Its rather sweet when people who couldn't call an election hours away talk with absolute certainty of elections five and ten years out.
We simply do not know what's going to happen.
Quite. Was there a single regular poster on here who predicted a Tory majority?
Rod Crosby & Tissue Price never wrote it off.
Mr. Smithson Junior got pretty close with, iirc, his final forecast of 314 seats for the Blues. Which reminds me, several months ago, I asked him whether he was intending to publish "Son of VIPER" the original version of which had proved very accurate at the time of the 2010 GE. I never received his reply ..... somehow or other, I fancy he had a forecast model up and running for his own consumption, which seemingly he didn't share with his Dad, or more likely Senior simply didn't want to know!
Shame that he (junior) was so terribly terribly wrong on the LibDems
Really? I think practically every post I wrote for the last two weeks of the campaign was on the incredible value to be found in the "LibDems 11-20 seats, 4-1" bet.
I think I forecast 16 LibDem seats. Which was - I admit - too high. But it was a lot lower than most PB-ers...
Its rather sweet when people who couldn't call an election hours away talk with absolute certainty of elections five and ten years out.
We simply do not know what's going to happen.
Quite. Was there a single regular poster on here who predicted a Tory majority?
Rod Crosby & Tissue Price never wrote it off.
Mr. Smithson Junior got pretty close with, iirc, his final forecast of 314 seats for the Blues. Which reminds me, several months ago, I asked him whether he was intending to publish "Son of VIPER" the original version of which had proved very accurate at the time of the 2010 GE. I never received his reply ..... somehow or other, I fancy he had a forecast model up and running for his own consumption, which seemingly he didn't share with his Dad, or more likely Senior simply didn't want to know!
I do have my own model (SMERSH), but it's very rough around the edges, and therefore I didn't feel ready to post it on PB. I posted a number of outputs from it (such as my predicted LD seat numbers at various vote shares). I think I had 7 seats at 7% and 10 at 8%, so I was wrong, but not as wrong as many. I thought the LDs would end up around 10.2%, hence my reckoning of a mid to high teens seat number for the LDs.
The comments below the line show how emotionally charged this referendum is going to be. A timely reminder that at the moment the Tory party's biggest enemy is the Eurosceptics within.
9. Reduce tax credits paid to offset most of the above, cut in half the number of people paying tax then having to claim some of it back again through the bureaucracy.
Tax Credits are another thing that I hope (but they won't) the government really get to grips with. I have yet in all the years of tax credits heard one single convincing reason why tax credits are a better system than just not paying tax in the first place and using the other levers such as thresholds to make sure that the rich don't benefit.
Of course that would be true but in practice huge numbers of people who get tax credits don't pay tax at all - or get miles, miles more in tax credits than they pay in tax.
The name "tax credits" is completely misleading. They aren't "credits" against tax paid. They have nothing to do with tax. They are actually what used to be called supplemetary benefit.
eg Single person, 2 children, gross pay £10,000:
Tax paid = £nil Tax credits received = £8,000 Child benefit received = £2,000
Net money in pocket = £20,000
(+ Housing Benefit which is separate)
Well aware of that....and anybody who knows the history of tax credits, will realise why it came about and it has little to do with being the best way of doing things.
Also in your example it isn't quite that straight forward as if you think of NI as a tax paid, people even on £10k are paying NI....that is why I was talking about overhauling both and minimum wage.
'A Labour spokesman denied there was a plan to carve the pledges on a cliff face.' hahaha
I don't know about you, but I hope the EdStone gets discovered in thousands of years and is used as some form of Rosetta Stone for future archaeologists.
According to Sky news it's stored because it's too delicate to move and would break easily. A stone that size would need a crane to move it so was it even real stone? Unlikely to survive a Millienium I suspect .
Plato summed it up perfectly the other day. She envisaged a bunch of squawking chimpanzees dancing around it in the year 3001.
It was made by Stone Circle, an excellent family owned stoneworks company in Hampshire. It is being stored by Andrew Paye, of PAYE Stone, the most hideously expensive monopoly supplier of church floors on God's Earth
Incidentally, I remember well a Daily Politics programme held at the 2007 Conservative conference, when Andrew Neil quite seriously asked the question of whether the Conservatives would be forever finished if Brown called an election and beat them.
Things can change very quickly. Writing off Labour would be foolish.
Not read the comments so sorry if its been already said but winning the Tories winning so many Lib-Dem seats has significantly reduced the range of seats for a Hung Parliament and removed one long term advantage Labour had in possible coalition partners, since except for Clegg for the last 40 years or so the Lib Dems have been more likely to back Labour than the Conservatives.
I didn't see the point of targeting Lib Dem seats two weeks ago as under Clegg in a Hung Parliament the Lib Dems were more likely to back Cameron than Miliband plus SNP. But winning the seats altogether has changed the landscape entirely.
Realistically barring some incredible Lib Dem recovery PC/SDLP/Green/Lib Dem won't be more than about 20 or so now. DUP/UUP is around 9, so excluding the SNP that's a net difference of 11 in favour of Labour from the "others".
That means far more than last time, the choice next time is either Tory or Labour plus SNP. With the Lib Dems neutralised, that is the choice now.
Mr Eagles makes the very reasonable point that ex-Lib Dem seats are not nailed-on for the Tories next time, so should not be ruled out of potential hung parliament land.
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I would love the Troies to be knocked out and I do not underate their proclivity for being mad, bad and dangerous but TSE's analysis is pretty hopeful.
It is not that the Tories are much good it is also that Labour are total rubbish. Andy B do me a favour. He makes Milliband look gigantic. Quite obviously with the Tories heading for trouble on the EU the thing to do is to reverse the established position?
