Tomsk79

Finally in our round-up (as I've yet to receive anything from the Mysterious Independent), the Green Party. Again it comes in compact A5 format, no doubt because more eco-friendly. It is of course printed on FSC-approved paper. No-one does hopey/changey quite like the Greens. Bannister's photo is curiously back-lit, like an angelic character from a Sofia Coppola film, leading us to a Green utopia with a list of the promises you wish Labour would make if only they didn't have to worry about actually winning an election. On the reverse we learn Bannister is another proud graduate of the University of Manchester, only this time writing with impeccable English. I'd expect no less from someone who studied the king of subjects. Surprisingly even on the back there is no mention of the environment at all. I suppose this is what they mean by "politics for real people". As a Real Person who occasionally attempts to get to Sheffield using a car, I curse the

Perhaps the best that can be said about UKIP's election leaflet is that it comes in a handy A5 format. Whether the size symbolises their little England worldview or their chances of winning here, I cannot judge. The front is essentially a transcript of Davies' opening statement at the hustings:   Many things are said to be the definition of madness. Seriously wayward punctuation. Standing for UKIP in Withington. Still, I'm intrigued by his wide experience of business AND organization. What is this non-business organization he has wide experience of? UKIP purple always vaguely recalls Wimbledon for me, so I can't shake the notion that it was the Wombles. Being oop north we get the version of UKIP that is intended to appeal to disgruntled Labour voters, with promises on the NHS and bedroom tax nestled in amongst the foreigner bashing: I do hope the Australian-style points-based system will allow Madame Cholet to stay.

At last the Lib Dem/Labour leaflet duopoly has been broken, with all three of the other parties' free communications arriving on the same day. First the Tories. Receiving a leaflet with hues from the other side of the rainbow is a refreshing change for the eyes, even while the content makes them burn. Manning's cover letter (as ever, click to enlarge) is undermined by some terrible grammatical howlers. "investment ever more in our NHS"? "Liberal Democrats set to loose many of their seats"? I expect better from proud graduates of the University of Manchester! With all the gazillions of pounds being poured in to the party by hedge funds you'd think they'd be able to hire someone to proof-read their sales pitches. On the other hand I quite enjoyed his subtle trolling of the yellow team: "It is not clear that the Lib Dems will be able to support a Conservative government again". Heh. The Northern Powerhouse gets name-checked in a

An increasing focus on local elections as Labour send me a leaflet advertising the Jeff Smith/Matt Strong two candidate combo deal: Good stat work there with the claim that the Lib Dem candidate (who he?) has voted with the Tories 93% of the time in the last parliament. Just guessing but I imagine it's the other 7% of votes that are the important ones. More exciting is the other side of the leaflet which doubles up as a poor man's window poster: Even if I was in a poster-displaying mood I think I'd be too embarrassed to put one up featuring text-speak, but I have seen them go up in a few windows so clearly it's a worthwhile use of leaflet space. The Lib Dems, however, have trumped these puny A4 signs with a supersized hashtag in the middle of Chorlton: I thought political hoardings died out sometime in the mid-90s and spotting one this time round would be as likely as ever hearing a new Blur album. We live and learn.

The 2015 election has been notable for the many new models attempting to predict the result, mostly created by academics trying to avoid doing any proper work. In that spirit we at Tomsk79 have created our own model for predicting the result of the Manchester Withington constituency, which is detailed in full here. The starting point for my model is the constituency poll carried out in June 2014 by Lord Ashcroft (blessed be his name). This poll suggests a decisive swing from the Lib Dems to Labour since the election: The next stage is to correct the Ashcroft poll by movements in the national polls since June 2014. For this we use the BBC Poll of Polls , which reports changes as follows: Con: 31 to 34 (+3) Lab: 34 to 33 (-1) LD: 10 to 9 (-1) UKIP: 15 to 13 (-2) Green: 5 to 5 (0) We assume that the national changes apply uniformly to the Withington constituency. Next, we apply a sub-seat correction using local election results from Withington wards. By analysing