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This week’s polling news is going to be dominated by the publication tomorrow of the inquiry into what went wrong the GE2015 polls when all the firms undershot the Tory share by big margins. Unfortunately I’m at a memorial service tomorrow and won’t be able to attend the big event.
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Isn't this simply another round about way of stating that shy Tories really do exist?
And then, having not told opinion pollsters how they feel, what do the bustards do?
Go out and vote, in their droves.
While the mouthy 'share everything' younger folks may think tweeting about it is as important as actually casting a ballot.....so don't......
So its potentially a 'double whammy' - those least likely to talk about it are most likely to vote - while the most talkative are less likely to turnout on the day.....
As technology improves, it's becoming very easy to ignore unsolicited phone calls, especially from the older generation. My parents (mid 60s) have a caller ID on their home and mobile phones, take the view that if it is important then whoever is calling will leave a message.
Meanwhile the younger generation are engaged in surveys, vote on TV shows and like to tell the world what they're doing and how they're thinking - but for all their talk the actual turnout in the actual election from these groups is poor.
It's a reasonable assumption from past analysis that the former group are more likely to vote Conservative, and the latter group more likely to vote Labour.
For both groups the use of technology in filtering their preferences has changed a lot since 2010. For an example of the speed of technological change, think that at the time of the 2010 election no-one had an iPad - they first went on sale a month later. Now my pensioner father has an iPad and and iPhone, both hand-me-downs, and loves them!
Did the 2010 election analysis not show that there was something of a shy Labour factor, especially in Scotland where Brown was seen in a very different light to middle England?
In the meantime the pollsters contacted more of the easy to contact groups, who are disproportionately young, Labour-voting and less likely to vote.
This effect will be very hard for them to counter without increasing costs or further fudging.
No, they underestimated the Government.
If, however, these under represented segments move in a different direction or, even worse, if the proportion of, say, retired women who are willing to speak to a pollster are atypical of that group as a whole, it becomes virtually impossible to have an accurate poll.
What I found interesting in 2015 is even the large scale exit poll, which had been incredibly accurate in 2010 and 2005, was out in terms of seats by a very important margin, the entire Tory majority. This suggested to me that this aversion to telling people their business was increasing in its materiality.
I am struggling to see how the polling industry keeps its relevance at the moment. In the year of the Euro referendum that is unfortunate.
The rest of us don't want to see that either, but for those who did witness it first hand that feeling will be much stronger - as will the connection between the policies Corbyn proposes and the aforementioned '70s outcomes.
"Mr Cameron said it was time to be "more assertive about our liberal values, more clear about the expectations we place on those who come to live here and build our country together and more creative and generous in the work we do to break down barriers"."
"And in a move to confront men who exert "damaging control over their wives, sisters and daughters", the prime minister will announce a review of the role of Britain's religious councils, including Sharia courts."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35338413
Devil's in the detail, of course.
For LOLs try asking such regressives about their views on the treatment of women in fundamentalist Mormonism or Judaism.
Absolutely certain to vote: 75 : 43
Voting intention:
Con: 53 : 24
Lab: 16 : 53
UKIP: 17 : 2
Curiously, despite the big difference in voting intention there isn't much difference in views of Conservative unity (5 points), but a huge gap on Labour (35 points):
Net United
Con : -13 : -8
Lab: -49 : -84
When it comes to leaders, again despite the VI gap, the difference in view on Cameron (15 points) is much closer than the view on Corbyn (77 points)
net 'good':
Cameron: +20 : +5
Corbyn: -68 : +9
Similarly 'oldies' support for the Junior doctors strike is the lowest (net opposed) of any demographic:
Net support strike: -8 : +41
So yes, the 65+ have 'been there & done that' - left wing Labour Leaders and strikes - and they'll vote not to go back.....
There is also the small, but growing group, that realises the privacy issues of being online - minimal or no facebook, no response to unsolicited email. This group may grow further among the young... my eldest daughter is horrified by the concept of giving anything that she considers "Personal Information" online. This is what they teach in ICT portion of the curriculum in primary schools.