Len McClusky who at least seems to have semblance of consistency, if not much in the way of common sense, should send for Salmond, offer him support for the leadership if they can persuade him to defect from the NATS. If that fails then any grown up politician will do.
Well aware of that....and anybody who knows the history of tax credits, will realise why it came about and it has little to do with being the best way of doing things.
Also in your example it isn't quite that straight forward as if you think of NI as a tax paid, people even on £10k are paying NI....that is why I was talking about overhauling both and minimum wage.
I know - my figures were rounded - they'll be paying about £200 of NI.
But the point stands that you can't just cut tax and cut tax credits to "simplify" the situation - because it would result in huge changes to what people actually get.
Using my example above we simply have to decide how much welfare to pay. Either we carry on paying the above person £10k of welfare or we don't.
I would love the Troies to be knocked out and I do not underate their proclivity for being mad, bad and dangerous but TSE's analysis is pretty hopeful.
It is not that the Tories are much good it is also that Labour are total rubbish. Andy B do me a favour. He makes Milliband look gigantic. Quite obviously with the Tories heading for trouble on the EU the thing to do is to reverse the established position?
Len McClusky who at least seems to have semblance of consistency, if not much in the way of common sense, should send for Salmond, offer him support for the leadership if they can persuade him to defect from the NATS. If that fails then any grown up politician will do.
You have not taken Gordon's medication by mistake this morning have you?
Incidentally I have a theory as to why the Ashcroft Question 2 (which was the one everyone focused on, including Lord A) was such a disaster.
Logically the responses to Q1 and Q2 should have been identical by the time we got close to the election. The fact that there were such big changes from Q1 to Q2 indicates that respondents thought (not unreasonably) that the pollster must have been asking something different in Q2, i.e. not simply 'Who will you vote for?'
So, what question did they think they were being asked? My suggestion is that they thought they were being asked "Which of the candidates in your constituency would you vote for if you were to ignore national politics?". You can see how, if respondents thought that was the difference between Q1 and Q2, then Q2 could easily produce a very large jump towards popular incumbent MPs - people who intended to vote Tory because they didn't want Ed Miliband (let alone Ed Miliband in thrall to Nicola) anywhere near No 10, but who had a strong residual personal loyalty to their previous MP.
Its rather sweet when people who couldn't call an election hours away talk with absolute certainty of elections five and ten years out.
We simply do not know what's going to happen.
Quite. Was there a single regular poster on here who predicted a Tory majority?
Rod Crosby & Tissue Price never wrote it off.
Mr. Smithson Junior got pretty close with, iirc, his final forecast of 314 seats for the Blues. Which reminds me, several months ago, I asked him whether he was intending to publish "Son of VIPER" the original version of which had proved very accurate at the time of the 2010 GE. I never received his reply ..... somehow or other, I fancy he had a forecast model up and running for his own consumption, which seemingly he didn't share with his Dad, or more likely Senior simply didn't want to know!
Shame that he (junior) was so terribly terribly wrong on the LibDems
Really? I think practically every post I wrote for the last two weeks of the campaign was on the incredible value to be found in the "LibDems 11-20 seats, 4-1" bet.
I think I forecast 16 LibDem seats. Which was - I admit - too high. But it was a lot lower than most PB-ers...
And if they had only won 3 more you'd have paid for you next trip to the wrong part of Long Island...
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I don't think seats like Lewes will go LibDem again anytime soon (if ever). The thread has been broken - it took years for the LibDems to build up that kind of personal-vote based support.
'A Labour spokesman denied there was a plan to carve the pledges on a cliff face.' hahaha
I don't know about you, but I hope the EdStone gets discovered in thousands of years and is used as some form of Rosetta Stone for future archaeologists.
According to Sky news it's stored because it's too delicate to move and would break easily. A stone that size would need a crane to move it so was it even real stone? Unlikely to survive a Millienium I suspect .
Plato summed it up perfectly the other day. She envisaged a bunch of squawking chimpanzees dancing around it in the year 3001.
It was made by Stone Circle, an excellent family owned stoneworks company in Hampshire. It is being stored by Andrew Paye, of PAYE Stone, the most hideously expensive monopoly supplier of church floors on God's Earth
Charles Thanks and I stand corrected unlike the stone that's does not stand erected.
I can understand the 30k price tag now. Scandalous waste of money based on Labour measurement terms that would have paid for 1.2645 nurses for a year.
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I don't think seats like Lewes will go LibDem again anytime soon (if ever). The thread has been broken - it took years for the LibDems to build up that kind of personal-vote based support.
I agree that it'll be a long road back for the LibDems, but there are going to be some of those 14 seats where the LibDems still control the council, where the incumbent Conservative doesn't do a good job, and where the LibDem PPC works the seat like crazy over the full five years (i.e. does a Lynne Featherstone). In those constituencies, there is the chance of a comeback.
And, ultimately, the biggest determinant is going to be the LibDem national share. If it's 14% at the next election, then I'd expect them to make reasonable gains. If it's 6%, they'll make losses.
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I don't think seats like Lewes will go LibDem again anytime soon (if ever). The thread has been broken - it took years for the LibDems to build up that kind of personal-vote based support.
I agree that it'll be a long road back for the LibDems, but there are going to be some of those 14 seats where the LibDems still control the council, where the incumbent Conservative doesn't do a good job, and where the LibDem PPC works the seat like crazy over the full five years (i.e. does a Lynne Featherstone). In those constituencies, there is the chance of a comeback.
