This week Peter Kellner, President of YouGov, published an article both on YouGov’s website and in The Times newspaper, with his views on why opinion polls in Scotland by different polling companies have produced consistently divergent results on the question of the Scottish independence referendum.
Comments
It was probably prompted by a very healthy sense of enquiry and doubt rather than to bash Survation over the head.
However yougov seem closer to Jack's ARSE..
Out of ten how likely are you to vote?
How will you vote?
Forget past weightings and party bs.
When the going gets tough, the left start going!
P.S. Lucky that US video on wealth distribution was public domain as The Guardian would have had to answer for copyright infringement as well as plagiarism!
Interestingly they show the same sort of leads for No that YouGov do.
2/5 YouGov
7/4 Survation
At these odds, Shadsy is presumably referring to the closer (rather than closest), i.e. between these two pollsters.
Keep calm and lay England ?
Sorry go go flying off topic so soon, but I have just had a jolly good email from Nick Palmer entitled, "Serious politics: Exports, industry, training, small business, science" (I'm on his re-elect me mailing list). I can't find fault with a word he says, though he links to the Adonis Report in whose conclusions I am sure I will find much to argue.
None the less as the good Dr. Palmer says,
"It’s widely believed that it is actually impossible to get serious consideration of detailed policy because (a) the media aren’t willing to report it and (b) most people don’t seem to have the attention span. This leads directly to one-sentence politics: Labour will curb your energy bills, the Tories will fight Mr Juncker, etc. It also leads to playground trivialisation. Who is the best leader at eating bacon butties? Not Mr Miliband. Do we care?
Meanwhile, we have one of the lowest investment levels in the entire world – competing with Mali in sub-Saharan Africa. Low-skilled employment is booming (why not hire a cheap helper rather than invest?), high-skilled employment is struggling. Our balance of payment deficit is terrifying. Industry is a shadow of its former self. Do we care about any of that? Do any of the parties have any policies to deal with this?
Actually, yes. Labour’s policy on these issues was published this week. It’s 85 pages long. Media coverage has been a tiny fraction of the bacon butties story. But if you’d like to know what Labour would do differently, it’s worth a look, at least at the one-page summary – and maybe have a skim of the full document? Issues it addresses include vocational schools training, schools career planning working with employers, boosting research for small business, encouraging industry and exports, devolving half of business rates to local Combined Authorities (which in our area would be a partnership between Nottingham and Nottinghamshire – not some kind of merged council) and eliminating mock-apprenticeships and boosting real ones.
Not every idea may be perfect. But it’s a serious attempt to draw up serious policy. Have a look? The summary is here, and there’s a link to the full report (which has a longer summary with 30 specific recommendations) at the bottom:"
http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/agenda-2015/policy-review/adonis-review
P.S. Nick, I hope you don't mind me quoting you but I thought you words were worth a wider audience, not least because they go against the left-right (evil-good) nonsense.
The usual political approach is: I have an ideology, implement it, fails, implement a more intense version of your ideology, fails even more, repeat ad nauseam.
Eg on the NHS let’s really implement some fully centrally controlled (Stalinist) hospitals and some fully market based (state pays but customer of the state delivers). See what works. Go with that.
Labour have lead the field on that; it's one of their, and their party supporters specialities. Why has it suddenly become an insignificance in Mr Palmers eyes? One suspects because it's hitting home and hard, when used against Miliband by the other players.
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Article/Page/en/LIVE?id=20335&page=PressReleases
Shadsy lists some of the not-recently-fired-for-incompetence candidates:
http://politicalbookie.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/has-lansley-been-junckered/
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2118017-islam-slimani-algeria-will-donate-their-world-cup-prize-money-to-gaza
'Low-skilled employment is booming (why not hire a cheap helper rather than invest?), high-skilled employment is struggling. Our balance of payment deficit is terrifying. Industry is a shadow of its former self. '
Hilarious stuff, can't think which government flooded the country with low-skilled immigrants,but he's certainly right about industry being a shadow of it's former self.
'Manufacturing accounted for more than 20 per cent of the economy in 1997, the year Labour came to power. But by 2007, that share had declined to 12.4 per cent.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232897/Manufacturing-decline-Labour-greater-Margaret-Thatcher.html#ixzz36PchzupK
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
If they have any real confidence in their product they should be rushing round to Ladbrokes' nearest shop to wager half a month's salary on being closer to the actual result than YouGov.
Somehow I don't see that happening.
