Political polling

[Mr Moose]

Labour policy to persist with Ed just because the polls indicated they needed only to hold their nerve was found lacking in the extreme.

Labour haven't won anything in 10 years. The polling gap closed quite a while back. Alarm bells should have rung.

 

[brogdale]

Labour haven't won anything in 10 years. The polling gap closed quite a while back. Alarm bells should have rung.

Wonderful thing hindsight; but if we're playing that game...perhaps there were signs that Lab knew things were awry? I suppose alarm bells might have rung a little louder when they wheeled Blair out to endorse Milibrand.

 

[Mr Moose]

Wonderful thing hindsight; but if we're playing that game...perhaps there were signs that Lab knew things were awry? I suppose alarm bells might have rung a little louder when they wheeled Blair out to endorse Milibrand.

Not hindsight. Many wanted Miliband gone, but on here that was dismissed as Blairite plotting and a misreading of the polls which, thanks to the Kippers, apparently promised victory.

 

[killer b]

Wonderful thing hindsight; but if we're playing that game...perhaps there were signs that Lab knew things were awry? I suppose alarm bells might have rung a little louder when they wheeled Blair out to endorse Milibrand.

they didn't have a clue. did you see how shell shocked they were last night? how much the vermin and assorted allies were panicking in the run up?

 

[brogdale]

they didn't have a clue. did you see how shell shocked they were last night? how much the vermin and assorted allies were panicking in the run up?

They had plenty of clues; the polling on preferred PM and leader was consistently biased towards Cameron with Milibrand trailing badly.

 

[killer b]

they chose to ignore them then, or thought they'd done enough to counter them.

 

[brogdale]

they chose to ignore them then, or thought they'd done enough to counter them.

Some Lab MPs have been blabbing on the media all day about the doorstep evidence they were feeding back. The staged Blair thing must have been a point of desperation for them.

 

[butchersapron]

Wonderful thing hindsight; but if we're playing that game...perhaps there were signs that Lab knew things were awry? I suppose alarm bells might have rung a little louder when they wheeled Blair out to endorse Milibrand.

What sort of polling would they need to have done to get very different results from the other pollers? One more in line with the wrong exit poll.

 

[butchersapron]

(If i write exist rather than exit one more fucking time)

 

[Mr Moose]

Bit what sort of polling would they need to have done to get very different results from the other pollers? One more in line with the wrong exist poll.

They need to forget polling and think about both history and offer.

History, Michael Foot, a lampooned leader annihilated. 1992, the polls wrong. The rareness of a Govt being ousted with a (perceived) strong economy.

The Labour offer? To be Tory lite. Never going to be good enough.

 

[brogdale]

Bit what sort of polling would they need to have done to get very different results from the other pollers? One more in line with the wrong exist poll.

I suspect (no more) that their focus-group stuff would have worried them...allied to the feedback from ground-troops.

 

[butchersapron]

They need to forget polling and think about both history and offer.

History, Michael Foot, a lampooned leader annihilated. 1992, the polls wrong. The rareness of a Govt being ousted with a (perceived) strong economy.

The Labour offer? To be Tory lite. Never going to be good enough.

They might well do - my point was bout what sort of private polling they may have done that presaged the actual result.
I'm not being funny but the historical sweep you offer = nothing.

 

[butchersapron]

I suspect (no more) that their focus-group stuff would have worried them...allied to the feedback from ground-troops.

My still working labour tendrils were reporting back easy vics and sizable swings from the ground pre-election (all south and west mids). We've got shy tories and secret hidden lib-tories in the shed until the man goes now.

 

[butchersapron]

They need to forget polling and think about both history and offer.

History, Michael Foot, a lampooned leader annihilated. 1992, the polls wrong. The rareness of a Govt being ousted with a (perceived) strong economy.

The Labour offer? To be Tory lite. Never going to be good enough.

Map this economic determinism onto history - see if it holds up.

 

[brogdale]

My still working labour tendrils were reporting back easy vics and sizable swings from the ground pre-election (all south and west mids). We've got shy tories and secret hidden lib-tories in the shed until the man goes now.

Yeah.

I suppose one obvious problem with polling (public and party private) was identifying the 'marginals' in order to examine the breaks. Quite obviously, without appreciating the full extent of the LD implosion, the LD-> Con was never properly examined.

I'm not at all sure I'm making any sense any more....bishop's II opened

 

[gosub]

they didn't have a clue. did you see how shell shocked they were last night? how much the vermin and assorted allies were panicking in the run up?

Think tories might have had a better idea through private Ashcroft polling...In Basingstoke day before the polls Labour were pushing out polls saying it was neck and neck and even pointing out Maria Miller wasn't even in Basingstoke, but campaigning in Portsmouth. Given her history in the last parliament,I am amazed to see she polled 48%,but she must of got confidence from somewhere to travel down to Pompey.

 

[killer b]

Ashcroft's polls were in line. He was just as surprised.

 

[brogdale]

Second wind now!

