If crossover occurs before the end of this year and panic breaks out amongst labour ranks will they have enough time politically to change leader or will it be seen a desperation?
Cross over may, or may not happen. The "Labour are steady at 38" crowd overlook that that's down nearly 4 points.....however, even if it does happen the PLP have shown remarkable discipline (fatalism, to the unkind) in the face of adverse polling in the past, so out with a surprise "event" - Ed will lead them into the GE.
As someone once memorably observed, its the Tories that "only ever panic in a crisis".
I think UKIP have got this one about right: UKIP chairman Steve Crowther said: "We are asking Godfrey not to use this phrase [Bongo Bongo Land] again as it might be considered disparaging by members from other countries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23597233
"...What is offensive is that Africans are still starving when, with the right policies, the continent could be booming. Indeed in many parts it is, thanks to a decade of free market economics, not that the BBC Today programme would bother telling you that. What matters is not that language about Africans is policed, but that reality makes such language obsolete; jokes about poor, thick Paddy died out not because of the league of the professionally outraged, but because Ireland became rich; people won’t think of Africa as Bongo Bongo land, a continent of corruption, poverty and disorder, when that is no longer the reality. But politics and economics are complicated, while moral outrage is easy and cheap.
I just don’t believe many of the people talking about Bloom actually are offended – it’s more likely ostentatious moral outrage designed to display opposition to the sin of racism, membership of the liberal communion, and moral superiority to sinners and deviants, an example of how secular politics has developed quasi-religious traits.
Looking at Twitter one sometimes gets an idea of what England must have been like in the 1650s when the Cromwellites were in charge. I think I would have headed off to Virginia – or Mumbo Jumbo land, as Edmund Blackadder called it."
Zimbabwe to open racially segregated stock exchange ?
Reading that article its South Africa who are the losers as the companies being seized to be 'traded' on the all black exchange are SA owned.
It serves South Africa right. They could have shut Mugabe down decades ago and yet still he goes on. Will the SA government lift a finger to help its companies? I doubt it.
Still, I guess Peter Hain will be leading the opposition to sports tours by Zimbabwe after this openly racist decision. LOL.
I think UKIP have got this one about right: UKIP chairman Steve Crowther said: "We are asking Godfrey not to use this phrase [Bongo Bongo Land] again as it might be considered disparaging by members from other countries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23597233
Yep - bear trap adroitly avoided.....and they got a free day's coverage in the news on a topic (Foreign Aid) which the polling suggests the public are much more in line with their views on than the main parties....
Zimbabwe to open racially segregated stock exchange ?
Reading that article its South Africa who are the losers as the companies being seized to be 'traded' on the all black exchange are SA owned.
It serves South Africa right. They could have shut Mugabe down decades ago and yet still he goes on. Will the SA government lift a finger to help its companies? I doubt it.
Still, I guess Peter Hain will be leading the opposition to sports tours by Zimbabwe after this openly racist decision. LOL.
I'm sure Roger is designing an ad campaign at this very moment ;-)
Zimbabwe to open racially segregated stock exchange ?
Reading that article its South Africa who are the losers as the companies being seized to be 'traded' on the all black exchange are SA owned.
It serves South Africa right. They could have shut Mugabe down decades ago and yet still he goes on. Will the SA government lift a finger to help its companies? I doubt it.
Still, I guess Peter Hain will be leading the opposition to sports tours by Zimbabwe after this openly racist decision. LOL.
I'm sure Roger is designing an ad campaign at this very moment ;-)
But the Artful Dodger's observation that hindsight works in favour of the reputations of those winners which serve as PM is probably a valid, if party pooping, observation.
If this is an argument that, in effect, incumbency tends to make the candidate look better, I respectfully disagree. In 3 of those 8 elections, the incumbent was turfed out by someone who was obviously better: Callaghan, Major, and Brown.
The fact that Major won against Kinnock but lost against Blair shows that candidate quality is what matters. Likewise, Kinnock wasn't able to win against either a formidable PM or a weak one.
