The UK’s first December general election in almost a century will take place in wet and chilly conditions on Thursday.
Much of the country will have about eight hours’ daylight and Northern Ireland, Wales and the south west of England are forecast to have bands of rain during the morning that will spread throughout the UK in the afternoon.
In Fife, where the SNP is defending a majority of just two in the closest seat in the country, North East Fife, temperatures will fall to near freezing overnight. But it is not expected that the seasonal weather will affect turnout anywhere in the UK.
“There’s going to be a cold start across eastern Scotland, and much of northern, central, and eastern England,” Luke Miall, a meteorologist at the Met Office, told the Guardian. “There will be frost and ice around in the morning in many parts and cold weather warnings in Scotland will be in force till 10am.
“It will be wet and windy in most areas and there will be some heavy spells of rain in many parts,” he said. “Followed by blustery showers coming in from the west as the day goes on.”
Kensington in London, with a Labour majority of 20, and Richmond Park, with a Conservative majority of 45, will have wet conditions. Met Office meteorologist Craig Snell said it would “start off cold but dry and bright, but as we go through the course of Thursday we’re going to see a band of rain moving through from the west, reaching London around lunchtime.”
Dudley North, with a Labour majority of 22, will be wet throughout the morning and at the end of the day, with a dry spell in the afternoon.
Two other tight Scottish constituencies, Glasgow South West and Glasgow East, both held by the SNP with majorities of 60 and 75 respectively, are likely to experience showers.
“Temperatures in Glasgow are going to be around the freezing mark – in the centre probably about two to three, and in the outskirts between zero and minus one,” Snell said.
Two weather warnings for ice have been issued for election day in parts of Scotland where wintry showers are expected, though it is not expected they will cause disruption.
Heavy rain is expected in Cardiff, and light rain in Edinburgh and Belfast. “Generally speaking its going to be a cold day for the UK, with maximums of 4 C in the north to 10 C in the south,” Miall added.
Chris Hanretty, a politics professor at Royal Holloway University, said he had found no significant statistical link between rain on the day of the EU referendum in 2016 and voter turnout.
“The effects of weather on turnout are small, if they exist, and the effects on vote share are tiny. Less than one-fifth of 1% in an extreme case,” he wrote on Twitter.
The polling expert John Curtice said there was limited evidence to suggest wintry weather had deterred voters previously. In fact, he said, the highest turnout in a postwar election came in a winter election, in February 1950.
“We obviously don’t have much experience of winter elections but we have had two at the back of winter, in February 1974, when turnout was almost 79%, six points up from 1970, and the highest ever turnout in the postwar period was in February 1950, when the turnout was almost 84%,” he told CNBC.
Regarding the shorter days, Curtice said December was dark but not the coldest or darkest month, and January and February were often worse.
Meanwhile, Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage told activists in Labour-held Doncaster central that he was hoping for poor weather on polling day.
“[The polls] are reckoning on a turnout of about 69%, which is the same as the last general election. My hunch is [it will be] less,” he said, adding he was hoping for “very, very heavy rain in Doncaster” on Thursday.
“Because I know that people who will vote for us will turn out, because they absolutely believe in our message. They believe it in their hearts and in their heads.”
