I never fancied Gove as a leader. He's a top quality ideas man, way too gawky for popularity and the Boris take-down (although on balance, the right thing to do) wrecked any leadership hopes he had. I do think he's a fab Number 2 though. Radical, original, brave and, by all accounts, fairly collegiate.
You have that backwards. People with imagination and drive are the best leaders - as long as they have talented administrators under them to implement those ideas.
Gove is indeed a genius at coming up with bold and radical ideas that look excellent on paper, but he couldn't administer a local charity. Therefore he would make a dreadful number two.
Incidentally your last sentence is also incorrect- he's very much a loner and likes to be on the minority side picking a fight. It's one reason why his school reforms went so horribly wrong. If he'd worked with teachers they could have been very effective rather than utterly disastrous. That probably rules him out as PM anyway. And even Liam Fox has allegedly expressed reservations about his foreign policy stance!
I don't see a Number 2 as an implementer though, I see it as a right hand man.
Gove was the one chosen to duel with Cameron for PMQs prep. Before him it was Hague. That in itself is a demonstration of talent, somebody broad-minded enough to place themselves in the shoes of the opposition.
Re teachers, you have a point. They were out to get him from the start though. Gove's aide, Dominic Cummings, came away from government thoroughly pissed off with the intransigence of the vested interests, particularly in the civil service.
Is there any criticism of the poll that rises above the level of "spent the day laughing at yet another stupid poll by YouGov" and so on?
It would be interesting to know why people are so convinced the model is wrong, and where they think the errors have been made.
The model is far too favourable to Labour:
Labour within 4% in Warwick & Leamington Pudsey (Toss up) High Peak (Toss up) Stevenage Lab 2% behind Hastings Lab 3% ahead Thurrock Lab 1% behind
Labour will be further behind on all of those.
FWIW, Pudsey. Nailed on win, double the present lead or I'll eat Paddy Ashdown's entire wardrobe of millinery. Take it from someone who lives there and has been ground campaigning since day 1.
I like the idea of what YouGov have tried to do. I'm yet to be convinced by the execution of it.
Me too.
This has great potential.
Having a massive polling panel with detailed demographic / socioeconomic info on your panel - then figuring out which voters are changing their minds (and where they live) is the future of FPTP election polling.
By 2027, they'll be predicting the result to within a dozen or so seats.
The data will be used by campaigns to increasingly focus their campaign effort on smaller and smaller numbers of crucial swing voters they've personally identified.
It will crash and burn this time but should be able to be massively refined for next
The question that's been running through my head over the last couple of days is
'where has the increased labour vote actually come from?'
This is especially puzzling as we know from the locals that UKIP have crumbled towards the tories. if you look at the previous GE where has the 38% come from (the peak labour vote share)
previous GE (c38 l31 u13 ld8 s5 g4) yougov on the 24/25th (c43 l38 u4 ld10 s5 g1)
the most obvious switch is the ukip=>con, for this I'm going to give all 9% to the Tories but that gives the tories 47% which is somewhere near where they were at the beginning of the campaign.
when it comes to the labour vote I can't work it out if they have really be squeezing the left side of the tories and the greens that much? is it realistic to expect that 75% of green voters are going to vote Labour? have the SNP really gone nowhere?
if you take the ICM on 26-29th of (c45 l33 u5 ld8 s4 g3) it's reasonable to expect that the tories have lost 1-2 % to labour during the campaign, that the LDs have remained static, the SNP have lost 1% jointly to labour and the tories and that the greens are being squeezed by 1% by labour.
I know that there is going to be some polling error in all of this and that the narrative is all labour strength and tory weakness but I'm beginning to doubt most of the large labour surge is real.
The Army has a long memory. Centuries. How would serving military personnel, not to mention recruitment and retention activity, respond to a PM who is on record as embracing and openly supporting their armed enemies, people who actually killed and ordered the killing of many of their comrades?
The only conclusion I can draw from Yougov's exercise is that the entire Yougov panel leans Labour way more than "normal" people in their particular constituency.
@Alistair I don't believe the Orkney projection for one second !
I like the idea of what YouGov have tried to do. I'm yet to be convinced by the execution of it.
Me too.
This has great potential.
Having a massive polling panel with detailed demographic / socioeconomic info on your panel - then figuring out which voters are changing their minds (and where they live) is the future of FPTP election polling.
By 2027, they'll be predicting the result to within a dozen or so seats.
The data will be used by campaigns to increasingly focus their campaign effort on smaller and smaller numbers of crucial swing voters they've personally identified.
It will crash and burn this time but should be able to be massively refined for next
two issues here.
1) UNS is too simplistic to make a prediction so someone has to come up with a better mechanism. personally I think that working out which groups are switching between parties is better but could be proven wrong.
2) the model is all well and good but if you can't get a representative sample (and some of the pollsters are definately getting it wrong but don't ask me who) then even a perfect model falls foul of the SISO rule.