Was Blair a better politician/leader/PM than Hague? I am not sure we would have answered that question in the affirmative had Hague won the 2001 election.
The idea that the winners look better simply because they won is a wholly circular objection, IMO. To say that "If he had won he wouldn't have lost so you're wrong" is logically identical to saying "If my auntie had had b@lls she'd have been my uncle".
As has been discussed on here several times before including quite recently , you are looking at 1979 through the eyes of hindsight . The polls of the time showed that Callaghan was preffered to Thatcher by the majority of voters
As I have patiently explained before, this is not to do with what the average opinion is, but with what a discriminating opinion is.
Every year, some music magazine or other runs a poll of who are the best bands ever. The top 85 to 90% of the spots go to bands that are active now. This is because the average person who can be bothered to respond to such polls is 14 years old, a fan of some current crap act, and can't remember or imagine anything that happened more than 3 years ago.
A discriminating person would note this, and conclude that such polls are a poor guide to likely career longevity. If you had to bet on what bands will still be in that list in 10 years' time, you would be looking at the 10 to 15% that aren't this week's fad.
IOW, there can be such a thing as the folly of crowds.
In the examples I gave, a thoughtful person able to park their loyalties would agree that the better candidate won, whether Labour or Tory. This has been obvious to me since 1979, and certainly to a lot of people I speak to. I particularly recall a conversation in 1986, at the peak of the Westland kerfuffle, in which a client of mine remarked that he couldn't see anyone but Thatcher getting in. Reflecting on this, i.e. that if he were wrong Kinnock would get in, one could not but agree.
Hence I predict that Miliband will not beat Cameron in 2015 in the popular vote. It's a Kinnock versus Major contest. I am insufficiently versed to say what this means for seats.
Notting & Southampton both post that analysis (see earlier) - the bit that missing is the context of 3 months ago:
"Labour are now down almost four points from their peak, and approaching their lowest scores since Ed Miliband took over as leader. They retain a healthy 8% lead over the Conservatives, but the recent softening in numbers must be a concern, particularly as it comes during a period without any significant positive economic news to bolster the government."
chris g @chrisg0000 #Blair's Cabinets..I only got 77 of 107, though given amnt of notice Blair took of Cabinet, prb more thn he wld score sporcle.com/games/kelcey_s…
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 Health Sec Jeremy Hunt says he does NOT support homeopathy after all. Is this the end for homeopathy on the NHS? @lbc973 or 0845 6060 973
HYS - I hate Marmite but this ad taking the mick out of the RSPCA is fantastic
Ipsos ASI UK @IpsosASIUK "Love it. Hate it. Just don’t forget it." new @marmite campaign by @aandeddb: What do you think? youtu.be/mHjssdNNzP0 #ad # MRX
As has been discussed on here several times before including quite recently , you are looking at 1979 through the eyes of hindsight . The polls of the time showed that Callaghan was preffered to Thatcher by the majority of voters
As I have patiently explained before, this is not to do with what the average opinion is, but with what a discriminating opinion is.
Every year, some music magazine or other runs a poll of who are the best bands ever. The top 85 to 90% of the spots go to bands that are active now. This is because the average person who can be bothered to respond to such polls is 14 years old, a fan of some current crap act, and can't remember or imagine anything that happened more than 3 years ago.
A discriminating person would note this, and conclude that such polls are a poor guide to likely career longevity. If you had to bet on what bands will still be in that list in 10 years' time, you would be looking at the 10 to 15% that aren't this week's fad.
IOW, there can be such a thing as the folly of crowds.
In the examples I gave, a thoughtful person able to park their loyalties would agree that the better candidate won, whether Labour or Tory. This has been obvious to me since 1979, and certainly to a lot of people I speak to. I particularly recall a conversation in 1986, at the peak of the Westland kerfuffle, in which a client of mine remarked that he couldn't see anyone but Thatcher getting in. Reflecting on this, i.e. that if he were wrong Kinnock would get in, one could not but agree.