And, ultimately, the biggest determinant is going to be the LibDem national share. If it's 14% at the next election, then I'd expect them to make reasonable gains. If it's 6%, they'll make losses.
But they won't be a major party, their Short money is a lot smaller & there aren't as many councillor subventions.
Without publicity, money or footsoldiers, it's going to be hard.
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I don't think seats like Lewes will go LibDem again anytime soon (if ever). The thread has been broken - it took years for the LibDems to build up that kind of personal-vote based support.
I agree that it'll be a long road back for the LibDems, but there are going to be some of those 14 seats where the LibDems still control the council, where the incumbent Conservative doesn't do a good job, and where the LibDem PPC works the seat like crazy over the full five years (i.e. does a Lynne Featherstone). In those constituencies, there is the chance of a comeback.
And, ultimately, the biggest determinant is going to be the LibDem national share. If it's 14% at the next election, then I'd expect them to make reasonable gains. If it's 6%, they'll make losses.
But they won't be a major party, their Short money is a lot smaller & there aren't as many councillor subventions.
Without publicity, money or footsoldiers, it's going to be hard.
Well aware of that....and anybody who knows the history of tax credits, will realise why it came about and it has little to do with being the best way of doing things.
Also in your example it isn't quite that straight forward as if you think of NI as a tax paid, people even on £10k are paying NI....that is why I was talking about overhauling both and minimum wage.
I know - my figures were rounded - they'll be paying about £200 of NI.
But the point stands that you can't just cut tax and cut tax credits to "simplify" the situation - because it would result in huge changes to what people actually get.
Using my example above we simply have to decide how much welfare to pay. Either we carry on paying the above person £10k of welfare or we don't.
Your example is of a single person with children working part time, maybe they do need help from the state. That is different to families earning 40k yet still getting tax credits. Why do people earning more than the average wage need it to be topped up by the government?? Surely it's easier for them not to pay the tax in the first place?
The Lib Dems performed far better in seats that an incumbent was defending than in those where the MP stepped down ( a drop of 15% as opposed to 24%). The problem was their drop in support was so great that this made little difference.
There are six Conservative seats (like Lewes) where the winning margin was less than the increase in the Labour vote, and 14 where it's less than the increase in Labour plus Green. If the LDs get some of the tactical voting back in those seats, then those seats would seem to be the first to go yellow again.
I don't think seats like Lewes will go LibDem again anytime soon (if ever). The thread has been broken - it took years for the LibDems to build up that kind of personal-vote based support.
I agree that it'll be a long road back for the LibDems, but there are going to be some of those 14 seats where the LibDems still control the council, where the incumbent Conservative doesn't do a good job, and where the LibDem PPC works the seat like crazy over the full five years (i.e. does a Lynne Featherstone). In those constituencies, there is the chance of a comeback.
And, ultimately, the biggest determinant is going to be the LibDem national share. If it's 14% at the next election, then I'd expect them to make reasonable gains. If it's 6%, they'll make losses.
But they won't be a major party, their Short money is a lot smaller & there aren't as many councillor subventions.
Without publicity, money or footsoldiers, it's going to be hard.
We'll see: I'd expect the LibDems to make gains in the council elections over this electoral cycle. And there will be plenty of publicity around the Euro referendum. I suspect Farron - whom I personally have little time for - will be a very effective communicator in the Charlie Kennedy mold.
If they don't make council gains, then I'd reckon your forecast will be accurate. But I suspect they will. We'll see...
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
'A Labour spokesman denied there was a plan to carve the pledges on a cliff face.' hahaha
I don't know about you, but I hope the EdStone gets discovered in thousands of years and is used as some form of Rosetta Stone for future archaeologists.
According to Sky news it's stored because it's too delicate to move and would break easily. A stone that size would need a crane to move it so was it even real stone? Unlikely to survive a Millienium I suspect .
Plato summed it up perfectly the other day. She envisaged a bunch of squawking chimpanzees dancing around it in the year 3001.
It was made by Stone Circle, an excellent family owned stoneworks company in Hampshire. It is being stored by Andrew Paye, of PAYE Stone, the most hideously expensive monopoly supplier of church floors on God's Earth
But also the cheapest, monopolies being what they are...
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and-ish a strong Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
Absolutely. We have no idea about external events: will the Eurozone implode? Could inflation in the UK soar, triggering rapid interest rises? Will Russia invade Estonia? Will the price of oil collapse to $20 triggering a string of revolutions in South America, an end to dreams of Scottish independence and a boom in the developed (oil importing) world?
Any of these could happen. Lots of other things could happen too. We just don't know.
These external events will probably have more impact on the 2020 election than anything our politicians say or do.
Its rather sweet when people who couldn't call an election hours away talk with absolute certainty of elections five and ten years out.
We simply do not know what's going to happen.
Quite. Was there a single regular poster on here who predicted a Tory majority?
Rod Crosby & Tissue Price never wrote it off.
Mr. Smithson Junior got pretty close with, iirc, his final forecast of 314 seats for the Blues. Which reminds me, several months ago, I asked him whether he was intending to publish "Son of VIPER" the original version of which had proved very accurate at the time of the 2010 GE. I never received his reply ..... somehow or other, I fancy he had a forecast model up and running for his own consumption, which seemingly he didn't share with his Dad, or more likely Senior simply didn't want to know!
I do have my own model (SMERSH), but it's very rough around the edges, and therefore I didn't feel ready to post it on PB. I posted a number of outputs from it (such as my predicted LD seat numbers at various vote shares). I think I had 7 seats at 7% and 10 at 8%, so I was wrong, but not as wrong as many. I thought the LDs would end up around 10.2%, hence my reckoning of a mid to high teens seat number for the LDs.