Bring out your dead, Mr. Corbyn, bring out your dead.....
What I also remember is the violence of the miners' strike in the early 80s and the broad determination that that kind of mob rule would be consigned to history. I find it hard to believe that even most unions would really want to go back to the days of secondary picketing etc.
Their tails are being tweaked by the demand for increased participation in the balloting for strike action. In the case of more militant public sector groups, like the junior doctors and tube workers, this is not going to be a problem at all but in many areas this would make strike action even less likely and unions less relevant. But strikes were commonplace in my youth. Now they are almost entirely a public sector phenomenon. I am not sure the government really needs to do this but if they do it should be accompanied with a large scale relaxation of the rules on balloting encouraging participation by allowing online voting for example. The government should be meeting with the Unions and seeking to remove the problems that the current system causes.
Back in '91 I had a good friend on my uni course in London. He was a lovely British-born young man, with parents from Bangladesh. He and his brothers were all being sent to university - it was demanded of them by their parents (He ended up changing unis to SOAS and we lost touch).
I thought 'demanding' was a little pushy, but it was good to see parents wanting the best for their children. Except ...
His mother was not allowed by their father to learn English. So she could cope, their ?eldest? daughter was expected to stay at home, go shopping with her mother, and generally interact with services. The activities of their other daughters were also much more constrained than the sons'.
Another much better friend of mine was half-Pakistani. His family life was even worse, at least from my perspective. As an example: their father married an Englishwoman, but there was no way any of his daughters were going to marry an Englishman ...
How can we help both the first-generation women subjected to such control, and particularly their daughters? Education has to be a key component.
It was my genuine concern that EdM could be PM, that pushed me into joining the Tories.
I shudder to think how much personal information about me is out there.
Dawn Butler will no doubt denounce me as a waycist.
Education is important, as is starting to treat such communities as an integral part of British society rather than de-facto embassies of the country of origin, to be only communicated with through community leaders.
I would also suggest ending the revolving door of mainly sourcing wives from rural areas of the subcontinent, which means reinstating primary purpose and facing down the inevitable backlash.
In the case of the doctors the old are the affected group. It's not something 18-24 year olds need to worry about.
It makes London Labour voters a pain to canvass and knock up, of course, but the city is pretty politicised so a lot just go and do it anyway.
Miss Plato, calling a spade a spade is clearly racist. All civilised people refer to soil relocation implements.
I think it may be significant but, equally, people may just become more right wing as they get older.
At present I'm experimenting with putting polling results in word rather than numerical format to try to give myself a correct sense of their evidential value. So the Tories have an appreciable lead over Labour, who have not shown any signs of recovery from the last election. The Lib Dems remain nailed to the canvass. Meanwhile, UKIP may be building on their general election success, but have not made a leap forward yet.
I can see that oldies in Scotland may well be disproportionately more unionist than the under 70s but so far this hasn't caused the pollsters to trip up. Are they adjusting for a non-existent problem or not adjusting and risking a similar embarrassment?
I think there's a really good argument for a year zero approach to our armed forces. What do we want to be able to do, how much will it cost, get it done. But the new Trident proposal.
lol
wat
As another example, a good friend of ours is having a few problems. I have to be careful what I say, but she is being pestered into an arranged marriage to the extent that I'd class it as marginally forced. She is educated and in a good job, and so is her potential husband.
Some people will be thinking: "Ah, they're immigrant Muslims". No, they're both Christians, the children of second- (and I think in her case third-) generation Indians. It's a cultural thing for them: their daughter's already too old, and they want her married.
There's more to the story that I can't really say without breaking confidence, but it's shown me the line between 'arranged' and 'forced' can be mighty thin. How much 'persuasion' can someone apply before the arrangement becomes forced?
It'd be interesting to see how that bulge has changed as time progressed.
That said generally speaking, the Scottish polls marginally underestimated the SNP & Lib Dems and over estimated Lab/Con.
With the benefit of hindsight I think I prefer neck and neck because it implies that either one could still win decisively.
