Before the 2010 UK General Election, Decision Technology used Populus polling data to devise a different way of predicting election results. Most election predictions use a "uniform swing" model, where the change in national vote share is assumed to be mirrored in every constituency. Instead, we attempt to model the flow of voters between the parties (and non-voting) and also include relevant local factors for each constituency.

Populus data allows us to investigate the current voting intentions of past political party voters. This allows us to estimate how well each party is holding their vote, which parties they are losing voters to, and where they are gaining votes from. Because we investigate past polls, we are able to give each party's chance of winning in each constituency, in addition to predicting which party will win.

Click here to see our forecasts for the general election in May 2010. (Note: this website now displays the actual results from the 2010 UK General Election.)