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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why categorising people by which papers they read might not be as relevant any more
YouGov makes a big deal in its weightings on which newspaper those on its polling panel say they read. This was introduced by the firm when it started polling in 2001 and has remained a key part since even though there has been a collapse in the number of printed copies of papers being sold each day.
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The Independent wot won it.
Seems a very valid point. I wonder if it'll be included in the Inquiry of Doom.
news to me.
I look at a wide range online so political preference would be quite well hidden if they were looking at site visits for example.
Although not available everywhere the Metro and the Evening Standard are free so two newspapers a day, one in morning and one in the evening may be sufficient for many. This may also result in some local reductions in sales of main stream red top / broadsheets.
For the benefit of the discussion, could you provide a link to it please.
Thank You.
This divergence is going to increase as we get more tech like watches, spectacles, subcutaneous microchips (as practically extolled by an idiot on the BBC some months ago), VR [coming next year, I think] and so on.
In comparison a smart phone goes in your pocket and then can be used while multitasking, eg while on the coach watching TV (or more rudely when having dinner). Headsets are just too disruptive to be so readily adopted. In the time that Oculus Rift has been getting developed, smartwatches have been developed and launched. They're more likely to fail due to people not needing watches than due to being too disruptive.
Re technology, I feel certain at some point we will just give babies a chip which will assign a mobile number and email address. And can access the Internet or something. Not quite 'devil on my back' , if plot summaries I've seen are accurate, but still.
Mr. kle4, yes. They helped reduce nausea by adding a nose [which we all see but filter out of our own vision] but it's still a problem.
I think smartwatches might have some potential but they're ugly, too expensive, have rubbish battery life and the utility seems daft (it appears to have total overlap with a mobile phone, which everyone who wants a smartwatch, just about, already has).
Mr. L, the desire for stuff like fridges and even kettles to have online connections utterly baffles me.
4k HD is the future (I hope after recently buying a 4k TV)
The basic point that newspaper readership is of historic use as a weight for surveys is valid. I wonder how many newspapers are delivered every morning now compared to 30 years ago.
Identifying the brand loyalty of a reader of online news is hard, as many online users will dip into sources that have contradictory viewpoints. I have even heard of Labour supporters on here sullying themselves with visits to the Mail website, and Tory supporters have allegedly visited Mirror.co.uk.
However when asked which is the preferred source you would expect the respondent to pick one that coincides with the core political belief that they hold. May be they should just ask about the news source / brand not the newspaper.
It'll be interesting to see if we ever get holographic TV. I suspect the technology will reach that level, but it'd be a significant shift from the old flat screens.
Mr. Animal, quite right. They claim 'all the best things in Actual Life are free', but unlocking the best cars cost a bloody fortune.
I think the Sun retains its importance despite the paywall because it is read by people who are in jobs where there is little in the way of computer access. Smartphones are changing this a bit, and social media, but it is much easier to read a physical copy on a building site tea break.
VR may have a niche market but it is no closer to being the Next Big Thing than it was 30 years ago.
It still isn't, although we're getting nearer. Immersiveness is really difficult.
Having said that, it was the first time I ever got anywhere near immersed in a virtual reality environment. The only problem was that it was on a system running on a very expensive SGI system.
Computers with the power of those systems - costing many hundreds of thousands of pounds - are probably on our desktops, if not in our hands. Especially when you consider that graphical 'power' (GPU) has increased much faster than raw computing (CPU) power.
I think it has much more potential than the Kinect and similar nonsense.
BT announced yesterday they were launching a 4k sports channel in August.
The future is 4k
Over time, if that's the case, it'll just become more widely adopted, the same way we moved to 720p then 1080p.
I think other changes (3D) are less likely to come about. Holographic TV would be interesting but would mark a fundamental shift.
This old ad sums it up
http://youtu.be/K_7UgleMhmg
Fortunately this one very much has an upside for us.
The funniest one was the one where the company's board got rid of its founder, only for that founder to join another company who bought out the original company in less than a year. The staff continued on regardless.
Or the one where on Monday and Tuesday I worked for company A, on Wednesday and Thursday I worked for bank B whilst the company was split up, and on Friday I worked for company C.
I never quite understood why it was organised that way, except for the fact that lots of money was involved.
The main problem is how to get 4k media distributed, its ridiculous that BBC One isn't even broadcast in full in HD still (though every other major channel on Sky is). 4k mainstream channels rather than On Demand won't be available anytime soon.