I think the Wisdom Index was continually that the LibDems were going to get 14%. That never looked close. As I said at the time, it required each LibDem identified by the polls to find another on the way to the polling station.
'A Labour spokesman denied there was a plan to carve the pledges on a cliff face.' hahaha
I don't know about you, but I hope the EdStone gets discovered in thousands of years and is used as some form of Rosetta Stone for future archaeologists.
According to Sky news it's stored because it's too delicate to move and would break easily. A stone that size would need a crane to move it so was it even real stone? Unlikely to survive a Millienium I suspect .
Plato summed it up perfectly the other day. She envisaged a bunch of squawking chimpanzees dancing around it in the year 3001.
It was made by Stone Circle, an excellent family owned stoneworks company in Hampshire. It is being stored by Andrew Paye, of PAYE Stone, the most hideously expensive monopoly supplier of church floors on God's Earth
But also the cheapest, monopolies being what they are...
It's just the muppets in the Diocesan Office that requires local churches to use PAYE (for "heritage reasons"). York stone, while not cheap, is not that hard to source...
"It suggests that if the Conservatives can make the election about the economy and leadership, and a clear choice between themselves and Labour, they stand a chance of winning it. The latest UK general election forecast from Stephen Fisher assesses the chance of a Tory majority at 27%; significantly higher than the chances of Labour majority at 19%. I think the betting markets have the odds of a Labour and Conservative majority the wrong way round.
The question for punters – interested in possibly capitalising on this – is which is better value: betting on the overall election result, or in the various constituency markets?
One area I feel’s been overlooked (so far) is the prospect of the Conservatives making seat gains directly from Labour. The focus has tended to be upon the more obvious gains that are there to be made from the moribund Liberal Democrats. However, unless the Liberal Democrats almost entirely collapse in the Conservatives favour, and they suffer hardly any losses to any other party, the Conservatives will almost certainly have to win some seats from Labour in order to achieve a small stable majority.
But will they win any?
The short answer: very possibly. In my next post, I will explore this in more detail."
"What really lies behind it is the scenario where the Labour vote continues to splinter to UKIP, SNP and the Greens, or simply stays at home, and results in Labour achieving a poll-share worse than Gordon Brown in 2010 – see Part 1. If this happens, and is coupled with a rally of swing voters behind David Cameron who may pick him as PM out of fear of something worse, then a Conservative majority is perfectly possible.
A 25% shot feels about right, but we shall have to wait and see for May 2015 for the result.
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and-ish a strong Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
Absolutely. We have no idea about external events: will the Eurozone implode? Could inflation in the UK soar, triggering rapid interest rises? Will Russia invade Estonia? Will the price of oil collapse to $20 triggering a string of revolutions in South America, an end to dreams of Scottish independence and a boom in the developed (oil importing) world?
Any of these could happen. Lots of other things could happen too. We just don't know.
These external events will probably have more impact on the 2020 election than anything our politicians say or do.
The Lib Dems performed far better in seats that an incumbent was defending than in those where the MP stepped down ( a drop of 15% as opposed to 24%). The problem was their drop in support was so great that this made little difference.
I didn't predict anything like a LD wipe-out (my low-end forecast was 17 seats) but it's on that basis that I backed the Tories quite heavily in Bath. I also backed the Tories in Cheltenham off the back of Q1 of the Ashcroft constituency poll, which in the end turned out to be more accurate than Q2:
"Liberal Democrats *will* drop further where there is no incumbent re-standing. I have them dropping to an average of 60% of their 2010 vote where they are not re-standing. It’s closer to 75% where they are re-standing. Liberal Democrats really will be relying heavily on personal votes this time."
Jim Messina, a former White House deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama, says the Rolling Stones lead singer was 'one of the savviest political observers I’ve come across'
Macedonian news, unrelated to the extremism business mentioned earlier: protesters call for the PM to resign. Unlike the unwashed ranters angry at how democracy works in this country, their grounds appear more valid (alleged plans to rig votes and cover up murder): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32771233
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
I had 281 Con to 262 Lab and 32 Lib Dem. All very wide of the Mark.
Jim Messina, a former White House deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama, says the Rolling Stones lead singer was 'one of the savviest political observers I’ve come across'
Ha. What a sage.
On a more serious note, what do we think of this?
"Mr Messina also believed the Conservatives did well by aggressively pushing the party's message on social media like Facebook in marginal constituencies.
The Telegraph can disclose that a team of ten staff at Conservative Campaign Headquarters designed ads that were promoted on the newsfeeds of potential voters, identified by their postcode, age and sex.
Nearly 50 per cent of marginal voters are on the site, including increasing numbers of older voters. By polling day, 80 per cent of social media users in marginal seats had been contacted by the Tories over the site.
In order to push the Conservative message, activists who posted the most Tory adverts on social media were rewarded with prizes, including posters signed by George Osborne and books by Boris Johnson.
The Conservatives knew their strategy was bearing fruit when Lord Ashcroft, the pollster, reported a man telling a focus group he did not trust Labour because "they left that note, ‘there’s no money in the pot’. I saw it on Facebook”.
They also received adverts over YouTube, the video hosting website, tailored to their demographic profile based on log in data.
Older users received adverts on the Tories’ pension plans, while young users were shown adverts promoting Help to Buy."
I must admit, I'm instinctively sceptical about the decisive impact of Facebook and Youtube on an election result. But, then again, the sniper-level targeting of Labour marginals by the Conservatives (leading to pick-ups like Vale of Clwyd and Gower) does suggest a very finely honed operation.
