That’s right. A year today, the whole of the UK goes to the polls. Or at least, between probably 60% and 75% will go to the polls at any rate to decide who their next MP will be, which will in turn decide the next government.

To mark the occasion, there has been a flurry of activity over the last 24 hours to get psephologists rather excited. First, the British Election Study website has been launched, designed to ‘help our understanding of long-term political change, and the role of national and sub-national variations in the political and social context in shaping citizens’ attitudes and behaviour’. This dataset will provide many of the results we see in articles, books and blogs for years to come. So far, it seems we’re not going to be disappointed by the efforts of the BES2015 team.

Prior to the election, we can expect to see an increasing number of election forecasts, looking to predict the vote share and seat numbers of each party. An interesting paper looking back at the polls and vote in Britain can be found here. This morning, the Polling Observatory team made their first vote share forecast ahead of next year’s election. The full details can be found here, but their forecast is as follows:

Conservatives: 36.1%

Labour: 36.5%

Liberal Democrats: 10.1%

The prediction can only go so far at the moment. They have yet to make a seat forecast (this will come soon), but this will depend upon the Liberal Democrats’ ability to win seats in their strongest local areas with a dwindling national poll, and UKIP’s ability to hold on to its high vote share over the coming 12 months. Many outcomes remain possible, but each would be unprecedented in some shape or form. Labour remains best placed due to the workings of the electoral system, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

What is certain is that there will be changes of opinion and many twists and turns over the coming 12 months. For now, I’ll leave you with this from the Telegraph.