Whatever the outcome, the 2019 general election will be one of the most decisive polls in British history. Like the Liberal landslide of 1906 which led to the foundation of the welfare state, the Labour victory of 1945 or the 1979 election which introduced free-market Thatcherism, the 2019 election is likely to determine the nature of the UK for decades to come.
The 2019 election is also highly uncertain, and few pollsters are confident of the likely outcome. There are several reasons for this. Although Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are well ahead in the polls, the memory of Theresa May’s melting majority in the 2017 election looms large. A second important reason for the uncertain outcome is the presence of three or more parties with a substantial share of the vote. In the UK’s first-past-the-post system the complex relation between seats and votes becomes more volatile when at least three parties have similar vote totals.
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