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mauvais said:
I don't see how the Lib Dems are going to hold the balance of anything
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Well, there's 8 of them currently. YouGov says there may be 12 of them on Friday. It'll be a small number. But all it needs to be is enough to mean that Tory MPs + Lib Dem MPs > Labour MPs + SNP MPs + (others if necessary). Or indeed that Tory + Lib Dem > 50% of seats.

My instinct is that they won't be needed to put the Tories over the 50% of seats mark. But WTFK?

Here's what Political Betting says: politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Breaking the chain. Can the Lib Dems defy history?
 
danny la rouge said:
Well, there's 8 of them currently. YouGov says there may be 12 of them on Friday. It'll be a small number. But all it needs to be is enough to mean that Tory MPs + Lib Dem MPs > Labour MPs + SNP MPs + (others if necessary). Or indeed that Tory + Lib Dem > 50% of seats.
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9 of em. But not 2010's 57. I mean, the DUP has 8, and noone's been floating them as the same kind of kingmaker, AFAIK.
 
mauvais said:
9 of em. But not 2010's 57. I mean, the DUP has 8, and noone's been floating them as the same kind of kingmaker, AFAIK.
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That's because they can just be relied upon to prop up the Tories. But, if the Tories got between 309 and 319 seats, they would need some or all Unionist MPs in order to get to a working majority (assuming the number of Unionist MPs stays they same).

It's only when you get below 309 that things start to depend on what the Lib Dems choose to do.
 
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I'll start with my obligatory 'there isn't going to be a fucking coalition' post - I keep saying that because I'm daring the universe to prove me wrong. I'll be happy to have people laughing and pointing at me as the Holy Corbyn Emperor is anointed.

But anyway, joining in the fun: relying on the DUP would entirely fuck up her strong and stable mantra generally, but what would it do to the brexit negotiations specifically i.e. what would the DUP demand from her? They'd presumably be happy with the full array of border controls politically, but not economically?
 
Wilf said:
But anyway, joining in the fun: relying on the DUP would entirely fuck up her strong and stable mantra generally, but what would it do to the brexit negotiations specifically i.e. what would the DUP demand from her? They'd presumably be happy with the full array of border controls politically, but not economically?
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I don't think the DUP in coalition would make any difference to the Brexit negotiations, its her own party she would have the problem with. The idea that having a big majority would somehow strengthen her hand in Brussels is patent nonsense. Its always been about getting her will past her own party which, with the current majority would be tough. She would be beholden to the headbangers on the back rows.
 
I'm sure I remember Ashcroft getting the last election utterly wrong, to be fair.

Having looked into YouGov's methodology, I think it's by far and away the most sound, statistically speaking. It uses the same principles that are rather successfully used to price motor insurance and maximise supermarket profitability from club card data. It's the next generation of polling -- YouGov are using 10 year-old techniques where the others are stuck on 50 year-old techniques.

It is much more data-dependent than ordinary polling, though, which is why I guess they survey 50,000 people. Even with this many, though, I'm still not utterly convinced it is enough -- the equivalent motor insurance analysis would tend to have millions of data points if it was trying to cover the whole population, rather than 50,000. But then, motor pricing is trying to predict rarer events, not make a best estimate guess at a poll result.
 
YouGov's methodology for its seat prediction thingy is supposed to be really cutting edge, something I totally don't understand called MRP - but apparently Ashcroft is using a very similar methodology too. Suspect YouGov have the larger dataset though.
 
kabbes said:
I'm sure I remember Ashcroft getting the last election utterly wrong, to be fair.

Having looked into YouGov's methodology, I think it's by far and away the most sound, statistically speaking. It uses the same principles that are rather successfully used to price motor insurance and maximise supermarket profitability from club card data. It's the next generation of polling -- YouGov are using 10 year-old techniques where the others are stuck on 50 year-old techniques.

It is much more data-dependent than ordinary polling, though, which is why I guess they survey 50,000 people. Even with this many, though, I'm still not utterly convinced it is enough -- the equivalent motor insurance analysis would tend to have millions of data points if it was trying to cover the whole population, rather than 50,000. But then, motor pricing is trying to predict rarer events, not make a best estimate guess at a poll result.
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That's the spirit.
 
