Political polling

[brogdale]

They had this in the bag - all they needed to do was keep hold of all those lib dem deserters - and they've fucked it.

Meanwhile IPSOS-Mori's latest Scot-poll has Lab back into 'existential threat' territory...

 

[weepiper]

Meanwhile IPSOS-Mori's latest Scot-poll has Lab back into 'existential threat' territory...

Thing is though that it's not just annihilation for Labour, it's annihilation for everyone except the SNP.

 

[brogdale]

Thing is though that it's not just annihilation for Labour, it's annihilation for everyone except the SNP.

Is it possible to describe the vermin losing their one seat as 'annihilation'?

 

[The Boy]

Is it possible to describe the vermin losing their one seat as 'annihilation'?

No, but the lib dems won't be wanting to throw away that handful of seats they hold atm.

 

[weepiper]

Is it possible to describe the vermin losing their one seat as 'annihilation'?

well, they won that seat with 38% of the vote vs the SNP's 10.8% in 2010, so for them to potentially lose that to the SNP seems like a bit of a thumping.

 

[weepiper]

Compare 2001 (left) and 2005 (right) with the map in the STV article

 

[brogdale]

Compare 2001 (left) and 2005 (right) with the map in the STV article

Yeah, but it's 2010 to 2015 that swings/gains/losses will be based on.

Mind you the variability of Scots polling is a bit disconcerting atm..

 

[weepiper]

Yeah, but it's 2010 to 2015 that swings/gains/losses will be based on.

well, they won that seat with 38% of the vote vs the SNP's 10.8% in 2010, so for them to potentially lose that to the SNP seems like a bit of a thumping.

 

[brogdale]

Yeah.

It will be interesting to see what Ashcroft's millions discover when he finishes his Scot's constituency polling. Back in December he said...

Moreover, we have not yet looked in detail at Scottish constituencies, which could potentially change the equation dramatically. My fieldwork north of the border will begin in the New Year.

 

[marty21]

Saw a headline on the Express front page (I was in a newsagent) stating that 80% of brits want to leave Europe ...lol obvs

 

[brogdale]

Saw a headline on the Express front page (I was in a newsagent) stating that 80% of brits want to leave Europe ...lol obvs

Just about as accurate as their weather 'forecast' headlines, really.

The Express headline is “80% want to quit the EU, Biggest poll in 40 years boosts Daily Express crusade”. This doesn’t actually refer to a sampled and weighted opinion poll, but to a campaign run by two Tory MPs (Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone) and a Tory candidate (Thomas Pursglove) consisting of them delivering their own ballot papers to houses in their constituencies. They apparently got about 14,000 responses, which is impressive as a campaigning exercise, but doesn’t suddenly make it a meaningful measure of public opinion.

Polls are meaningful only to the extent that they are representative of the wider public – if they contain the correct proportions of people of different ages, of men and women, of different social classes and incomes and from different parts of the country as the population as a whole then we hope they should also hold the same views of the population as a whole. Just getting a lot of people to take part does not in any way guarantee that the balance of people who end up taking the poll will be representative.

I expect lots of people who aren’t familiar with how polling works will see a claim like this, see that 14,000 took part, and think it must therefore be meaningful (in the same way, a naive criticism of polls is often that they only interview 1000 people). The best example of why this doesn’t work was the polling for the 1936 Presidential election in the USA, which heralded modern polling and tested big sample sizes to destruction. Back then the most well known poll was that done by a magazine, the Literary Digest. The Literary Digest too sent out ballot papers to as many people as it could – it sent them to its subscribers, to other subscription lists, to everyone in the phone directory, to everyone with a car, etc, etc. In 1936 it sent out 10 million ballot papers and received two point four million responses. Based on these replies, they confidently predicted that the Republican candidate Alf Landon would win the election. Meanwhile the then little known George Gallup interviewed just a few thousand people, but using proper demographic quotas to get a sample that was representative of the American public. Gallup’s data predicted a landslide win for the Democrat candidate Franklin D Roosevelt. Gallup was of course right, the Literary Digest embarrassingly wrong. The reason was that the Literary Digest’s huge sample of 2.4 million was drawn from the sort of people who had telephones, cars and magazine subscriptions and, in depression era America, these people voted Republican.

Coming back to the Express’s “poll”, a campaign about leaving Europe run by three Tory election candidates in the East Midlands is likely to largely be responded to by Conservative sympathisers with strong views about Europe, hence the result. Luckily we have lots of properly conducted polls that are sampled and weighted to be representative of whole British public and they consistently show a different picture. There are some differences between different companies – YouGov ask it a couple of time a month and find support for leaving the EU varying between 37% and 44%, Survation asked a couple of months ago and found support for leaving at 47%, Opinium have shown it as high as 48%. For those still entranced by large sample sizes, Lord Ashcroft did a poll of 20,000 people on the subject of Europe last year (strangely larger than the Express’s “largest poll for 40 years”!) and found people splitting down the middle 41% stay – 41% leave.