Hence I predict that Miliband will not beat Cameron in 2015 in the popular vote. It's a Kinnock versus Major contest. I am insufficiently versed to say what this means for seats.
Your definition of a discriminating person seems to be matched by only one person and that is yourself . If it is backed up by opinion poll evidence all well and good if not you are correct and the polls have been taken mainly of non discriminating people . Self delusion and hindsight rule OK . .
Your definition of a discriminating person seems to be matched by only one person and that is yourself .
Come off it, Mark. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there are people who think Kinnock was better fitted for office than Thatcher? Hague than Blair? Pfffffft.
Your definition of a discriminating person seems to be matched by only one person and that is yourself .
Come off it, Mark. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there are people who think Kinnock was better fitted for office than Thatcher? Hague than Blair? Pfffffft.
No , of course not but in those particular examples I agree with you . With regard to Callaghan and Thatcher the decision was not so clear cut and my opinion differs with yours and was supported by the opinion polls of the time .
Your definition of a discriminating person seems to be matched by only one person and that is yourself .
Come off it, Mark. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there are people who think Kinnock was better fitted for office than Thatcher?
There are some who claim to have suspected Mrs Thatcher was already losing her marbles, and it was not long before she was deposed. Harold Wilson famously stepped down when he noticed his own mind going. Such are the strains of top office.
Actually the end of that article is surprisingly candid. It concludes that most political pundits are completely useless. Just noise.
And Mr Sparrow's article at the top of the page, suggests the data is completely useless too. Guesses all round!
The data isn't useless. It's just overinterpreted by all and sundry (and especially political pundits).
There is no attempt to find the actual levels of popular support, and the attempt itself is absurd. That sounds like useless.
Eh ?
No attempt to find actual levels of support
"The established conventions for question design in market research would be to ask for a spontaneous response, i.e without mentioning any possible choices, or prompt with all the main alternatives. By this yardstick it becomes difficult to justify continuing to omit mention of UKIP at least, and arguably other smaller parties as well, as they appear to add up to a choice for almost one in five of those who would vote in a new election."
The attempt itself is absurd:
"With the next election 2 years or so away, pollsters pose a question that is presently absurdly hypothetical. Ask a respondent “If there were to be an immediate general election …..” and many will immediately be thinking “well there isn’t!” "
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 Health Sec Jeremy Hunt says he does NOT support homeopathy after all. Is this the end for homeopathy on the NHS? @lbc973 or 0845 6060 973
Where does he say that? I didn't think he was the type to change his mind.
With regard to Callaghan and Thatcher the decision was not so clear cut and my opinion differs with yours and was supported by the opinion polls of the time .
Eh? My opinion is that Thatcher was the better candidate and would win. She won.
The opinion polls suggested Callaghan would win, and he lost.
Hence the folly of crowds.
Take sport as a parallel application of what I shall call the Obvious Favourite Principle. If you asked a random sample of the UK public in 1990 if England were going to beat Germany in the World Cup semis; and if you asked a panel of veteran players, who'd played both, if England were going to win; - whose forecast would you trust more?
Likewise, if you asked Basil Brush in July 2013 who was going to win this year's Wimbledon final, and if you asked John McEnroe who was going to win this year's Wimbledon final, whose judgment would you back?
It's the same thing. The margin can be narrow, but in every case, it is and was plain who the lightweight was.
Mark Wallace @wallaceme RT @Markfergusonuk With Alan Beith stepping down, I reckon labour could take a decent run at Berwick in 2015 << from 13.2% of the vote?
Quite amusing how a 3% chance is given 24% by punters. Money to be made here boys.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The 3% is an estimate of what Nate Silver would call a 'NowCast', i.e. the probability if the opinion polls were as they are today AND there really was an election scheduled for tomorrow.
The 24% is the implied probability for 20 months' time, quite correctly taking account of the fact that, at the very least, things change in politics, so it's barmy to assume that only 3 elections in 100 could things change enough over that time to produce the given plausible outcome.