Anecdote I know but political obsessive loves taking part in polls, older people don't.
In his first camera piece, the academic stated that, the results that they had were consistent with a Tory majority. My gut feeling was they picked a headline number nearer the bottom of their margin as they couldn't quite believe it either.
So while it did move upwards (originally 316, 239, 10, 58, 2, close of play 330, 232, 8, 56, 1 (ok, where are the other 2 seats ... PC?)), almost ALL of the other predictions were in the 270s to 280s for the Conservatives.
For the record:
In 2010, it was also slightly out - 307, 255 - but in the other direction and not across an important boundary.
2005 - out by about ten seats but again in a direction that really didn't matter. 356, 209 vs 356, 198.
I see another half a dozen from Rotherham are before the beak.
Clinton was robotic and wasn't connecting
Sanders was shouty and impossible to imagine as President
O'Malley just faded into the background
Just my own reaction to them.
What I mostly thought was that Hillary is not a natural at this.
An accurate poll has to both find an accurate way to predict turnout by sub-group, in order to get a balanced voting electorate, and in then accurately determine how that sample will vote, which may not be how it says it will vote.
We know that in all raw polling data, people overstate their intention to vote (with the possibility of some 9/10s who are in reality 10/10s but are hedging their reply). Getting the adjustments right there is as important as getting the adjustments right on VI.
sounds remarkably like political correctness gone mad
Choice. I have no problems with people saying to their kids: "It's about time you got settled down. A work colleague has a lovely son, why don't you meet him?"
As long as the daughter has the right to say: "Bog off!", either before or after a meeting.
It becomes worse when money (e.g. dowries) and/or influence becomes involved, and terrible when the daughter is put into the position our friend has been.
I have no doubt her parents want the best for her; and she's not even sure she doesn't want to go through with it. From what she's said, as far as they're concerned she won't be happy unless she's married. And she's really old in their view (she's under thirty, ffs).
I also suspect that some of the 'Christian' aspect is wanting her to get married before she has sex out of wedlock.
It's madness in my eyes, but it obviously make sense to them.
(The above obviously also counts for sons as well as daughters).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpN_TOP9hg8
A decade or so back there was a section about this song on R4, where the child the song's essentially about was interviewed, along with the rest of the family.
And often we don't even want to: plenty of Peebies this morning have denounced TU power in the 1970s without connecting its demise to the falling value of labour power in the years since then.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12104463/Remaining-in-the-European-Union-will-increase-likelihood-of-Cologne-style-sex-attacks-warns-Vote-Leave-boss.html
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/01/17/andrew-jackson-revenant/
Although that was a double-whammy; pregnancy outside wedlock and to a black man.
Fortunately they all made up:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4465666.stm
Norway have by far the highest military budget of similar sized nations. Norway have the luxury of spending whatever they want as being Independent and allowed to keep their own wealth, they became the richest country in the world (excluding micro-states).
Compared to Ireland, the SNP was proposing a spend of over 150% of the Irish level, on par, IIRC, with Denmark. Of course there is a great deal to be said for the Icelandic model of spending Zero on defence.
How interesting, I can certainly see how in the mid 70s that was the case, fortunately most people have moved on. Unfortunately it seems some haven't judging by the PM's welcome announcement today.
A list of upcoming council by elections and vacant seats
https://t.co/DpsA1WYxSQ
Incidentally I hope we'll get some TV debates pre the referendum, we all saw what Nigel did to the hapless Clegg.
And from a Pakistani origin - so leaving the EU will have zero impact on immigration from Pakistan.
So the article is bollox.
If you know more than me (sounds like it) I would be interested in your thoughts.
I can see a flaw in that somewhere
UKIP to deport foreign mothers!
"The campaign to leave the European Union will be led by a Tory cabinet minister, former chancellor Lord Lawson said, as a new poll gave a six-point lead to the “Out” side.
The peer, who is president of Conservatives for Britain, a Eurosceptic group, said on Sunday he would not reveal the identity of the senior minister but it would emerge “in due course”."