Edited extra bit: Mr. Rentool, politicians trying to bind future governments (as per the 0.7% aid law nonsense) are ridiculous.
There is a massive difference between attempting to reduce the debt from £1.56 trillion - to suggesting it would become zero. Reducing the debt during good times is simply sound economic management, providing a buffer to run a deficit during recessions; eliminating it altogether is just implausible and not being proposed.
Meanwhile.....titter.....
The SNP yesterday reacted with hostility and horror yesterday to proposals for an impartial commission to examine the economic consequences of their plan to cut Scotland’s financial ties with the UK.
Labour tabled an amendment to the Scotland Bill, which proposes transferring a swathe of new powers to Holyrood, to initiate an independent inquiry into full fiscal autonomy that would report back to MPs by the end of March next year.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/SNP/11663552/SNP-hostile-to-full-Scottish-tax-powers-inquiry.html
Of course no Parliament can bind its successors - but the logic of setting sound budget rules is that any successor would have to actively revoke that rule. Of course a future (eg Labour) Chancellor could remove it, but then they'll get stick for doing so at the time and more importantly when things go wrong a future opposition will be able to clearly say "you did this irresponsibly and you're responsible for this mess".
On topic, it's quite hard to see a pattern of what sort of papers get big online readerships - I wouldn't have guessed the Telegraph. The massive Mirror lead over the Sun online is presumably the paywall effect. Habits online are different, as Fox and I were agreeing a few threads back - I don't think people sample unfamiliar material as readily online, unless the title sounds unusually bizarre/sexy/whatever. Whether people are getting exposure to more or less political material that doesn't agree with their prejudices isn't at all clear.
Difference between, say, VR and the Kinect is that I think people want VR, whereas Kinect was driven by Microsoft.
I think a key thing to remember is that when most people buy a print newspaper, they tend to read 75-100% of the content. When someone looks at a paper online they maybe look at 1-10 articles. If you have paid for the content you are going to read more to make sure you get your money's worth.
Really the figures above are not much use unless you know what coverage people are lookign at. If someone just looks at stories about sport or celebrities then the paper is not actually influencing anyone politically.
It's both amazingly cool, and totally useless. Being able to look around and stand up, and things shifting is incredible.
But the resolution is still far too low. Around the centre of your eyes the pixels are highly visible.
Also, plugging yourself into the OR is a bit antisocial. ("Hey honey, not only am I not going to talk to you, but I'm not even going to be able to look at you!")
I am stuck between Yvette and Andy- I've always felt that Andy B has a warmth and honesty that connects, and Yvette is exceedingly bright. I think I'm trending Andy B by a whisker.
Liz Kendell- well- she just comes across as a kids TV presenter- I half expect her to reveal some glove puppets, and Mary Creagh, bless really. Reminds me of my Auntie Mabel.
I have backed Yvette- a couple of hundred and think'll she'll win though.
Problem with the Kinect is that it's far more of a faff using voice/the body than just a controller (although it did lead to a nice comedy moment when a Microsoft conference at E3 led to every Xbox being used to view it switching off when they said 'Xbox off').
It also requires far more room.
Mr. 1000, low-res may not be a problem. Not my games, but Minecraft and Seven Days To Die [think that's the title] both appear to be immensely popular.
Do you think that those eligible to vote in the Labour Leader election will be greatly influenced by such polls, if one of the candidates were significantly in front?
If I had to predict the future of VR porn, I would guess that it would involve scanning individuals into some system that would create a .shag file. You would then be charged to download that file, so you can have VR sex with the originator.
Celebs would unwisely send their file to their boyfriends and girlfriends, and these would then get hacked and distributed around the net. So that instead of Paris Hilton's home sex tape going public, her .shagfile would. Everybody in the world who wanted to shag Paris Hilton would download her .shag file into their gadget and have virtual sex with her for free. In the same way as now, these folk would bleat about how exploited they felt. Conceivably this would simply become something celebs would routinely just sell, in the same way that in the 90s female celebs suddenly took en masse to stripping off in lads' mags for money.
Individuals would save their own file at regular - say, annual - intervals so that when you and the wife are both 50 you could load up the wife's file from when she was 20 (so could the wife but this will always be a guy thing).
The possibilities are endless. Narcissists could shag themselves, for example. You could create home-made porn in which your load in your wife's file and watch her shag Alexander the Great, or Scipio, or Errol Flynn, or Elizabeth Hurley when she was 25.
