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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » David Herdson says “LAB most votes – CON most seats” is a good bet at 66-1
Labour has won most votes at a general election before and come out behind on seats. It happened in 1951, when Attlee’s Labour polled over 13.9m votes:
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Not sure about the overall conclusion though. Remember in 2005 the Tories won most votes in England but LAB secured 92 more seats. See
http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2014/08/05/remember-when-the-tories-won-england-at-ge2005-ahead-on-the-popular-vote-but-92-behind-on-seats/
2) The SNP can only clean up in Scotland via a collapse in the Labour vote there, further depressing Labour's UK vote.
So it appears the value bet is Labour loses the popular vote and their vote becomes less efficient...
... Majestic is a big data source which can extrapolate deep insights from the way in which pages and entities on the web connect to each other. We thought it would be useful to turn our insights onto the Scottish independence referendum.
From my analysis, it looks like the Yes campaign will beat the No campaign on polling day. As I write this I am personally very disappointed as I think Scotland would be stronger in the union. We predicted it correctly for the Mayor of London, and Obama vs Romney – so we do have a track of calling these things.
... I wish I could be sure… but I think Scotland will vote for Independence by much more than the polls suggest. I can’t say for sure because I had to work this out on a morning’s analysis. With more time I would start drilling down into the location and demographics of the users on the sites passing Trust Flow into the two campaigns. I am not paid to do that, but any political commentator ignoring Topical Trust Flow as a signal in any election is missing a trick now.
http://blog.majesticseo.com/research/scottish-election-poll/#sthash.FvkaBETD.dpuf
This is probably biased by Yes being very active online, younger activists etc. Same goes for Obama.. maybe not Boris, though.
I mean, it could just as well be the name of the YES campaign, if you think about it.
"We Ourselves" (aka Sinn Fein) is not a million miles away in meaning, and is, of course, the antithesis of Unionism...
1) Independence: Generously, 1 in 4.
2) Lab lead thereafter: 1 in 2
3) But only a teensy little one: 1 in 4
4) Compressed Con vote from strong UKIP performance in safe seats, but Con not resulting in Con losing enough marginal seats to break (3): Exceedingly generously 1 in 4
=> 4 * 2 * 4 * 4 = 1 in 128
Admittedly there are some other ways to get to the same place, but it's not obvious they make up the gap.
I think the actual margin of error in such circumstances which would allow for the Labour most votes Tory most seats scenario is tiny. 66-1 seems optimistic to me.
Stepping back, perhaps Salmond's first victory was to frame the debate in those terms.
So unable to celebrate Britain, BT's campaign has not been Better Together but rather its corollary, the negative Worse Alone.
Probably should execute the spotty little SPAD that came up with Project Fear though.
Maybe of course he’s been active in Scotland and as usual, it’s not reported in the London media.
I suspect SNP will also suffer a backlash in the 2015 general election. With the libdem vote on the floor also, I can see the tories regaining quite a few seats in Scotland
I suspect when it comes to putting the x on the ballot that some may hesitate. Some will overcome it, some wont.
How about "Strength Through Unity"
In the Borders and Highlands, Aberdeenshire, Perthshire and the leafier areas of the Central Belt, Tories and Labour (plus LibDems) have comfortably campaigned together. A perfect example has been the sight of Ken MacKintosh the Labour MSP for Eastwood and Jackson Carlaw his Tory opposite number he beat in 2011, being seen campaigning together. However frothing Broon and chums have been campaigning using the Labour party colours for their United with Labour and many non-Labour voters haven't identified them as part of the NO camp.
It will have been Broon and chums who will have lost the Union. "Wallace" Milibland speaking to rooms full of Labour party activists has done no good for the NO campaign. Last night he spoke to an audience of 400. Those 400 should have been out pounding the streets.
The more UK and foreign institutions "tell" the Scots what is good for us, the more certain that they overwhelming majority of Scots will respond "fcuk off" and vote YES.
OGH has expressed surprise that the Edinburgh postal vote returns so far are only 75% or thereabouts. There has been such a high registration that returning officers have been sending them out in tranches. In Highland, the 2nd tranche were only posted out on Monday. Mine arrived on Tuesday apparently and was posted back on Thursday.
