to have a much better shot at winning.
And the result was as expected. Claire came a close second, and had Labour and Lib Dems dropped out she would undoubtedly have won this seat.
They say that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it – and here we are with just a week to go until the election, and Paul A is running a close second and Labour is going to split the vote again and potentially let the Tories win yet again.
FFS LABOUR, STOP BEING SO DARNED SELFISH AND GET BEHIND PAUL ARNOTT!!!
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