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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The limits of private polling
For we followers and obsessives of opinion polls, there are two words that grab our attention like no others, those two words are “private polling”, there’s some belief that “private polling” is much more sophisticated and accurate, than the normal public polling, but is it?
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I would not want to be the academic who had to tell him they got the numbers the wrong way around ...
They want to replace all Main Stream Media reporting with people on Facebook telling each other they are going to win...
Still no sign of Stuart Dickson? Was he a MI5 mole?
just a reminder from FPT
How can you tell it's been a seriously bad week for Ed M? Here's how:
tom_watson@tom_watson·1 hr
Personally speaking this has been the most enjoyable labour conference I've ever attended. #lab14
Labour 2/9
Ukip 3/1
In Heywood and Middleton?
If there was any I mean
40/30?
'Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite trade union which is one of Labour's biggest backers, said that the failure to mention the deficit was a "glaring omission".'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11119350/Ed-Milibands-leadership-openly-questioned-by-his-own-MPs.html
That's intellectual superiority for you...
Today was the day when the Magic Sign was overtaken by the Mighty Machine in terms of market capitalisation:
Ladbrokes ........... £1,172.56 million
Betfair ................. £1,195.97 million
How are the once mighty now fallen! I wonder what Cyril Stein would have made of it. Of course it wouldn't have happened in his day. Judging by the following extract from his entry in Wiki the old boy who died three years ago did all right for himself and for his shareholders:
"Cyril ran his own small credit-betting office in the West End of London when (aged 28) he teamed up in 1956 with his bookmaker uncle Mark, who traded as Max Parker, to buy the venerable but failing bookmarking firm of Ladbrokes, founded in 1886, for a reported £100,000."
Wow!
Labour are normally pretty good at getting behind the leader.
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=2_nnYSD2gGo
Might be worth a look as it is by Vernon Bogdanor on EV4EL and so on - was he not Mr Cameron's tutor at Oxford?
Get her in as Lab leader pre-election and asap.... I need my winnings with whoever bookie it's with.
I can only imagine the upheaval caused by politicians doing a PR stunt from places like hospitals or schools. It really annoys me, and yes they all do it.
If they really want to know about how a public body functions etc, they can do it privately and quietly and away from the cameras, and they do. All the big set piece nonsense just causes distraction of the running of the place, for what getting on the news shaking the hand of some poor sod who is ill or doing an interview from a hospital bed.
'The clueless wonders around here are in for a shock.'
Presumably it must be because one thinks they are better than public polls and so they represent valuable information that gives you an advantage. Why would that be?
Perhaps because you had fed in the [private] data from your canvassing returns/other campaign data on voter contact? That's the only thing I can think of that might not be available in the public domain.
Most likely is that there is an observational bias at play here. We are only hearing about private polling that was contrary to the public polling - because it's not interesting to hear that private polls gave the same answer as public polls.
Private polling - win by 8%
Actual result - lose by 11%
An error in the lead of 19 points.
Equivalent to having polls with Lab leading by 4% and the actual result being Lab winning by 23% or Lab losing by 15%.
What gives Milliband and Channel 4 the right to use a publicly owned asset as a film set? Of course, I'm sure Channel 4 and the Labour Party paid a hefty location fee.
(Take a bow PBer whose identity I've now forgotten.)
Anything above 80% and he thought the Nationalists were home and hosed.
Bunkum as it turned out.
This was usually in the form of a reproof directed at anyone who ventured to suggest that No was going to walk it and it wouldn't even be close.
He used to deliver it with a sort of pitying head shaking contempt, as though pointing out that you really had no right to call yourself interested in politics given this glaring lacuna.
Anybody can be wrong, but he simply ignored requests to substantiate or argue his case.
Now what I want to know is if Miliband is going to give England equality and devolve to regions and Cities does that mean he is proposing to break up the NHS? Logically to address the democratic deficit properly by devolving to city and regions that is what you would have to do. Otherwise how could say the Northwest choose to get free prescriptons and say the North East choose to get extra nurses.
There is only one solution which actually gives England democratic equality and keeps the NHS whole and that is an English Parliament........
* Yes, yes, I know about Scots and Scotch. I'll call them what I like, especially now we pwn them.
1. Distortion of questions - a private pollster has no reason to resist asking leading questions etc.
2. Selection of best results. You might have four private polls done, and leak the one that suits you best.
3. Pollster distortion - trying to please the customer by helpful rounding etc.
Number 3 seems the least likely - it would just be annoying to have a pollster who makes stuff up. Those unscrupulous enough to lie to the public can make up their own lies based on non-existent pollsters. But either 1 or 2 looks possible.