I am delighted that today I will be well away from all the campaigning, surrounded by fellow clansmen and women from all around the world at the Highland Association of Clans International Gathering in Inverness. Last night we had a torchlit procession through Inverness City Centre with roughly 500 people from 20 clans and the salute taken by the Inverness (LibDem) Provost, the Lord Lieutenant and the Earl of Cromartie as Chief of the organising clan, the Mackenzies. It was good to see some of the Clan Chiefs like Godfrey and Lady Claire MacDonald of MacDonald who had made the trip over from Skye. We all appreciated the surprisingly large crowd which lined the fog bound streets at 9pm on a Friday evening.
Careful about predicting Tory gains at the election, you'll be accused of being a PB Tory Surger ;-)
Incidentally in the last couple of days I have heard suggestions of the YES side inviting all their supporters to withdraw their business from banks and businesses who are pushing for a NO vote. Never mind Jim Sillars and his fantasy 1970s Labour nationalisation politics.
But the key to this bet is Scotland. If there is a yes I still don't believe that there will be Scottish MPs elected in 2015. If there isn't a major part of the efficiency of the Labour vote will be lost at a stroke making the bet more plausible if still unlikely. Would it be voided though if the number of seats were changed in this way?
I am going to be spending most of the day doing my best to ensure this particular risk does not come to pass.
Cowardly Scott would be hiding a mile behind Alex , petrified to decide which path to take, he would rather stand where he is and starve to death , frozen in fear , a pathetic quivering jelly with no brains , a complete and utter failure. On his headstone would be written , Here lies a fool and a coward, good for nothing he came to nothing.
I expect a NO majority of at least 10% on 18/9/14, but that Unionist politicians will then renege on their promises to revise devolution, or deliver new arrangements for Scotland that would be much more financially deleterious than independence. Westminster politicians will know that the possibility of secession has been put off for a generation and that their success depends on the views of English voters, not those from the Celtic fringes.
There are simply too many counter-indications. We see the Labour vote collapsing even where they are potential contenders - as in Newark. To get most votes and not most seats Labour would need lots of votes in seats they don't win. Pre-UKIP you might have expected lots of votes for Labour in safe Tory seats where Labour voters have previously voted Lib Dem - but those voters are most likely to go for UKIP this time.
You would also need to see a higher turnout in safe Labour seats, but the growth of UKIP in areas such as Rotherham is likely to increase the efficiency of the Labour vote in their northern urban heartlands.
Also, the bar for Labour winning most seats is quite low. Setting aside Lib Dem held seats they need to win only about 25 seats from the Tories to get ahead. The tipping point seat is Hove on a swing of less than 2%. Bearing in mind that in 2010 the Lib Dem's increased their vote most in Lab-Con marginals and it's hard to see why there wouldn't be a bigger Con-Lab swing in the Con-Lab marginals than the national vote totals.
Tory hopes for 2010 lie not so much in the relative efficiency of the Labour or Tory vote, but in Labour losing votes compared to 2010. Here they have reason to hope. I do think that there are Labour 2010 voters who can be persuaded to vote for the Conservatives. There are also lots of Labour 2010 voters who will vote for UKIP. The Lib Dems 2010 voters who will vote Labour may not be numerous enough to offset these losses - particularly if they are the sort of "voters" who didn't manage to vote for the Lib Dems in 2010 anyway....
IMHO the value bet, if you can find it, is for UKIP to win both pending by-elections.
@skynewsniall: Jim Sillars giein' it laldy this am - his comments on a "day of reckoning" for BP and others widely reported #indyref http://t.co/nFxILyDe8f
But the Yes campaign has been very negative too, painting Independence as an easy way to avoid austerity (and not very plausibly).
Whatever the outcome, the process is going to lead to major recriminations as well as lasting damage.
I am increasingly leaning to Yes. I don't see much benefit to England being shackled to a zombie Union.
So it is hope versus NO hope, as you say people will likely grab the olive branch.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettarends/2014/09/12/scottish-independence-englands-shameful-secret/
Still think that the obvious value bet this week is Yes, though - they ought to be no more than 7-4.
Such an incident would have hit the front pages. And I haven't seen it. Source please?
