Who will win the 2015 General Election?

January brings the urge to predict the year ahead.

This time last year there were three big political predictions to make who would win the Euro elections in May, who would win the Scottish independence referendum and where would the polls be by the end of the year.

The first of those proved the most unpredictable.

Ukip were talking the talk at the start of the year. In May they didn’t just walk the walk they sprinted over the finishing line, winning the Euro elections outright when Labour might have expected to triumph.

They even took a seat in Scotland with colourful Humpty Dumptya-like David Coburn picking up enough votes under the proportional representation system to see him home.

By the end of the year they’d had their first two MPs elected and plenty of pollsters and pointy-heads are now pondering just what their impact might be at the General Rlection next year.

Ukip claim they are a people’s army bent on shaking up the Westminster system

But their deputy chairman is Neil Hamilton, expelled from the Westminster system for being bent. And their two MPs are so anti-establishment that they are both privately educated men who were sitting on the Tory benches at the start of the year.

Their leader is called Nigel. How many reformers or revolutionaries down the years have been called Nigel?

Farage’s own anti-establishment credentials run to previously working in the City and education at one of the most expensive private schools in the country, Dulwich College in London.

Bob Monkhouse is another former pupil of that school. To paraphrase his joke about making a life in comedy: “They laughed when Farage said he wanted to be an MP and maybe even deputy Prime Minister. They’re not laughing now.”

Ukip will be in the mix at the General Election. They most likely won’t return many MPs though the electoral arithmetic could mean even a handful of kippers in the Commons could hold the balance of power but they’ll take a lot of votes and that could be enough to have an impact in swing seats. The question is off whom are they going to take those votes? The answer is nobody knows.

In Scotland it’s more clear cut Labour and the Lib Dems will lose out to the SNP. Most predicted the SNP would lose the independence referendum. They did. But they won a momentum that is sure to see them pick up seats in May.

And that in turn feeds into the issue of the polls.

It was easy to foresee last January that by the close of 2014 the polls would’ve tightened, though Labour retains a stubborn lead. A lead that is confounding the Conservatives who have a recovering economy and a lame opposition in their favour.

But whereas usually big swings one way in some areas or seats are countered by swings the other way elsewhere making polling imperfect but a rough guide to electoral outcomes this time that balance is not in place.

There are effectively 650 separate General Elections taking place, one in each constituency.

Add in the unknown quantity of a Coalition Government and how badly that will impact the Lib Dems and it’s clear that when the pollsters say they’ve no idea who is going to win in 2015, it’s not just because they want to drum up business by persuading parties and papers to keep commissioning their research.

There is only one big prediction to make as 2015 begins who will win the General Election. This pundit won’t be persuaded to make a call on that just yet so here are some other forecasts.

There will be a plethora of plot twists in the political soap opera before May, a barrage of polls and watch out for news stories based on single surveys even though it’s long term trends in support that matter and an election night pockmarked by the most outrageously unexpected results.

In other words, 2015 is going to be unpredictable.