As Nick Sparrow, father of modern polling, puts it in his article: "Whatever the polls presently say, come the real election expect things to be rather different". You need to factor that it to your betting.
Or, to put it another way, I'm very happy to bet as much as anyone is prepared to lay at 32/1 on Con Maj.
Comments
As someone once memorably observed, its the Tories that "only ever panic in a crisis".
UKIP chairman Steve Crowther said: "We are asking Godfrey not to use this phrase [Bongo Bongo Land] again as it might be considered disparaging by members from other countries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23597233
Self praise is no praise surely ?
http://www.betfair.com/exchange/politics/marketactivity?id=1.101416473&selectionId=1111884
Polls may not have moved for a year but the prices have.
"...What is offensive is that Africans are still starving when, with the right policies, the continent could be booming. Indeed in many parts it is, thanks to a decade of free market economics, not that the BBC Today programme would bother telling you that. What matters is not that language about Africans is policed, but that reality makes such language obsolete; jokes about poor, thick Paddy died out not because of the league of the professionally outraged, but because Ireland became rich; people won’t think of Africa as Bongo Bongo land, a continent of corruption, poverty and disorder, when that is no longer the reality. But politics and economics are complicated, while moral outrage is easy and cheap.
I just don’t believe many of the people talking about Bloom actually are offended – it’s more likely ostentatious moral outrage designed to display opposition to the sin of racism, membership of the liberal communion, and moral superiority to sinners and deviants, an example of how secular politics has developed quasi-religious traits.
Looking at Twitter one sometimes gets an idea of what England must have been like in the 1650s when the Cromwellites were in charge. I think I would have headed off to Virginia – or Mumbo Jumbo land, as Edmund Blackadder called it."
Reading that article its South Africa who are the losers as the companies being seized to be 'traded' on the all black exchange are SA owned.
It serves South Africa right. They could have shut Mugabe down decades ago and yet still he goes on. Will the SA government lift a finger to help its companies? I doubt it.
Still, I guess Peter Hain will be leading the opposition to sports tours by Zimbabwe after this openly racist decision. LOL.
The fact that Major won against Kinnock but lost against Blair shows that candidate quality is what matters. Likewise, Kinnock wasn't able to win against either a formidable PM or a weak one. The idea that the winners look better simply because they won is a wholly circular objection, IMO. To say that "If he had won he wouldn't have lost so you're wrong" is logically identical to saying "If my auntie had had b@lls she'd have been my uncle".
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/2013/08/07/polling-observatory-27-labour-in-crisis-tories-resurgent-not-really/
Actually the end of that article is surprisingly candid. It concludes that most political pundits are completely useless. Just noise.
Everyone else is wrong - I am right. Actually sounds familiar...
Every year, some music magazine or other runs a poll of who are the best bands ever. The top 85 to 90% of the spots go to bands that are active now. This is because the average person who can be bothered to respond to such polls is 14 years old, a fan of some current crap act, and can't remember or imagine anything that happened more than 3 years ago.
A discriminating person would note this, and conclude that such polls are a poor guide to likely career longevity. If you had to bet on what bands will still be in that list in 10 years' time, you would be looking at the 10 to 15% that aren't this week's fad.
IOW, there can be such a thing as the folly of crowds.
In the examples I gave, a thoughtful person able to park their loyalties would agree that the better candidate won, whether Labour or Tory. This has been obvious to me since 1979, and certainly to a lot of people I speak to. I particularly recall a conversation in 1986, at the peak of the Westland kerfuffle, in which a client of mine remarked that he couldn't see anyone but Thatcher getting in. Reflecting on this, i.e. that if he were wrong Kinnock would get in, one could not but agree.
Hence I predict that Miliband will not beat Cameron in 2015 in the popular vote. It's a Kinnock versus Major contest. I am insufficiently versed to say what this means for seats.