I'm wondering if it is a garbled reference to an incident where a Glaswegian housing agency reportedly ordered its tenants to remove (presumably mostly Yes) posters.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/world/English-regions-demand-freedom-from-London-at-eve-of-Scottish-independence-referendum/shdaily.shtml
The question about the polls is more in the weighting issue - it's very hard to guess whether they are weighting previous non-voters and teenagers correctly. However, with all the polls showing much the same picture, the default assumption must be that they're right and No is marginally ahead right now.
In the event of a No next week, which I'm hoping for and can also just about imagine happening, the offer of more Devo for Scots will similarly be so unpopular elsewhere in the UK that more red votes will soften in England - especially in the poorer marginals.
I'm hoping that the political earthquakes of the last 2 weeks will actually shake people out of cosy yet negative outdated political allegiances (e.g. Anyone but Tories). The dynamism of necessary political radicalism has shifted towards the Tories, in some cases it has shifted towards the margins UKIP, SNP - people of my generation (under 30, just) would simply not consider voting old labour, they won't forgive new labour, and only see palatable radical change (away from ever growing state) from the blues.
Could it be that saddling my generation with student debts was yet another failure of the last 15 years - it provokes an awful lot less faith in the truth or fairness of universal welfarism - and provokes 30 years of balancing the budgets, reducing the scope of the state and more emphasis on personal responsibility?
(Another lurker (10+ years), coming in from the cold.
Any Devomax solution is just a halfway house to independence in a decade or so; better to do it now and skip the tedious wrangling over devomax.
I agree that the value bet is on Yes, with the polls so close, but look to be getting longer.
I'd also put the chance of a Labour lead in the 0-2% range at less than the 7/1 you suggest. I think it's very unlikely that a lead for either party will be more than 5% with precisely the Lab0-2 as the most likely option. I don't think that 4/1 is unrealistic. (Though obviously, the further from zero the lead, the less likely a Con lead in seats).
So my working assumption was that the condition re how the votes shift between Lib Dem and Lab, and Con and UKIP only has to be less than 4/1 for there to be some value.
Brilliant!
The broken windows report was, as I said on a forum (a non politiical webforum) on a fairly civilized "off topic" discussion on indyref. The poster does not strike me as having an agenda. The post is #272 on this page.
http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=105183&page=19
The rudeness of your above post inferring that I am a "thick stupid , ignorant half witted Daily mail reader", does I feel, rather prove my point.
Our own people might be a better translation or just "Us"
Going around the doors there are quite a number of people who have said that they have made up their minds but that they are not telling anyone but that is a different phenomenon from polling.
My guess, FWIW, is that No is still marginally ahead but the gap is such that a strong finish by Yes could overcome that. I think the risk of differential turnout in favour of yes has largely, if not completely, been dealt with because the closeness of the polls has energised the No vote.
One interesting feature is that pretty much everyone who I come in contact with who has already voted has voted no. As I have said before this reflects the demographics of those that tend to use postal votes to some extent but it is really noticeable. Yes supporters are much keener to vote and to be seen to vote (I think) on the day. I suppose if you feel you are going to be a part of something historic that makes a kind of sense.
Given the increasingly bad-tempered atmosphere, I do know genuinely wonder whether the losing side (whether Yes or No) is actually going to accept a close referendum result.
Cries of foul play have already started (from both sides).
Furthermore the Guardian today quotes extensively from Alistair Darling who states "But what I think is unacceptable is where a line has been crossed, where people feel afraid to speak out. This has been a feature, it's not just businesses, it's people in the arts world, just individuals scared of speaking out.."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/12/alistair-darling-accuses-scottish-yes-camp-physical-verbal-abuse-independence
Sorry but your responses to my post, do the YES campaign no credit whatsoever.
Oh dear. Not sure what I have done to upset you, but the fact that the Yes movement is not just the SNP is an absolutely fundamental issue in understanding indyref. To imply otherwise is as unwise as it is to imply that Alistair Darling is a Tory, or that the Orange Order are doing the bidding of Blair McDougall.
I (a) am not a SNP member, (b) obviously - and overtly as in that posting you quote - support the Yes campaign, and (c) was trying to point out some serious errors of fact, and therefore of analysis, in reporting and discussion of the indyref debate. Those serious errors were being posted and accepted as gospel on this site. It's not good for any southern PBer, for instance, to be led to believe that Mr Sillars is a leader of the SNP. Correcting that throws light also on the newspaper (and presumably BT) strategy involved. All good and proper meat for discussion here.