Teaboy said:
The seat by seat map is very interesting on that. It certainly rings true with how it feels on the ground in the places I know. Interestingly they've also got East Devon down as an independent win.
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Though it places Stroud south of Bristol :mad: (yes, I know it's just a data visualisation)
 
For those who didn't see it on the Corbyn thread, this is my little model that allows you to specify Labour managing to engage a certain % of those who previously were no shows and then try out various cross-party swings.

The following is one parameter set that roughly fits the current polls:
10% previous no-shows become Labour
20% Greens become Labour
0% Lib Dems become Labour
50% UKIP become Tory
15% UKIP become Labour
10% SNP become Tory
0% SNP become Labour

That gives the Tories 335 seats and Labour 237, which is +5 for both of them versus 2015. Lib Dems and SNP lose 4 each on that basis (UKIP also lose 1 and Greens lose theirs)
 

Attachments

  • 2015 election swing.zip
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I was trying to work out where the Lib Dem swings were hitting them in my swing model and comparing this to YouGov.

Some of the YouGov predictions seem surprising. YouGov have Twickenham as "safe Liberal Democrat" with 53% (45-61%) of the vote compared to Tories at 35% (29-41%). I have no reason to think they are wrong in this, particularly. But in 2015, the Tories won the seat with 41% of the vote to the Lib Dem's 38%. So that's an ENORMOUS swing to the Lib Dems away from the Tories, with the LDs also picking up all the residual party votes that aren't standing this time.

That could be right (as I say, I have no idea) -- if it is, it really demonstrates the limitations of a uniform swing model and shows why YouGov could be onto something big. Their modelling, they would claim, can pick up on the regional demographic causes for different types of swing.

ETA: they also have the LDs taking seats off the SNP. Also an interesting element to the election that their model can predict, but which other models cannot.
 
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kabbes said:
I was trying to work out where the Lib Dem swings were hitting them in my swing model and comparing this to YouGov.

Some of the YouGov predictions seem surprising. YouGov have Twickenham as "safe Liberal Democrat" with 53% (45-61%) of the vote compared to Tories at 35% (29-41%). I have no reason to think they are wrong in this, particularly. But in 2015, the Tories won the seat with 41% of the vote to the Lib Dem's 38%. So that's an ENORMOUS swing to the Lib Dems away from the Tories, with the LDs also picking up all the residual party votes that aren't standing this time.
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Yes but before that a safe seat for Vince Cable. If you see 2015 more of an outlier then that makes sense. Throw in Brexit and Heathrow expansion and it seems a fairly clear win for the orange slime.
 
That (the Vince Cable thing) makes more sense, although I'm not sure that I do see 2015 as an outlier. The Liberal Democrats have stayed on the same single figure polling in 2017 than they had in 2015. It's more that they've refocused on a dozen or so seats rather than seriously fighting for 50+ of them, which has allowed them a fighting chance in those seats.

It's definitely feasible that the Libs do end up with even fewer seats than they got in 2015 though. Everything they won in 2015 was still pretty tight as far as I can see, and we've had a lot of retrenchment of the big two since then.
 
killer b said:
Twickenham is Vince Cable isn't it? He seems bullish about taking it back, and the greens have stepped aside and endorsed him (fwiw)
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Yes he's standing again. It's the lib dems number one target and the whole place is covered in lib dems posters. I would be very surprised if he didn't win comfortably.
 
kabbes said:
That (the Vince Cable thing) makes more sense, although I'm not sure that I do see 2015 as an outlier. The Liberal Democrats have stayed on the same single figure polling in 2017 than they had in 2015. It's more that they've refocused on a dozen or so seats rather than seriously fighting for 50+ of them, which has allowed them a fighting chance in those seats.

It's definitely feasible that the Libs do end up with even fewer seats than they got in 2015 though. Everything they won in 2015 was still pretty tight as far as I can see, and we've had a lot of retrenchment of the big two since then.
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I'm not sure how much can be extrapolated from what is going on in this corner of SW London. It looks like next door in Richmond Park the race is neck and neck. I think the specifics around Brexit and Heathrow make any analysis difficult.
 
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