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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Nick Sparrow, the pollster who did most to change post-1992, on poll averaging, herding and the pressure to conform
Following the General Election, the pollsters have been accused of having herd instincts. How else do so many polling companies, acting independently, get to the same – wrong – answer?
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I always struggle with "anxiety" and "compartmentalisation" [a horrible word that I first encountered when someone explained how Bill Clinton was able to behave as he did while in the White House]
Hmm .. are there now fewer qualified pollsters or less qualified pollsters?
We pedants should stay united.
I had my ears boxed for such slovenliness, and was so conscious of doing it again - I started missing the *k* from the end of words instead. That lasted a quite a while much to the annoyance of my mum who couldn't understand WTF was going on.
And the Athens News Agency says ballot boxes are being filled at a similar rate to January’s general election, when 65% of the population voted."
http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/jul/05/greeces-eurozone-future-in-the-balance-as-referendum-gets-under-way--eu-euro-bailout-live
Palmerston is one of my favourites!
So there is a methodological problem with our pollsters systems that underestimate the Conservatives. Rather a stunning act of stupidity by the pollsters. They choose to look like each other rather than to be accurate. We should establish a new PB rule that every polling figure for the Conservatives should be treated as inaccurate by a standard %. How about starting with 2%? Now should all the 2% comne from Labour, or 1.5% from Labour and 0.5% from the LDs?
PS. Time we encouraged the use of one decimal point by the polling companies?
It would be ironic if it was Ed Miliband who neutered UNITE by this change.
I guess the reason no one took it seriously was initially it showed bad results for the Tories and many Tory diehards tried endlessly to say I was fiddling the numbers for my own advantage (why would I?)
Anyone who was an ICM champion could have made big out of it by keeping the faith w them and taking note of my findings
I'm perplexed. I really am.
"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."
2010 slightly muddied the waters because the popular left was the Lib Dems rather than Labour, so a few people seemed to think it didn't hold.
Labour holding up disguised the usual left wing under-performance.
I did consider the Schwelsig-Holstein Question as a prime example of diplomatic obscurantism too. While on my recent holiday I read the excellent "Englanders and Huns" which charts the course of Anglo-German hostility back to the SWQ. Our reaction to the SHQ may well have laid the foundations for the Great War fifty years later, not least because we failed diplomatically. The book starts with us regarding the Germans as comical poor relations and winds up with us sizing each other up for two rounds of total warfare. Not the whole story of the origins of WW1, but a significant part of it. Highly recommended!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/review/0857205285/R1Z1MT9MIY6SBG/ref=mw_dp_cr?cursor=1&sort=rd
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wages-of-triangulation/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/review/0857205285/R1Z1MT9MIY6SBG/ref=mw_dp_cr?cursor=1&sort=rd
FPT: Mr. Tyndall, hmm, I was unaware of Constans' going north of the then border, though I did know he was stationed in Blighty. I stand corrected (not going to quibble over an invasion versus punitive expedition).
FPT 2: Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Max, cheers.
Who's the cat who won't cop out, when there's crashing all about?
Pastor! Morris Dancer!
Edited extra bit: ahem, on-topic: I wonder if a new problem for polling 2015 was the deluge, the saturation of polling which meant people stopped thinking and just ticked the box they'd ticked yesterday.
Another interesting nugget in it was the German reaction to the British General election of 1880 and Mid-Lothian Campaign before it. Gladstones criticism of British foreign policy (particularly against Russian expansionism in the Balkans) and hands off policy to Europe turned a rift with the Germans into a chasm, and lined up the beligerents for the First War. We wound up on the side of the French and Russians, our longstanding enemies, against the Germans, our longstanding allies.
Passer by - " Errr....There's a big 'feck off' hole in his chest"
Cheers. Perhaps flukey, but if luck determines things I'll not complain if it's good.
Certainly the third-place man did not deserve to be on the podium.
Edited extra bit: also, Hamilton passed Bottas early on, on-track, and then lost a place to him later.
Reuters
The head of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, told German radio that Greece would have to introduce another currency if the “no” vote wins in Sunday's referendum on an aid-for-reforms deal.
"Is Greece still in the euro after this referendum? That is certainly the case, but if they say ‘no’ they will have to introduce another currency after the referendum because the euro is not available as a means of payment," Schulz told Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio in an interview broadcast on Sunday and taped on Thursday.
"The moment someone introduces a new currency, they exit the euro zone. Those are the elements that give me some hope that the people will not vote ‘no’ today.”
His comments are some of the clearest made by a top EU official.
Also, Hamilton's pass at Bottas was right at the start, when neither was particularly ahead.
I just didn't find the race very gripping (as did the people who were on slicks in the damp)
If rain is needed to make F1 interesting nowadays, perhaps we'd better return to the idea of random sprinklers on the track ... ;-)
It was said on Sky F1 coverage there is no German Grand Prix this year is there a specific reason for that?
What annoys me is that I even wrote a very detailed analysis of this for my Labour voting friends, pointing out that if these results were any indicator of a General Election result, the Conservatives might lose a handful of seats, but Labour would not be gaining them. I even reminded them that a brilliant performance in London was completely irrelevant because they already held lots of seats there, and that they needed to win outside London, something that Labour simply seemed incapable of doing. I noted that Labour was piling up council votes in seats it held, and failing to take votes directly from the Tories elsewhere, instead winning metropolitan authorities on a split vote between the Tories and UKIP, which they could not rely on being replicated when it really mattered. As it turned out, it was bang on the money. Labour gained seats in London and had a heavy net loss, including a net loss to the Conservatives, everywhere else.