"Labour are now down almost four points from their peak, and approaching their lowest scores since Ed Miliband took over as leader. They retain a healthy 8% lead over the Conservatives, but the recent softening in numbers must be a concern, particularly as it comes during a period without any significant positive economic news to bolster the government."
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/2013/05/02/polling-observatory-24-blue-revival-purple-advance/
I tend to find their stuff rather Lefty - ditto the other tweeting Pols Prof Steven Thingy.
Tim Bale is pretty good but he's more of a Tory...
http://www.sporcle.com/games/kelcey_s/tony_blairs_cabinet
chris g @chrisg0000
#Blair's Cabinets..I only got 77 of 107, though given amnt of notice Blair took of Cabinet, prb more thn he wld score
sporcle.com/games/kelcey_s…
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1
Health Sec Jeremy Hunt says he does NOT support homeopathy after all. Is this the end for homeopathy on the NHS? @lbc973 or 0845 6060 973
If you aren't bovvered by recent polling tim then cool - chillax in a zen buddha way - Ed style.
Does this mean the the labour MPs and bigwigs voicing their concerns about Labour's performance are secretly PB tories?
Its the reports of unease on the labour side that are getting everybody excited.
It seems to me Ed should hire tim to convince his own MPs there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
Ipsos ASI UK @IpsosASIUK
"Love it. Hate it. Just don’t forget it." new @marmite campaign by @aandeddb: What do you think? youtu.be/mHjssdNNzP0 #ad # MRX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mHjssdNNzP0
Self delusion and hindsight rule OK . .
"The established conventions for question design in market research would be to ask for a spontaneous response, i.e without mentioning any possible choices, or prompt with all the main alternatives. By this yardstick it becomes difficult to justify continuing to omit mention of UKIP at least, and arguably other smaller parties as well, as they appear to add up to a choice for almost one in five of those who would vote in a new election."
The attempt itself is absurd:
"With the next election 2 years or so away, pollsters pose a question that is presently absurdly hypothetical. Ask a respondent “If there were to be an immediate general election …..” and many will immediately be thinking “well there isn’t!” "
I think this is a mistake - let him be a maverick
Politico Daily @Politico_Daily
Bloom: "sincerely regrets any genuine offence which might have been caused" by phrase "Bongo Bongo land"
is the new thread taking comments or is Vanilla losing its flavour?
The opinion polls suggested Callaghan would win, and he lost.
Hence the folly of crowds.
Take sport as a parallel application of what I shall call the Obvious Favourite Principle. If you asked a random sample of the UK public in 1990 if England were going to beat Germany in the World Cup semis; and if you asked a panel of veteran players, who'd played both, if England were going to win; - whose forecast would you trust more?
Likewise, if you asked Basil Brush in July 2013 who was going to win this year's Wimbledon final, and if you asked John McEnroe who was going to win this year's Wimbledon final, whose judgment would you back?
It's the same thing. The margin can be narrow, but in every case, it is and was plain who the lightweight was.
RT @Markfergusonuk With Alan Beith stepping down, I reckon labour could take a decent run at Berwick in 2015 << from 13.2% of the vote?
The 3% is an estimate of what Nate Silver would call a 'NowCast', i.e. the probability if the opinion polls were as they are today AND there really was an election scheduled for tomorrow.
The 24% is the implied probability for 20 months' time, quite correctly taking account of the fact that, at the very least, things change in politics, so it's barmy to assume that only 3 elections in 100 could things change enough over that time to produce the given plausible outcome.
As Nick Sparrow, father of modern polling, puts it in his article: "Whatever the polls presently say, come the real election expect things to be rather different". You need to factor that it to your betting.
Or, to put it another way, I'm very happy to bet as much as anyone is prepared to lay at 32/1 on Con Maj.
http://www.lucianaberger.com/2013/07/meeting-chartered-institute-of-personnel-and-development-about-zero-hours-contracts/
POLABCO-0PWAS.
I made the fatal mistake of putting % signs in the headline which screws up the system