New poll throws all seats in Somerset up for grabs
Somerset Confidential examines the latest polling information from Electoral Calculus for the seven Parliamentary seats in our patch and hears from some of the candidates.
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New poll throws all seats in Somerset up for grabs
Electoral Calculus were the first polling organisation to take soundings based on the new parliamentary constituencies. In the past week they have updated their polling information and that has seen some dramatic changes in the picture for Somerset.
Just by way of a recap, the five constituencies in our patch up until this year were as follows:
Bridgwater & West Somerset
Somerton & Frome
Taunton Deane
Wells
Yeovil
These five are going to be replaced with seven new ones which in some cases will look very different:
Bridgwater
Frome & East Somerset
Glastonbury & Somerton
Taunton & Wellington
Tiverton & Minehead
Wells & Mendip Hills
Yeovil
According to the good folks at Electoral Calculus in their first assessment over a year ago, they reckoned Bridgwater, Glastonbury & Somerton, Tiverton & Minehead, Wells and Mendip Hills and Yeovil would all be Conservative wins. The remainder, Frome & East Somerset and Taunton & Wellington they called for the LibDems.
Since then we had last summer’s by-election in Somerton & Frome and the landslide win for the LibDem’s Sarah Dyke. Mind you and as you’ll see from what follows, not every politician in Somerset has the highest respect for Electoral Calculus!
That said with new data fed into their polling they are now showing a very different set of results. Firstly looking at the techniques used by the company. They rely heavily on regression techniques.