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Characterising UKIP?

YG have produced a nice graphical version of their 'churn' data that might be better for those not so keen on numbers...

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It's all very pretty and the improving infographics seemingly add something but it all supports a bogus premise. And pretty much a bogus industry.

Is there a single consitituency in which the above is a fair reflection of what will happen? No, because none of the above matters in safe seat and in marginals combinations of pre-existing Party strengths, tactical and protest voting means each is unique. It might have worth in the most general of sense but that's about it. Ashcroft knocks this nonsense into a cocked hat.
 
Don't think it does show this really. Taking brogdale's thing, which contains more information, as many Labour voters from 2010 have switched to the Tories this time as have switched to UKIP.

Of those intending to vote UKIP, 39% voted Tory in 2010, 13% Labour, 15% LD, 14% UKIP, 11% BNP...I'd say that's a broad spectrum.
 
It's all very pretty and the improving infographics seemingly add something but it all supports a bogus premise. And pretty much a bogus industry.
What on earth are you going on about?

Are you really claiming that there's no use in national polling? That getting an picture of how the UK as a whole is voting isn't useful information? Good constituency polling is great but the idea that makes national polling obsolete is ludicrous.
 
What on earth are you going on about?

Are you really claiming that there's no use in national polling? That getting an picture of how the UK as a whole is voting isn't useful information? Good constituency polling is great but the idea that makes national polling obsolete is ludicrous.
What on earth are you going on about? Etc.

It's just the old way and very convenient. Means slightly more that fuck all. Only three weeks to the next round of 'how did the pollsters get it so wrong'.
 
Apart from the pollsters haven't got it "wrong" for a long time. And until we have constituency polls that cover all the constituencies with the same regularity as national polling there is clearly a place for nation wide polling.
 
Apart from the pollsters haven't got it "wrong" for a long time. And until we have constituency polls that cover all the constituencies with the same regularity as national polling there is clearly a place for nation wide polling.
Er no. The election is won and lost in marginals. As Ashcroft well understands. I'm not sure why you want to poll safe seats, unless you're stuck in the 1970s?
 
Er no. The election is won and lost in marginals. As Ashcroft well understands. I'm not sure why you want to poll safe seats, unless you're stuck in the 1970s?
Because there's clearly value in have a weekly/daily look at the wider picture as well as a more irregular look at specific constituencies. Indeed having that national picture is going to help in identifying marginals. As brogdale pointed out unless you had the UK/Scotland wide polling showing that surge of SNP support then would people have done any constituency polling on a lot of the "safe" Labour seats in Scotland?

But also because there are seats that could change that have not had any constituency polling if you are going to try and build any model that predicts the outcome of the election you're going to have to consider what the national polling data is showing.

There simply isn't enough polling done at the constituency level to use it alone. In lots of cases you have a single poll done in 2014. If you think that makes the information national polling gives us totally useless, you're daft.
 
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Btw, most of those marginals polls show the parties doing pretty much as you'd expect them to be doing according to the national polls.
 
Er no. The election is won and lost in marginals. As Ashcroft well understands. I'm not sure why you want to poll safe seats, unless you're stuck in the 1970s?

What's happening outside the narrow world of middle-class swing voters in key marginals is interesting for reasons other than 'who wins?'
 
After all, what's interesting about UKIP, the subject of this thread, isn't who gets to form a government next month.

It's about the changing dynamics of UK politics, how UKIP's policies appeal to a various segments of an alienated public while others are leaving the neoliberal parties for various alternatives to the left.

All of these things are illuminated to some degree by wider polling.
 
No it's not. Not unless I'm reading it wrongly. The second one shows the total numbers in proportion to each other. So there are roughly the same numbers switching to each.
It's the same data, the one I posted just doesn't have the VI % that each 100 in the rows represents for each party - 34%, 32% etc at the bottom. I suspect that was done deliberately as this would give the suggestion of it being a proper weighted poll rather than a return to a group of people who took part in a weighted poll give years ago. I did initially part both charts btw but took up too much space.
 
After all, what's interesting about UKIP, the subject of this thread, isn't who gets to form a government next month.

It's about the changing dynamics of UK politics, how UKIP's policies appeal to a various segments of an alienated public while others are leaving the neoliberal parties for various alternatives to the left.

All of these things are illuminated to some degree by wider polling.
Exactly. Up the junction : there are a lot of people voting UKIP, and doing so in seats where UKIP won't win. Indeed, the vast majority of UKIP voters are doing so in seats where UKIP won't win. Those people, their motivations, are far more interesting than the targeted swing voters in the handful of marginals.
 
Yeah there is. Private polling. Resources are finite - human and financial. Of course each party directs those resources to best advantage. Plus Ashcroft.

Meanwhile the great British public laps up all kind of monkey polls - hey everyone, look at our poll of polls :D
What kind of private polling are you telling us to trust?

Maybe the ones the Lib Dems say tells them they're doing well? Or the informal doorstep "polling" of Lord George Foulkes, who yesterday said the feeling he got on Scottish doorsteps was that Labour are winning in Scotland?
 
What kind of private polling are you telling us to trust?

Maybe the ones the Lib Dems say tells them they're doing well? Or the informal doorstep "polling" of Lord George Foulkes, who yesterday said the feeling he got on Scottish doorsteps was that Labour are winning in Scotland?
Maybe the private polling that the sainted Ashcroft has criticised as being exercises in comfort polling, as opposed to the stuff on this thread which utj has criticised and Ashcroft praised.
 
Yeah there is. Private polling. Resources are finite - human and financial. Of course each party directs those resources to best advantage. Plus Ashcroft.

Meanwhile the great British public laps up all kind of monkey polls - hey everyone, look at our poll of polls :D
you do realise you have just completely contradicted yourself? And that the above post makes virtually no sense.
 
Maybe the private polling that the sainted Ashcroft has criticised as being exercises in comfort polling, as opposed to the stuff on this thread which utj has criticised and Ashcroft praised.
I'm just catching up on the thread, and I'm realising that Up the junction's opinions don't actually tally with each other, never mind reality.

Oh well.
 
What on earth are you going on about? Etc.

It's just the old way and very convenient. Means slightly more that fuck all. Only three weeks to the next round of 'how did the pollsters get it so wrong'.

The pollsters don't generally get it wrong on run-up polling. Exit polling, on the other hand, is notoriously shonky, not least because some people "mislead" the pollsters as to whom they voted for.
 
The pollsters don't generally get it wrong on run-up polling. Exit polling, on the other hand, is notoriously shonky, not least because some people "mislead" the pollsters as to whom they voted for.
You're missing the point entirely.

Polls are bollix. What is helpful is seat number predictions.

But sure, go back and marvel at how wonderful YouGov were at getting within 3% of the Tory vote.
 
There simply isn't enough polling done at the constituency level to use it alone. In lots of cases you have a single poll done in 2014. If you think that makes the information national polling gives us totally useless, you're daft.

It's done so little because unless some sugar daddy pays for it (and even Ashcroft didn't do that), it's way too expensive and labour-intensive to poll regularly at constituency level, except informally even if you only polled marginals.
 
There was a pensioner interviewed on Victoria Derbyshire on BBC, he said he was torn "between Labour and Ukip over the high levels of immigration", yet when he discussed his concerns he talked about workfare, benefit levels, cuts, etc and how awful they were.
 
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