Jim Messina, a former White House deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama, says the Rolling Stones lead singer was 'one of the savviest political observers I’ve come across'
Have we ever seen Rod Crosby and Mick Jagger in the same room?
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
I had 281 Con to 262 Lab and 32 Lib Dem. All very wide of the Mark.
And you're traditionally extremely good at it, and know your stuff. Inside out.
Mine was 289 Con to 259 Lab to 24 Lib Dem. But I'm sticking to my February prediction of course, where I forecast 302 Con seats, and came only 32nd in the pb.com league tables ;-)
The Lib Dems performed far better in seats that an incumbent was defending than in those where the MP stepped down ( a drop of 15% as opposed to 24%). The problem was their drop in support was so great that this made little difference.
Aye, and there's the rub for the LibDems: next time there cannot be more than 8 seats where they have an incumbent defending, and probably more like 6 at most. That extra 9% incumbency advantage has been lost in a whole swathe of formerly safe seats like Lewes and Twickenham. This makes their task even harder than the raw majorities they are facing suggest.
Mr. Charles, why would the bigwigs do that if it's more expensive, or is it just due to muppetry?
Because the bigwigs get to fulminate about "preserving our national heritage" and the long-suffering parishioners get to pay. It cost our local church more than £12,000 to clean and restore the floor, for example. Cue one grumpy treasurer (me)
The Lib Dems performed far better in seats that an incumbent was defending than in those where the MP stepped down ( a drop of 15% as opposed to 24%). The problem was their drop in support was so great that this made little difference.
I didn't predict anything like a LD wipe-out (my low-end forecast was 17 seats) but it's on that basis that I backed the Tories quite heavily in Bath. I also backed the Tories in Cheltenham off the back of Q1 of the Ashcroft constituency poll, which in the end turned out to be more accurate than Q2:
"Liberal Democrats *will* drop further where there is no incumbent re-standing. I have them dropping to an average of 60% of their 2010 vote where they are not re-standing. It’s closer to 75% where they are re-standing. Liberal Democrats really will be relying heavily on personal votes this time."
The Lib Dems performed far better in seats that an incumbent was defending than in those where the MP stepped down ( a drop of 15% as opposed to 24%). The problem was their drop in support was so great that this made little difference.
Aye, and there's the rub for the LibDems: next time there cannot be more than 8 seats where they have an incumbent defending, and probably more like 6 at most. That extra 9% incumbency advantage has been lost in a whole swathe of formerly safe seats like Lewes and Twickenham. This makes their task even harder than the raw majorities they are facing suggest.
It all depends on the LibDem national share. If they get 14%, they should make gains. If they get 6%, it's curtains.
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I hope he comes back. I want to take him up on his argument that Kippers shouldn't vote Tory in order to get a referendum because it was absolutely impossible, he maintained, for the Tories to get a majority!
OT This did make me laugh - watching The Running Man. There are bits that made me instantly think of reality TV! The opening titles say
By 2017, the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.
Television is controlled by the State and a sadistic game show called The Running Man has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and comunications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I hope he comes back. I want to take him up on his argument that Kippers shouldn't vote Tory in order to get a referendum because it was absolutely impossible, he maintained, for the Tories to get a majority!
Mr. Charles, why would the bigwigs do that if it's more expensive, or is it just due to muppetry?
Because the bigwigs get to fulminate about "preserving our national heritage" and the long-suffering parishioners get to pay. It cost our local church more than £12,000 to clean and restore the floor, for example. Cue one grumpy treasurer (me)
The more successful a parish is the more the dioceses demands as its precept. You can understand why the exalted bishops spiritual in the Lords are all lefties. So why not spend it on your own heritage?
I hope he comes back. I want to take him up on his argument that Kippers shouldn't vote Tory in order to get a referendum because it was absolutely impossible, he maintained, for the Tories to get a majority!
OT This did make me laugh - watching The Running Man. There are bits that made me instantly think of reality TV! The opening titles say
By 2017, the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.
Television is controlled by the State and a sadistic game show called The Running Man has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and comunications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground
Mr. Charles, why would the bigwigs do that if it's more expensive, or is it just due to muppetry?
Because the bigwigs get to fulminate about "preserving our national heritage" and the long-suffering parishioners get to pay. It cost our local church more than £12,000 to clean and restore the floor, for example. Cue one grumpy treasurer (me)
The more successful a parish is the more the dioceses demands as its precept. You can understand why the exalted bishops spiritual in the Lords are all lefties. So why not spend it on your own heritage?
We choose to pay what we think they deserve. Which, surprisingly enough, is less than the Diocese thinks they do
But, there again, we have a rather unusual role as a church, and rather unusual connections for a church that doesn't even have its own parish.
Couldn't Labour just decide their leadership by locking Len McLusky and Russell Brand in a room? With a bit of luck nothing would ever be heard from the said room ever again of course - we could preserve it as a national Schrodingers Cat.
Mr. England, I hope it's possible for some of those who aren't here any more to have their bans lifted.
I think in France when a new President is installed there is a mass amnesty for a raft of minor offences. Perhaps pb.com could do something similar on the State Opening of Parliament?
Jim Messina, a former White House deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama, says the Rolling Stones lead singer was 'one of the savviest political observers I’ve come across'
Have we ever seen Rod Crosby and Mick Jagger in the same room?
Ha! Full cycle. I started off this thread linking to Jim Messina's article on politico.com, in which he talks about his conversation with Mick Jagger.
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
I had 281 Con to 262 Lab and 32 Lib Dem. All very wide of the Mark.
And you're traditionally extremely good at it, and know your stuff. Inside out.