I'm sure that a hypothetical SNP rebuttal service might say something similar. But that doesn't mean it is wrong.
I can think of some other aspects of the Sillars affair, and their impact on the vote which would not occur to our south of the border colleagues less familir with Scottish politics, but after your unpleasant personal attack I just can't be bothered to explore it more. I come to this website precisely to make sure I'm not in a pro-indy confirmation bias bubble, and have often been put right (to my benefit) by such as Mr Nabavi, to take just one recent and appreciated example. However, it works both ways, and I see that the Buckfast joke count indicator is climbing, which is always a bad sign. I'd probably be best to jack it in.
FWIW I think you overestimate the salience of the Scottish issue to most English voters. The SeanTs who feel passionately about it, or the West Lothian Question, or EV4EL, are a minority who are mostly already committed to a party - that's why the Tories, who would gain most from EV4EL, haqven't been pushing it. I also think that few people see palatable change from anyone, unfortunately - no sign whatever that young people are rushing to back the Tories, but also not anyone else. The Greens and UKIP benefit from that, as they purport to offer a simple solution, so some are inclined to give them a spin.
You are a handy antidote to the normal raving on here, and as such would be sorely missed.
What the poster is saying however that a block of flats near him has etc.
It does not say that he saw it himself, as his admission that he can't remember where it was tends to confirm, and his link is a generic Google search for intimidation Scotland, so he is remembering something that he read.
When I try to refine it with the addition of windows broken flats, I get just one hit - but it is to a car fire which broke windows in the adjacent block of flats in Stirling.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-29177100
Even when I omit flats I get remarkably few hits and some are irrelevant.
If you can find it, then great, but I would be genuinely surprised, for, as I said before, if it had really happened it would be all over the media: it'd be a gift for them.
That said, I think it's generally best not to get too clever and "correct" for polls, because there's so much room for cognitive bias. Generally if the polling average says X leads 3% over Y, the most likely of the outcomes is for X to lead 3% over Y, and each point in either direction gets progressively less likely.
Let's roll forward to post the election and little Ed's in power by virtue of Scottish & Welsh seats. If Labour change English taxes, or English education, or English NHS by dint of their non English MP's, the English will be in revolt.
If the Tories do not make a huge play of being the party for England over the next 8 months, they are idiots. You can guarantee UKIP will if they don't. Labour of course can't as they are the ones who reap the rewards of our dodgy "democracy".
Frankly, the impression I get is that the nats are their own worst enemies.
True or not,both sides have their mindless idiots.
I would hazard a guess that their are parts of Larkhall where a "yes" poster might attract the attention of a drunk adolescent or two.
Dave can have a landslide if he pushes the right buttons on:
Devolution / Scotland / England / WLQ / equality for all citizens
Rotherham / multiculti / Labour vote buying
Economic recovery / Brown and Balls / 'not those muppets again'
The SNP will only really split on a "Yes" vote, As long as the "cause" is there, they will survive.
Fortunately, the more "active" posters on line are invariably cowards when stripped of their keyboards and anonymity, so are unlikely to come face to face with the targets of their on line heroism.
You will be glad to know that, in my neck of the woods at least, we seem to be taking it all in our stride.
The one conclusion we have mutually agreed on is nobody is telling the truth.
This would put your implied odds at 1 in 64 - pretty much where the bookies are.
.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11093574/Scotland-heading-for-a-Great-Depression-after-a-Yes-vote.html
If this came to pass many would need to be on David Herdson 66-1 suggestion.
I hope in the final week it goes to a decisive vote and not a 50 -50 near draw.
On topic, I think the greatest decline in the LD vote in 2015 will be in those seats where they were 2nd to Labour 2010, so that aids David's theory.
I would assume that on a "no" they will lose some support, but that they will still be a major force.
I think in region of 55% YES is a reasonable number, but the sense of optimism may really change things.
Almost certainly no currency union, Scotland in the ERM with its own, soft, currency awaiting the Euro, massive debt liabilities etc etc:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67017a0a-390d-11e4-9526-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3DBIgSQ1I