And that’s about where we are – there’s some difference between different pollsters, but the broad picture is that the British public are NOT overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the EU, they are pretty evenly divided over whether to stay in the European Union or not.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9148

 

[weepiper]

 

[brogdale]

Minority coalition territory.

 

[brogdale]

Today's nationals...

This morning’s YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of:-

CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 14%, GRN 8% (tabs) – more typical figures than YouGov’s Tuesday poll.

There is also a new TNS poll with topline figures of:-

CON 31%(+3), LAB 31%(-4), LDEM 8%(+2), UKIP 16%(-2), GRN 7%(+2) (tabs).

Up until now TNS have tended to release their polls incredibly slowly, often a week or more after their fieldwork was finished, rendering them out of date by the time we see them. Fieldwork for this one however finished on Monday so it’s more timely than usual. The last couple of TNS polls showed Labour leads of 7 points, significantly and consistently larger than any other company. Today’s looks more like other polls.

Smithson continues to pull apart the nationals by isolating the English only intentions, and a measure of how badly Lab are doing in Scotland and the vermin are doing all over, is that Lab's share in higher in the English only!


Con -> Lab swing = vermin fucked.

 

[smokedout]

Class War heading for a landslide

http://ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/2nd-anniversary-poll.html

 

[brogdale]

Class War heading for a landslide

http://ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/2nd-anniversary-poll.html

LOL

CW victory!

 

[brogdale]

Smithson is very excited about this England only reporting...

Looks like 'Rat-killer' to me.

 

[chilango]

I'm enjoying flip-flopping between Labour, Green and "some other party" in the almost daily polls I'm filling in for YouGov.

Been "invited" onto the TES "political panel" too. So a bunch more polls I can have fun with.

 

[brogdale]

I'm enjoying flip-flopping between Labour, Green and "some other party" in the almost daily polls I'm filling in for YouGov.

Been "invited" onto the TES "political panel" too. So a bunch more polls I can have fun with.

Yep, I'm always fucking around with my YG responses.

 

[William of Walworth]

brogdale : That colourful Smithson poll of polls above -- are those Ashcroft figures themselves England only ones, ie were they England-only in the original Lord A polls?

If so, they surely highlights that his results are out of line with the others ....

 

[brogdale]

brogdale : That colourful Smithson poll of polls above -- are those Ashcroft figures themselves England only ones, ie were they England-only in the original Lord A polls?

If so, they surely highlights that his results are out of line with the others ....

Yes and yes.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ANP-150112-Full-data-tables.pdf

 

[brogdale]

Rob Ford's Observer piece about the Green (surge) electoral threat to NuLab...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/24/green-party-labour-threat-2015-election-robert-ford

The direct threat from the Greens is limited – the party is still relatively weak, and has little organisation or electoral track record outside of a handful of established strongholds such as Brighton and Norwich.

There is little chance of a direct Green challenge in more than a handful of seats, even if the current support level is maintained or increased. The larger threat to Labour comes from the indirect effects of a Green surge, particularly in key target seats where the party can ill afford to leak support.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

spot on.

ETA: UKIP are a bigger threat in England and the SNP in Scotland.

 

[brogdale]

Today's YG...

The weekly YouGov/Sunday Times survey is up here and has topline figures of:-

CON 32%, LAB 32%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 15%, GRN 7%.

LD - Green parity.

 

[brogdale]

This week's Ashcroft national..
Looks a bit more in line with the other pollsters...

Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck in this week’s Ashcroft National Poll. Both parties are on 32%, with UKIP third and unchanged on 15%. The Greens are fourth on 9%, down two points from last week’s peak but still ahead of the Liberal Democrats, fifth with 6%.

The SNP are down two points at 3%. However, this figure hides the disproportionate influence the party could have in May, and illustrates why the national polls – though clearly showing a tight race in terms of overall vote share – are not the best guide to the result in terms of seats. My constituency polling in Scotland, which will be released next week, will help to clarify this picture.

 

[brogdale]

YG's Evening Std. London polling...

 

[brogdale]

...and JFF..here's Ashcroft's last focus group polling...

Finally, to reveal more of the psychology of voters’ underlying perceptions, the crucial question of the week: if each party leader were a car, what car would they be?

There was a surprising consensus in both venues about Nick Clegg: he would be a Smart car, unless he was a people carrier to cart round all the baggage. Ed Miliband was more difficult: “A Ford Focus; average. Actually no, a Ford Focus is reliable.” David Cameron would be “something smooth”, possibly a Mercedes or a Range Rover, “depending on the image he wanted that day”. On Nigel Farage the groups were divided: a Ford Capri (“tinted windows, pimped”), with a “shiny exterior but then you look under the bonnet”; or “a four-by-four with illegal bull bars on the front. Or a tank.”

My view is..

 

[Dogsauce]

Clegg is totally one of those aluminium scooter things used by kids and the occasional briefcase twat.

 

[brogdale]

Clegg is totally one of those aluminium scooter things used by kids and the occasional briefcase twat.

or...

 

[BigTom]

Sinclair C5 - for some reason, some people thought it was a good idea at the time. Now consigned to the dustbin of history thank fuck. We still have to wait 4 months for Clegg to be thrown away though.