Labour forgets many things. It forgets that in 1997, it was elected on a promise not to bring in tuition fees for university students. It clearly forgot that when the introduce legislation implementing their u-turn. It also forgets that there was a significant backbench rebellion when meant that the measure only went through because Scottish Labour MPs voted for it - even though their own constituents were only going to be marginally affected by the policy (if at all)
With more devolution, such things are going to happen again and again. That is unacceptable in any democracy.
Yes, there are issues when the party of National Government does not carry a majority of the seats in England. But if the past 4 or so years have shown us anything, it is that parties can come together to being forward policies that carry support beyond simple party lines.
A supply and demand situation for English laws is sure a good thing if that is what is necessary for stable government for the UK as a whole.
I do not believe in an English Parliament. I do not believe in devolution to cities (or even city states.) And I certainly do not believe that the current system can continue without reform.
That reform has to mean that English MPs have the final say over measures that only affect English matters.
The detail of how that is implemented is not beyond intelligent people to determine. It means co-operation, communication, collaboration - and accepting that, in a union of different nation states with different political systems, Westminster has to adapt.
And for those who bring up the idea that London having a mayoral system means that we need to account for that, they are just attempting to divert attention from the real issues. The same goes for those who talk about the difference between those MPs from coastal or inland seats, or the urban/rural divide.
England will not stand for having policy imposed by politicians who have no democratic right to do so. Just as the Scots have made it perfectly clear that they want control over many areas of policy.
We all need to adjust our thinking and our systems to reflect that reality.
Miliband stands in the way of this. And the people will see that.
@DPJHodges: If, as Ed Miliband is now claiming, his speech wasn't "prepared earlier" how did comments he never made appear in the released text?
Angus Reid and all that.
Prize turnips for "getting it wrong" must go to "GOTV Pork" and "hopeless" malcolmg......
I believe it is.
And it is unthinkable, going forward, that an Education Secretary will not represent an English constituency.
"What I try and do is I try and write a speech and then I use it as the basis for what I want to say to the country."
Please, please, when are the grown-ups coming to sort all this out?
I tweeted him a few days ago but he didn't reply, which isn't surprising since I only have about 200 followers.
I think this misrepresents Mr Romney's position. The US pollsters results fell into two groups, the variation being on who they thought would be the electorate. The pro-dem pollsters were right, the pro-gop pollsters were wrong.
You can see something similar in current UK polls. There is a high-UKIP group, and a low-UKIP group.
"forgotten" speech issues - "
Ben said yesterday that party leaders doing a speech without notes should be cast into a bottomless pit. Very prescient of him as usual
If it meant that much to him, I expect he's still trying to come to terms with the loss in Scotland. I do hope he pulls himself together soon, and comes back on here.
Inevitably, he will have to deal with the ribbing and the pillorying, but there are some insights of his I miss already.
How do you address areas like the Home office which will have devolved areas such as police and non-devolved areas such as Immigration. Are you going to break up one of the great offices of State or just ban non English MP's from a job that should be available for them.
How do you identify which Peers (who will be able to block all legislation from the Commons) are non-English and which are not? They do not necessarily previously have constituencies. After all it would be a bit pointless having EVfEL if Mick Martin, David Steele and Neil Kinnock were then able to block it in the Lords.
The idea that you can provide national integrity for English only matters within the UK Government/ Parliament is highly implausible. In fact to adapt a William Hague phrase its a bit like being 'In England but not run by England'
There is a big difference between 'English Votes for English Laws' and 'English Rule for English Laws' and the latter is where we should be heading.
The voters will have to judge whether that makes him fit to be PM.
I wasn’t aware of Alex Salmond’s winning certainty - Just goes to show, even with the most sophisticated methodology available, private polling can prove to be just an expensive dud.
We've had another "Cameron will resign any moment now" obsessive here recently.....
Coincidence?
Parliament recalled over air strikes on Islamic State in Iraq
Cammo trying to drown out the start of the UKIP Conference in Doncaster?
It won't help him or any of the Lab/Lib/Con team.
.@chrisg0000 @HouseOfTwitsCon Cam should have waited for the #UKIP conference so they can send back all their MPs. #ohwait
"Hello, White House. Bomb Iraq to get up the Kippers noses? Yup, anything for you Dave"