Mine was 289 Con to 259 Lab to 24 Lib Dem. But I'm sticking to my February prediction of course, where I forecast 302 Con seats, and came only 32nd in the pb.com league tables ;-)
I assumed that - broadly speaking - the pollsters knew their business; that the Tories would finish slightly ahead on votes; that first-time incumbency would boost the Tories, but that incumbency would save a lot of Lib Dems.
I think those were reasonable assumptions, but they were all wrong (first time Tory incumbents did way better than I expected).
Post election vote switch analysis - the weird thing is, Labour's Lib Dem "firewall" never went away, nor did the disproportionate effect of UKIP on Con. Those 2 Lab to SNP only effect Labour in Scotland, there was a 1.1 swing to Labour in England.
In the end it was the blue Liberals wot won it, as well as Labour piling up too many votes in safe seats
Mr. England, I hope it's possible for some of those who aren't here any more to have their bans lifted.
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I missed why Easterross was banned. I don't suppose anyone knows why? He didn't seem like the sort of chap to be overly aggressive or false.
Well I think that OGH and family went a bit bonkers over any criticism of pollsters and the polls in general. I think I was banned 3 times between December and April when I implied that the polls were wrong, and that some were wrong as a policy by certain pollsters.
OT This did make me laugh - watching The Running Man. There are bits that made me instantly think of reality TV! The opening titles say
By 2017, the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.
Television is controlled by the State and a sadistic game show called The Running Man has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and comunications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground
I imagine that people like Rebecca Roache thinks that's a far description of Britain under the Tories.
Mr. England, I hope it's possible for some of those who aren't here any more to have their bans lifted.
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I missed why Easterross was banned. I don't suppose anyone knows why? He didn't seem like the sort of chap to be overly aggressive or false.
He suggested that the polls were badly wrong and the pollsters should have known something was wrong, but chose to ignore their misgivings for commercial reasons.
OT This did make me laugh - watching The Running Man. There are bits that made me instantly think of reality TV! The opening titles say
By 2017, the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand.
Television is controlled by the State and a sadistic game show called The Running Man has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and comunications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground
I imagine that people like Rebecca Roache thinks that's a far description of Britain under the Tories.
Post election vote switch analysis - the weird thing is, Labour's Lib Dem "firewall" never went away, nor did the disproportionate effect of UKIP on Con. Those 2 Lab to SNP only effect Labour in Scotland, there was a 1.1 swing to Labour in England.
In the end it was the blue Liberals wot won it, as well as Labour piling up too many votes in safe seats
Actually it did went away. The Greens and UKIP chipped it. The Green surge and the UKIP surge cost Labour about 6% as opposed to 3% for the Tories.
He suggested that the polls were badly wrong and the pollsters should have known something was wrong, but chose to ignore their misgivings for commercial reasons.
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and-ish a strong Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
Absolutely. We have no idea about external events: will the Eurozone implode? Could inflation in the UK soar, triggering rapid interest rises? Will Russia invade Estonia? Will the price of oil collapse to $20 triggering a string of revolutions in South America, an end to dreams of Scottish independence and a boom in the developed (oil importing) world?
Any of these could happen. Lots of other things could happen too. We just don't know.
These external events will probably have more impact on the 2020 election than anything our politicians say or do.
I think the more obvious and immediate concern is whether the economic recovery can be sustained. I admit I've been surprised by the propensity of the British to start spending again and not put anything aside for a rainy day.
Mr. England, I hope it's possible for some of those who aren't here any more to have their bans lifted.
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I missed why Easterross was banned. I don't suppose anyone knows why? He didn't seem like the sort of chap to be overly aggressive or false.
He suggested that the polls were badly wrong and the pollsters should have known something was wrong, but chose to ignore their misgivings for commercial reasons.
In some lands that would be enough to make him a prophet.....
Mr. England, I hope it's possible for some of those who aren't here any more to have their bans lifted.
Far fewer people are banned than you'd think. For most it is temporary, but quite a few take umbrage, and don't come back.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
I missed why Easterross was banned. I don't suppose anyone knows why? He didn't seem like the sort of chap to be overly aggressive or false.
He suggested that the polls were badly wrong and the pollsters should have known something was wrong, but chose to ignore their misgivings for commercial reasons.
Well, points one and two were correct and point three is not an illogical conclusion, particularly given that we know that one pollster suppressed an eve-of-poll poll which turned out to be right, mainly (apparently) because it was simply out of line. The commercial imperatives not to go out on a limb on something so reputationally sensitive must be enormous.
Yeah, this wasn't meant to be a "I'm better at predicting than you are" fest, but my point is that virtually *no-one* confidently predicted a Tory majority.
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
I had 281 Con to 262 Lab and 32 Lib Dem. All very wide of the Mark.
And you're traditionally extremely good at it, and know your stuff. Inside out.
Mine was 289 Con to 259 Lab to 24 Lib Dem. But I'm sticking to my February prediction of course, where I forecast 302 Con seats, and came only 32nd in the pb.com league tables ;-)
I assumed that - broadly speaking - the pollsters knew their business; that the Tories would finish slightly ahead on votes; that first-time incumbency would boost the Tories, but that incumbency would save a lot of Lib Dems.
I think those were reasonable assumptions, but they were all wrong (first time Tory incumbents did way better than I expected).
Annoyingly, I wrote an article the weekend before suggesting that the Lib Dems might do far worse than expected and the Tories far better, and failed to come to the logical conclusion from those two points re an overall majority.
He suggested that the polls were badly wrong and the pollsters should have known something was wrong, but chose to ignore their misgivings for commercial reasons.