This is a particularly serious problem for IndyRef, which is very much a one-off. There's nothing directly comparable to calibrate the weightings against.
So, given the rather large disparity between different polling organisations, we don't really have much choice but to fall back on a mixture of gut-feel, and the reputation and experience of the pollster. On balance I'm inclined to favour the Peter Kellner camp, but we shall see.
I think that reads more as a vote against Mr Callanan, than one against Mr Lansley.
That said, I don't see any obvious 'heavy hitters' amongst the Conservatives.
http://www.greenbenchesuk.com/2012/11/superbug-outbreak-jumps-200-at-1st.html?m=1
He's now 12/1
http://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/4403/elections-2nd-3rd-july-2014?page=1#scrollTo=170442
Andrew Teale's preview:
http://blog.englishelections.org.uk/2014/07/by-election-previews-23-july-2014.html
He's more of a professional apologiser
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100194054/another-glorious-apology-from-dr-eoin-clarke/
If we put forward a candidate, and then Juncker gives them a minor position, what happens if they then resign?
I say the 2015 election is one where betting success will be more about betting nous than pollster following, which makes it a rare thing in the Betfair dominated market
The Hersham Bugle (deputy ed - tim) has also learned that Ms Nuala Byrne has booked two tickets to Brussels.
You heard it here first, folks.
As a general rule, putting your faith in the best-established pollsters rather than the new kids on the block has tended to be a good policy.
Jus' sayin'. Might not have any significance.
http://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2014/07/mike-weatherley-mp-and-james-clappison-mp-to-stand-down-in-2015.html
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/hertsmere/
Somewhat like a pair of bald men fighting over a solitary comb when Sweeny Todd is inviting them to occupy the barbers chair.
Snip snip ....
Obviously the critical difference with 1992 is that this time we can tell there is a serious problem even prior to the result. But it's no good them sitting on their hands and waiting for the counts to come in to determine who got it right, in part because of the difference between a prediction and a forecast. If the electoral winds change, and they may wend a slightly different path even very late in the day (while few voters swing in the final 24-48 hours, less committed electors may only take on the final day the decision to hike, or not, to the polling booth) then it's possible that the team with the best methodology might end up with a slightly less "accurate" result. Nor would a mere comparison of polling with the final count explain the discrepancies between the pollsters, in both level and trend. I think self-funded research like YouGov's is to be praised. I'm sure all serious pollsters are self-critical and reflective practitioners of their art, but unless they seek out additional data then a lot of their hypotheses for the current gap will remain pure speculation. And it's better to seek the data now than in the post-mortem, both for the obvious reasons (a post-mortem is by definition too late!) and because issues like voter recall are surely only going to worsen by the passage of time and a supervening vote.
Oh well ....
I hope they dont end up in Bournemouth.
Just 2 comments
1 He mentions an ICM panel but ICM are a telephone pollster and do not therefore have a panel .
2 He attributes the response that 56% of Survation panel voters actually voted in the Euro elections to false recall rather than the more likely cause being the more likely reason that the panel members are not truly representative of the population as a whole . He does rightly draw attention that Yougov may be even worse in this respect .
This article shows how Labour is desperate to cover up its education catastrophe in Wales by making comparisons between English and Welsh schools more difficult.
The article says Labour are thinking of junking some health performance targets, too.
43 -> 49.9 (Yes) would be a very satisfying result for me as it would mean both the Nats and the Salmond doom mongers on here will have to pay out to me or charities of my choice.
If you buy me a drink at the next do I'll pronounce you an exception to it.
Cannock Chase
South Ribble
Thanet South
Hove
Louth & Horncastle
Hampshire NW
Hertsmere
I know Yougov ask about other stuff too, as do the other polling companies but I'd venture to guess that the average PBer is more likely to be in a panel, and more likely to vote than a general member of the public ?
http://www.icmresearch.com/media-centre/polls/scottish-independence-poll-june-2014
You are right, there are a number of reasons for false recall. It's an issue for all.
Zac's strength in Richmond is due to his family's location and presence in the constituency.
Boris's appeal as Mayor is mainly due to his rare personal appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and the way he has and has been able to promote this in the media (starting from HIGNFY and his own journalism).
A swap would not be playing to each's strength. More probably it would end in disaster for both, though Boris is more likely to win Richmond than Zac the London mayoralty.
http://news.sky.com/story/1294172/saudi-arabia-deploys-troops-to-iraq-border
And she wants it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-28078466
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381344/elizabeth-warren-obama-2016-jonah-goldberg