Compare electionforecast with YouGov for Richmond Park, Twickenham, and Kingston.
electionforecast has Tory probability of winning at 100%, 93% and 98% respectively.
YouGov has Tossup, likely LibDem and leans LibDem respectively which is line with the bookies.
I wouldn't say that electionforecast is MILES more realistic than YouGov.
Looking at several dozen random examples in YouGov I think their estimated (wide) spreads cover the likely outcome very well unlike election forecast which is too black and white (and often plain wrong).
I think Twickenham is (sadly) quite a likely LibDem gain:
1. They have every council seat in the constituency, and won them at the height of coalition unpopularity 2. Heathrow is a much bigger issue in Twickenham than in Richmond 3. It is in the heart of Remainia 4. Tania Mathias has struggled to make an impact as the MP 5. The Labour vote is more than twice the UKIP one 6. The Green vote in 2015 was significantly more than the Conservative majority 7. Twickenham is more... how to put this... David Cameron country, than Theresa May country
I'd reckon Twickenham is the only odds on gain for the LibDems (from the Conservatives) in the country.
Compare electionforecast with YouGov for Richmond Park, Twickenham, and Kingston.
electionforecast has Tory probability of winning at 100%, 93% and 98% respectively.
YouGov has Tossup, likely LibDem and leans LibDem respectively which is line with the bookies.
I wouldn't say that electionforecast is MILES more realistic than YouGov.
Looking at several dozen random examples in YouGov I think their estimated (wide) spreads cover the likely outcome very well unlike election forecast which is too black and white (and often plain wrong).
I think Twickenham is (sadly) quite a likely LibDem gain:
1. They have every council seat in the constituency, and won them at the height of coalition unpopularity 2. Heathrow is a much bigger issue in Twickenham than in Richmond 3. It is in the heart of Remainia 4. Tania Mathias has struggled to make an impact as the MP 5. The Labour vote is more than twice the UKIP one 6. The Green vote in 2015 was significantly more than the Conservative majority 7. Twickenham is more... how to put this... David Cameron country, than Theresa May country
I'd reckon Twickenham is the only odds on gain for the LibDems (from the Conservatives) in the country.
Elected in the 2014 local elections in Twickenham constituency were 19 Conservatives and only 14 LibDems:
Comments
Gove was the one chosen to duel with Cameron for PMQs prep. Before him it was Hague. That in itself is a demonstration of talent, somebody broad-minded enough to place themselves in the shoes of the opposition.
Re teachers, you have a point. They were out to get him from the start though. Gove's aide, Dominic Cummings, came away from government thoroughly pissed off with the intransigence of the vested interests, particularly in the civil service.
NEW THREAD
If that is typical of North Wales labour could lose Delyn and Wrexham
So different from opinion on here. Really good for TM
'where has the increased labour vote actually come from?'
This is especially puzzling as we know from the locals that UKIP have crumbled towards the tories. if you look at the previous GE where has the 38% come from (the peak labour vote share)
previous GE (c38 l31 u13 ld8 s5 g4)
yougov on the 24/25th (c43 l38 u4 ld10 s5 g1)
the most obvious switch is the ukip=>con, for this I'm going to give all 9% to the Tories but that gives the tories 47% which is somewhere near where they were at the beginning of the campaign.
when it comes to the labour vote I can't work it out if they have really be squeezing the left side of the tories and the greens that much? is it realistic to expect that 75% of green voters are going to vote Labour? have the SNP really gone nowhere?
if you take the ICM on 26-29th of (c45 l33 u5 ld8 s4 g3) it's reasonable to expect that the tories have lost 1-2 % to labour during the campaign, that the LDs have remained static, the SNP have lost 1% jointly to labour and the tories and that the greens are being squeezed by 1% by labour.
I know that there is going to be some polling error in all of this and that the narrative is all labour strength and tory weakness but I'm beginning to doubt most of the large labour surge is real.
@Alistair I don't believe the Orkney projection for one second !
1) UNS is too simplistic to make a prediction so someone has to come up with a better mechanism. personally I think that working out which groups are switching between parties is better but could be proven wrong.
2) the model is all well and good but if you can't get a representative sample (and some of the pollsters are definately getting it wrong but don't ask me who) then even a perfect model falls foul of the SISO rule.
1. They have every council seat in the constituency, and won them at the height of coalition unpopularity
2. Heathrow is a much bigger issue in Twickenham than in Richmond
3. It is in the heart of Remainia
4. Tania Mathias has struggled to make an impact as the MP
5. The Labour vote is more than twice the UKIP one
6. The Green vote in 2015 was significantly more than the Conservative majority
7. Twickenham is more... how to put this... David Cameron country, than Theresa May country
I'd reckon Twickenham is the only odds on gain for the LibDems (from the Conservatives) in the country.
http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2014/29/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_upon_Thames_London_Borough_Council_election,_2014