Every banned name listed so far have been proved to be seers in the end, ironically. HB was a great commenter as well. Very insightful.
Incidentally I have a theory as to why the Ashcroft Question 2 (which was the one everyone focused on, including Lord A) was such a disaster. Logically the responses to Q1 and Q2 should have been identical by the time we got close to the election. The fact that there were such big changes from Q1 to Q2 indicates that respondents thought (not unreasonably) that the pollster must have been asking something different in Q2, i.e. not simply 'Who will you vote for?' So, what question did they think they were being asked? My suggestion is that they thought they were being asked "Which of the candidates in your constituency would you vote for if you were to ignore national politics?". You can see how, if respondents thought that was the difference between Q1 and Q2, then Q2 could easily produce a very large jump towards popular incumbent MPs - people who intended to vote Tory because they didn't want Ed Miliband (let alone Ed Miliband in thrall to Nicola) anywhere near No 10, but who had a strong residual personal loyalty to their previous MP.
Quite possible. However - the reason we have had so many polls was that they could be done on the cheap. In doing them on the cheap the pollsters lost sight of the point of doing them accurately and the cheapness had in it the seeds of a fundamental inaccuracy. (as per the critique of Messina and Crosby) The polls gave newspapers a cheap way to create a headline, and when we realise that reporters have all the introspection of a rabbit caught in the headlights, we can see that what's important is the headline not where it came from.
Quite possible. However - the reason we have had so many polls was that they could be done on the cheap. In doing them on the cheap the pollsters lost sight of the point of doing them accurately and the cheapness had in it the seeds of a fundamental inaccuracy. (as per the critique of Messina and Crosby) The polls gave newspapers a cheap way to create a headline, and when we realise that reporters have all the introspection of a rabbit caught in the headlights, we can see that what's important is the headline not where it came from.
Miss Plato, indeed, and I did mention repeatedly (for years) that over-polling creates and shapes news rather than reflecting public sentiment, become and influence upon the public rather than a mirror of their views.
Comments
I think I forecast 16 LibDem seats. Which was - I admit - too high. But it was a lot lower than most PB-ers...
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/660224/#Comment_660224
Interesting that almost everyone bought the LibDem incumbency story, I guess because of the Ashcroft polls.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11610539/Ukips-warring-factions-could-bring-down-the-Eurosceptics.html
The comments below the line show how emotionally charged this referendum is going to be. A timely reminder that at the moment the Tory party's biggest enemy is the Eurosceptics within.
Also in your example it isn't quite that straight forward as if you think of NI as a tax paid, people even on £10k are paying NI....that is why I was talking about overhauling both and minimum wage.
The next Labour leader will never be Prime Minister
Things can change very quickly. Writing off Labour would be foolish.
It is not that the Tories are much good it is also that Labour are total rubbish. Andy B do me a favour. He makes Milliband look gigantic. Quite obviously with the Tories heading for trouble on the EU the thing to do is to reverse the established position?
Len McClusky who at least seems to have semblance of consistency, if not much in the way of common sense, should send for Salmond, offer him support for the leadership if they can persuade him to defect from the NATS. If that fails then any grown up politician will do.
But the point stands that you can't just cut tax and cut tax credits to "simplify" the situation - because it would result in huge changes to what people actually get.
Using my example above we simply have to decide how much welfare to pay. Either we carry on paying the above person £10k of welfare or we don't.
Logically the responses to Q1 and Q2 should have been identical by the time we got close to the election. The fact that there were such big changes from Q1 to Q2 indicates that respondents thought (not unreasonably) that the pollster must have been asking something different in Q2, i.e. not simply 'Who will you vote for?'
So, what question did they think they were being asked? My suggestion is that they thought they were being asked "Which of the candidates in your constituency would you vote for if you were to ignore national politics?". You can see how, if respondents thought that was the difference between Q1 and Q2, then Q2 could easily produce a very large jump towards popular incumbent MPs - people who intended to vote Tory because they didn't want Ed Miliband (let alone Ed Miliband in thrall to Nicola) anywhere near No 10, but who had a strong residual personal loyalty to their previous MP.
I can understand the 30k price tag now. Scandalous waste of money based on Labour measurement terms that would have paid for 1.2645 nurses for a year.
Perhaps Frank Field knew all along ... they let Mrs Rochester out of the attic.
And, ultimately, the biggest determinant is going to be the LibDem national share. If it's 14% at the next election, then I'd expect them to make reasonable gains. If it's 6%, they'll make losses.
I might have been tongue in cheek perhaps but then again ....
Without publicity, money or footsoldiers, it's going to be hard.
Without publicity, money or footsoldiers, it's going to be hard.
If they don't make council gains, then I'd reckon your forecast will be accurate. But I suspect they will. We'll see...
Yes, a few predicted a Lib Dem pasting, and a strong-ish Tory minority. And, yes, a few others didn't absolutely rule out a Tory majority.
But virtually no-one got it right. Not even Rod, whose final forecast was for the Tories at 298 seats, even lower than JackW's. He would have gone down in the pb pantheon of masters of the art for all time had he stuck to his L&N forecast of a Tory majority, that he'd regularly posted for months before, but - entirely understandably - the evidence for that looked rocky towards the end.
My point is: *none* of us can know what the 2020GE will look like. There's been a huge amount of change in the last five years - from the rise of UKIP, to the triumph of the SNP, to hugely changed geopolitical circumstances within the Middle East and Russia, to the destruction of the Lib Dems - and who knows what the next five years holds?
It could be a long, and interesting, road. But Nostradamus we are not.
Scrapheap_as_was • Posts: 4,377
May 6
Tory maj nailed on.