One thing that does strike me was how fucking obvious it was that, post Euros, the UKIP and Labour trend lines were negatively correlated as mirror images of each other. What the break data didn't show was that there must have been differential 'stickyness' between the Con->UKIP and Lab->UKIP voters. It would seem that the more recent accretion from Lab stuck, whilst the shedding was biased to the vermin.

 

[Mr Moose]

Map this economic determinism onto history - see if it holds up.

You mean the 'strong economy'? Not 100%. Blair got in when there was some recovery. But another factor, the utter cultural bankruptcy of the Tories was in play. In general it holds.

 

[butchersapron]

Second wind now!

One thing that does strike me was how fucking obvious it was that, post Euros, the UKIP and Labour trend lines were negatively correlated as mirror images of each other. What the break data didn't show was that there must have been differential 'stickyness' between the Con->UKIP and Lab->UKIP voters. It would seem that the more recent accretion from Lab stuck, whilst the shedding was biased to the vermin.

Which might say a frig load about the past and the future at once - totally abandoned labour vote never coming back because of labours attitude, but not enough to swing anything - and the UKIP-tory relationship simply being about europe - nothing else. UKIP clipped in one scenario but expanding in another. The opposite of expected. But 2017...

 

[Dogsauce]

Second wind now!

One thing that does strike me was how fucking obvious it was that, post Euros, the UKIP and Labour trend lines were negatively correlated as mirror images of each other. What the break data didn't show was that there must have been differential 'stickyness' between the Con->UKIP and Lab->UKIP voters. It would seem that the more recent accretion from Lab stuck, whilst the shedding was biased to the vermin.

The 'Labour' ones had no reason to go back, not even a mug.

 

[Quartz]

I suppose it's too early, but has anyone done any asking of why people voted Tory?

 

[Dogsauce]

I suppose it's too early, but has anyone done any asking of why people voted Tory?

I've seen a few on facebook, paraphrasing a couple:

'I'm working class and Labour always just want to keep us in our place'
'Labour bankrupted the country and haven't atoned for it'

 

[treelover]

I have been following discussions, to a point, on my local furom, many of them decent people, helped fix my car, etc, many of them would consider a L/P run by Chukka, but isn't he just as posh, detached, etc, as Milliband was claimed to be.

 

[treelover]

I've seen a few on facebook, paraphrasing a couple:

'I'm working class and Labour always just want to keep us in our place'
'Labour bankrupted the country and haven't atoned for it'

This has been echoed on social media, its the device the republicans use in the U.S, "patronising the WC", "telling folk what is good for them, etc."

 

[Dogsauce]

A few cut and pasted justifications/rants for voting tory (not my friends but comments on the feed of friends having a grumble about the result):

"Of course Labour overspent: if you spend more than income in time of growth, you are overspending. Yes you need investment in the future, but that can be done through increased receipts tgrough growth. Also the "Banking Crash" (AKA don't blame me Bob) could have been limited if Labour had put in more controls on banks (like one Vince Cable predicted and suggested before the crash.)"

"Vote with your head not your heart... Voting labour doesn't lift every one up.... They drag everyone down... Socialism sux"

" I personally voted tory simply because of the benefits they'll have to me and labour have fucked right up letting Miliband in. When I was a union rep for USDAW we had to vote for labour leader and none of us voted for that cunt but he got in anyway. The new budget was brilliant and the tories HAVE got the country out of a lot of shit. If the wealthy get wealthier as a result so be it "

"We need to do a China and restrict families to 1 child each that would stop a lot of shit. If you get a dumb ass chavvy couple who don't earn 15k between them and have 9 kids to get extra income then their kids all fail school because the parents are too high to push the children then 20 years later the 9 children go and have 9 kids of their own and do the same shit.
This is why poverty exists."

"last lot were a bunch of lying bullshit merchants and they now want us to vote for them again. great, either way we lose"

​

 

[Combustible]

There was some polling a few weeks ago showing a fair few people who said they would vote Labour would prefer a Tory government to a Labour-SNP deal. Which is presumably one of the reasons why the Tories pushed the SNP issue so hard. The odd thing was that the polling in the run-up to the election suggested that it hadn't been too effective...

 

[Quartz]

Hey, brogdale, can you check something for me? Aren't the actual results within (just) the margins of error of the opinion polls? If that's the case, then perhaps future polls need to be larger - and thus have a smaller MoE - to be considered reliable?

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

The impression I get is that the election result wasn't so much a vote for the Tories as it was a vote against the SNP. I've no idea if that theory holds up beyond the immediate circle of humans I interact with though.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

The impression I get is that the election result wasn't so much a vote for the Tories as it was a vote against the SNP. I've no idea if that theory holds up beyond the immediate circle of humans I interact with though.

Clearly had a very significant impact in England and may well have been Crosby's dastardly plan all along. It dominated the messaging for a fortnight before the election; that wouldn't have continued if it wasn't cutting through.

Presumably one of Urban's nats will be along in a bit to explain laboriously that the breakdown of seats in Scotland made no difference to Cameron's majority.