The United Kingdom general election of 2015

On Thursday, 7th of May, the United Kingdom will be voting for its next government in the first general election since May of 2010. While there will be local elections running concurrently, unless anything remarkable occurs in them all eyes will be on what happens to Parliament.

What is the predicted outcome of this election? Indeterminable. While it's likely that we'll have a hung Parliament (when no party controls the majority of the seats), predicting which party will win the greatest amount of seats has been extremely difficult. The two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, are roughly tied in the polls and both are facing setbacks due to smaller parties.

The United Kingdom Independence Party has been averaging between 14% and 16% in the polls; while this doesn't seem like much, it secured around 3% of the vote in 2010 and because it is a right-wing party, it has the potential to split the right-wing vote and usher in a Labour landslide victory. At the same time, the Green party is polling at around 5%, which could offset some Conservative losses, but perhaps more concerning for Labour is polling in Scotland, which suggests that the party could lose nearly all of its seats there (40+) to the Scottish National Party.

The Liberal Democrats, the smallest of "main three" parties, are polling behind UKIP and stand to lose many of their Members of Parliament including Nick Clegg, the party leader. Having a party leader voted out would be an embarrassment, to say the least. The Liberal Democrats have performed poorly in polls since they entered into a coalition with the Conservatives in 2010. If large amounts of Liberal Democrat voters switch to Labour, this could shield the latter party from damage inflicted by Greens and/or the SNP.

With all this in mind, the exact outcome of this election is almost impossible to estimate. 2015 is certain to be both the closest and most unpredictable election in decades.

This will be the first time since 1992 that I have been present in the United Kingdom during its general election. Naturally, I missed the elections of 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010, and in 1992 I was too young to know anything about the election, anyway.