I was universally scoffed at - and because the general trend of the polls (yes, my silly mistake) was to suggest that the European election was a straightforward aberration I concluded that I had been wrong and they were all right. Had I backed my earlier judgement with cash, I'd have made a fortune.
So to get to the point - maybe it's time we lost our fetish with opinion polls and instead started looking at trends from actual results. I remember Anthony King in 2004 saying the opinion polls would be more accurate than the local election results, because they asked 'how would you vote in a general election. But actually, the polls were giving us completely the wrong message while properly interpreted, actual results were stating that Labour was only winning votes from the Conservatives where it didn't matter and was forfeiting them elsewhere.
Mr. Jessop, you are
The passes happened before the intermediate tyres went on any of the top four.
What is the alternative? Vote Yes? When even the IMF believe the debt is unsustainable this makes absolutely no sense. The EU will bend over backwards to keep Greece in the EU.
This sort of statement by EU officials doesn't bode well for the British referendum either, although the consequences for a British exit are very different to those in Greece.
Whilst Monaco pays no fee.
According to my info the share of voters under 30 has jumped by 4% and the share of people over 65 has fallen by 4% compared with the January election.
On a different point, I've been wondering about shy Tories. The picture in mind of such a voter is a lower middle/working class voter who is inclined to agree with the stuff Labour say about inequality, but when it comes to it they have to put their family first and that means voting for who they trust with the economy. But I wonder if there is a good chunk of quite well off people who generally wouldn't vote Tory because they are trendy lefties and it doesn't matter who is in power as it wouldn't affect them. But this time, when faced with Ed propped up by the SNP they thought "no ******* way".
https://twitter.com/TheEIU_Europe/status/617704139951341569
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/united-kingdom-post-race-analysis.html
Without wanting to derail this thread, those who control the sport seem much more at home dealing with governments who will subsidise the races and guarantee income for the promoter at the expense of the fans. The sponsors also want to expose themselves to more developing markets. Silverstone is lucky in benefiting from a British champion and lots of British based teams. It is true that Monoco is the only track that pays no fee, on the basis that it's the only place that F1 needs to go on a mutually convenient basis.
Shows what I know
Mr. Sandpit, indeed. Thankfully the UK is once again bucking the trend of European decline
The locals of 1980-91, 1998-2003, and 2011-2014 showed the government wasn't in much trouble.
My guess is that it was the working classes and lower middle classes who switched from Labour. Looking at all the election data, the swings in the seats the Conservatives won - Telford, Southampton Itchen, Plymouth Moor View - plus the hefty swings in Stroud/Gloucester, Swindon, Warwickshire etc - would support that. The question has to be exactly how the polls all missed this and whether they were (A) incompetent or (B) being lied to. Your view seems to me to be a reasonable explanation for the latter.
I don't mind it when there's a prolonged period of real rain that allows drivers to show their skills in the wet, but we did not get to see that much today.
In the dry, aside from the first lap and pit stops, you mostly had the leaders just following each other. Williams could not overtake Williams; Mercedes could not overtake Williams, and even Mercedes could not overtake Williams. DRS was supposed to make overtaking easier, and although it often works, it seems to have much less effect when you have a train of cars all within a second of each other.
Although I'm glad the winner won, and he deserved it, it was hardly a classic race IMHO. Or even a memorable one in terms of racing.
Silverstone's got high speed corners for which aerodynamics matter, making passing tricky due to dirty air. But if you think that's bad, wait until Hungary (next). And be sure to check the odds for No Safety Car (it's the circuit least likely to see one).
Anyway, it's a matter of opinion. I liked the race. And not just because this weekend is the most profitable since Monza 2009.
Solved in 1920 by plebiscite?
Northern part of Schleswig voted for Denmark, middle part voted for Germany. Southern part was assumed to be German enough to not bother being given a vote.
Quick - get me a sexed-up dossier....
Edited extra bit: Twitter seems to think you're correct. I stand corrected (again).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11718775/Greece-euro-referendum-day-results-live.html
Remember those are not Exit Polls.
The young did come out and vote this time.
'Social justice and strong business sector go together, says Jeremy Corbyn'
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/jeremy-corbyn-labour-social-justice-9588566#ICID=sharebar_twitter
http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html?lang=en#{"cls":"main","params":{}}
Yes: 1) Greece goes through all this again five years from now when it becomes apparent that the terms make SFA difference to the debts (2) Greece is gradually, gingerly nursed back to health via emergency loans, including some writedowns of its debt on the quiet. However, it takes 20 years of abject hardship for Greece during which they consistently vote in hardline parties which make alarming remarks about Turkey every five minutes to shore up their vote and we get used to the idea of Greek waiters in every European resort.
No: (1) Greece exits the Euro and collapses in flames (2) The European political elites panic, offer some hurried concessions and keep Greece in the euro at the cost of in the next three years also having to bail out Spain, Italy and possibly France.
I have to say none of those options looks exactly attractive. Are there any others?