The watchword is depravity. Modern porn is nastier than 70s porn and future porn will proceed in the same way.
I submit that the reason VR has not yet taken off is that it is not yet porn ready. My services are available at reasonable consulting rates.
My leaning towards Andy B is based only on who I think over a five year period will have the best chances against the Tories. There will be opportunities over the next years to win back some trust- Andy I feel is best placed to do that. If Chuka had continued, I would be 100% behind him.
Liz Kendell is obviously clever and trying to woo the press (and so could get some good polling in this period), but she could well lead the Labour party into oblivion. The Labour party, like any political party needs a soul. Look what happened to the LD's when it lost its soul.
Glad he ended up in jail. Pity he served only 6 weeks
Conservatives (73)
14 will already be at least 50 by the end of the year: 9 50-54, 3 55-59, 2 60-65
Labour (50)
15 will be at least 50 by the of the year: 4 50-54, 6 55-59, 4 60-64, 1 65+
SNP (49)
19 will be at least 50 by the of the year: 9 50-54, 5 55-59, 2 60-64, 3 65+
In Holyrood there's currently a wave of SNP Alte Kampfers preparing to retire.
I fear he'll try and get a role in the IN campaign.
He's got all the arrogance of Varro and Paullus at Cannae.
Many of these - perhaps half or two thirds - will be people visiting a single page and bouncing out again 15 seconds later.
And when In used to monitor these things the numbers were that 50-70% might be international. Here that might especially be for the Mail, which gets a huge amount of celebrity-in-bra-and-knickers traffic and the Guardian, which is trying to buy popularity in North America recently.
During that period, double (or quadruple, in this instance) consular armies alternated command on a daily basis. Paullus chose not to attack Hannibal. Varro chose to do so.
Honestly. I know you're ill-educated when it comes to classical history, but there are some things that cannot be allowed to pass.
Edited extra bit: added a qualifier to the final sentence.
Hopefully a 'helpful' question from Ken Clark to add to the fun.
http://stephentall.org/2015/06/10/cliffs-and-ledges-the-lib-dem-polling-plunge-2010-15-explained/
Oodles of CCCP footage.
So: they lost their right wing voters to the Conservatives, their left wing to Labour, and their NOTA to UKIP and the Greens.
Should make pasty tax look like a masterstroke.
Will Hutton did an interesting piece on Sunday about where we would be now if Charles Kennedy had stayed as leader. There might even be a Lib-Lab coalition rather than a Tory majority government. They certainly would not have gone in with the Tories in 2010 and might now still have 30 or 40 MPs. Kennedy and a couple of others foresaw the disaster that awaited Clegg (who will go down in history as the only Liberal in 70 years or whatever to lead his party into the cabinet but also as the man who in the process destroyed the party for at least a generation).
Coalition killed that. What had been the LD's strength became a fatal weakness - they suddenly became "not Labour" to swing Labour and "not Tories" to swing Tories. If the prospect of a hung Parliament is expected and the LD's have shown themselves willing to hook up with everyone then it makes more sense for voters to make a forced choice between Labour and the Tories.
Whereas previously a vote for LD was a vote against the party you disliked, now a vote for LD was a vote for allowing someone else to decide who formed the government. It became little more than a spoilt ballot. UKIP then hoovered up the remaining protest voters who weren't willing to chose either of the two main parties.
Plus am an, um, true blue Cons.
On TVs - may I be the first to ask: what is a 4k TV?
Now any putative successors need to either make the next election's commitments with this restriction in mind - or formally propose to remove this restriction and be seen as being irresponsible.
http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/article/advice/what-is-4k-tv
Which lost it for them.
HENDERSON Ken (Conservative Party Candidate) 662
SHAW Jamie (Labour Party) 633
HENDERSON Lin (Conservative Party Candidate) 564
HIGGS Vi (Labour Party) 561
LLOYD Rob (Labour Party) 532
GOUGH Malcolm (Conservative Party Candidate) 492
THOMAS John William Roland (Independent Community and Health Concern) 404
BREWER Cliff (Independent Community and Health Concern) 378
SHEPPARD Dixon Raymond (Independent Community and Health Concern) 326
CLAPTON Martin Royston (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 213
JONES Ian Wynne (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 209
NEWMAN Trevor William (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 196
DAVIS John Edward (The Green Party) 66