Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future

Forecasting election results is hard. Forecasting UK election results is even harder. Forecasting in 2015 will be harder still. Over the coming months, this blog will showcase a wide variety of academic research analysing the forthcoming UK general election, with a particular focus on those researchers who are trying to predict the election outcome. In the introductory post to the LSE’s new General Election blog, Jack Blumenau and Simon Hix outline some of the main challenges of forecasting elections within the complicated British electoral context and introduce some of the forecasters taking on this daunting task. They ask a simple question: Why are UK elections so hard to forecast?