I also kep this one on a pc post it note which I've just seen - April 15th
NickPalmer • Posts: 4,554
LAB - 35% (-) CON - 34% (+1) UKIP - 13% (-) LDEM - 8% (-) GRN - 5% (-)
Manifesto surge, eh?
Any of these could happen. Lots of other things could happen too. We just don't know.
These external events will probably have more impact on the 2020 election than anything our politicians say or do.
They were just never there to be found.
https://royaleleseaux.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/could-the-conservatives-win-an-overall-majority-in-the-2015-general-election-next-year-part-1/
"It suggests that if the Conservatives can make the election about the economy and leadership, and a clear choice between themselves and Labour, they stand a chance of winning it. The latest UK general election forecast from Stephen Fisher assesses the chance of a Tory majority at 27%; significantly higher than the chances of Labour majority at 19%. I think the betting markets have the odds of a Labour and Conservative majority the wrong way round.
The question for punters – interested in possibly capitalising on this – is which is better value: betting on the overall election result, or in the various constituency markets?
One area I feel’s been overlooked (so far) is the prospect of the Conservatives making seat gains directly from Labour. The focus has tended to be upon the more obvious gains that are there to be made from the moribund Liberal Democrats. However, unless the Liberal Democrats almost entirely collapse in the Conservatives favour, and they suffer hardly any losses to any other party, the Conservatives will almost certainly have to win some seats from Labour in order to achieve a small stable majority.
But will they win any?
The short answer: very possibly. In my next post, I will explore this in more detail."
https://royaleleseaux.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/could-the-conservatives-win-an-overall-majority-in-the-2015-general-election-next-year-part-2/
"What really lies behind it is the scenario where the Labour vote continues to splinter to UKIP, SNP and the Greens, or simply stays at home, and results in Labour achieving a poll-share worse than Gordon Brown in 2010 – see Part 1. If this happens, and is coupled with a rally of swing voters behind David Cameron who may pick him as PM out of fear of something worse, then a Conservative majority is perfectly possible.
A 25% shot feels about right, but we shall have to wait and see for May 2015 for the result.
The election is 6 months on Friday."
"Liberal Democrats *will* drop further where there is no incumbent re-standing. I have them dropping to an average of 60% of their 2010 vote where they are not re-standing. It’s closer to 75% where they are re-standing. Liberal Democrats really will be relying heavily on personal votes this time."
https://royaleleseaux.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/libdemgeddon-you-dont-want-to-miss-a-thing/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32771233
On a more serious note, what do we think of this?
"Mr Messina also believed the Conservatives did well by aggressively pushing the party's message on social media like Facebook in marginal constituencies.
The Telegraph can disclose that a team of ten staff at Conservative Campaign Headquarters designed ads that were promoted on the newsfeeds of potential voters, identified by their postcode, age and sex.
Nearly 50 per cent of marginal voters are on the site, including increasing numbers of older voters. By polling day, 80 per cent of social media users in marginal seats had been contacted by the Tories over the site.
In order to push the Conservative message, activists who posted the most Tory adverts on social media were rewarded with prizes, including posters signed by George Osborne and books by Boris Johnson.
The Conservatives knew their strategy was bearing fruit when Lord Ashcroft, the pollster, reported a man telling a focus group he did not trust Labour because "they left that note, ‘there’s no money in the pot’. I saw it on Facebook”.
They also received adverts over YouTube, the video hosting website, tailored to their demographic profile based on log in data.
Older users received adverts on the Tories’ pension plans, while young users were shown adverts promoting Help to Buy."
I must admit, I'm instinctively sceptical about the decisive impact of Facebook and Youtube on an election result. But, then again, the sniper-level targeting of Labour marginals by the Conservatives (leading to pick-ups like Vale of Clwyd and Gower) does suggest a very finely honed operation.
Mine was 289 Con to 259 Lab to 24 Lib Dem. But I'm sticking to my February prediction of course, where I forecast 302 Con seats, and came only 32nd in the pb.com league tables ;-)
Against that I was wildly inaccurate about the number of UKIP seats.
Like Socrates. I think he was banned for 24 hours for some reason (I don't "do" banning, so I don't know), and he's certainly not banned now.
I miss his voice.
But then I'm a poor writer, not a chap with a bejewelled mitre to polish
So why not spend it on your own heritage?
But, there again, we have a rather unusual role as a church, and rather unusual connections for a church that doesn't even have its own parish.
Ha! Full cycle. I started off this thread linking to Jim Messina's article on politico.com, in which he talks about his conversation with Mick Jagger.
I think those were reasonable assumptions, but they were all wrong (first time Tory incumbents did way better than I expected).
Post election vote switch analysis - the weird thing is, Labour's Lib Dem "firewall" never went away, nor did the disproportionate effect of UKIP on Con. Those 2 Lab to SNP only effect Labour in Scotland, there was a 1.1 swing to Labour in England.
In the end it was the blue Liberals wot won it, as well as Labour piling up too many votes in safe seats
The Greens and UKIP chipped it.
The Green surge and the UKIP surge cost Labour about 6% as opposed to 3% for the Tories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Conservatives
HB was a great commenter as well. Very insightful.
However - the reason we have had so many polls was that they could be done on the cheap. In doing them on the cheap the pollsters lost sight of the point of doing them accurately and the cheapness had in it the seeds of a fundamental inaccuracy. (as per the critique of Messina and Crosby)
The polls gave newspapers a cheap way to create a headline, and when we realise that reporters have all the introspection of a rabbit caught in the headlights, we can see that what's important is the headline not where it came from.
Anyway, I'm off for the night.