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The yougov *massive panel that they know everything about then measure how opinions are swinging around* type modelling which can figure out correlations between voters and project FPTP seat numbers with way more accuracy.
'tis the future.
Related;
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/13/election_poll_accuracy/
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png
They've become the wealthy pensioners party.
Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.
It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1
Meanwhile in Italy, whilst the Five-star movement failed to win local elections, if immigration continues at the current pace something will replace it as the anti- establishment party. The liberal centre shouldn't celebrate a comeback just yet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40268210
https://twitter.com/hashtag/grenfelltower?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=tren
Which also appears to have been the subject of resident concern:
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/
And now it's dead;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4598772/Dementia-Tax-set-SCRAPPED-Tories.html
Deborah Orr had it right;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/19/pay-social-care-britain-land-of-minor-aristocrats-tory-manifesto-plan
"People don’t want to spend money tied up in their bricks and mortar on funding their care. They want to leave that cash to their kids, so they can buy some overpriced property themselves."
This is the vision the tories have sold to their wealthy client vote ever since Osborne's 2008(?) inheritance tax giveaway. Labour's LVT would end this regressive system of using the state to funnel wealth to older property owners so they can hand it on to their own kids, tax free.
Nothing for the young though
Hard to offer giveaways when there is still a big deficit.
There wouldn't be a deficit if we taxed property properly.
Would be possible if we scrapped Trident £60-100 billion and still counting...
Off topic: Hope no one got trapped in that tower block.
Apparently in 2015/6 the tower was renovated, including new cladding and windows.
Pure speculation: I wonder if the fire spreading is related to the cladding, as I believe occurred in the recent Gulf fires.
All guesswork, of course.
External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.
http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
This story should be of interest to many:
https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/06/russia-probed-election-systems-and-data-of-39-us-states/
Attacking the voter register is a very interesting way of manipulating an election in a massive way.
By reducing exorbitant expenditure on the old the future tax and debt burden would be reduced. It is called addressing intergenerational unfairness.
This election was unusual in that one demographic basis for voting behaviour died (class) and was replaced by another (age). There were some striking graphs posted in yesterday's thread showing that in 2015 age only marginally figured as a determinant of voting behaviour, but has exploded onto the scene since EUref with the strong correlation between greater age and Tory voting reflecting closely the age/Leave correlation of 2016. In such a demographically-driven election YouGov was uniquely well placed to identify outlier gains by both sides.
As I predicted at the time, YouGov wasn't so hot in dealing with the minor parties, where their fortunes depended less on demography. The mystery of its Indy gain prediction for East Devon remains (she did well but was nowhere close). That can only have been an unbalanced base sample? For the LibDems YouGov scores 7/13, not getting the loss to Plaid, a gain from SNP, and having four of its eventual seats down as Tory. For PC seats YouGov gets 2/4 of its predictions correct and for SNP 34/48.
I did suggest that the YouGov model *should* be able to predict the Con/Lab balance (not that I believed its prediction, sadly for my betting, being all too creative in coming up with credible and intelligent reasons as to why it must be wrong) - and so it has. The points for us to remember for future betting based on its predictions are a) be very wary of its gain/loss estimates for parties other than Labour/Tory, and b) as a demographic model YouGov is strongest when there is dramatic demographically-driven shifts in voting behaviour.
It is quite likely that the next election will be demographically "boring" (the patterns of behaviour persisting from 2017), and we will get very excited about trusting YouGov's unusual predictions, only to find we have been misled by the inevitable outliers where its model doesn't quite work. Even this time there were 22 Tory/Lab seats it got wrong, five on each side cancelling out leaving a net error of 12.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/the-day-after/
There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:
- the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start
- the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)
- nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)
- Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.
In 2009:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Latimer_Road_tube_station#/media/File:Latimer_Road_stn_look_east2.JPG
In 2012:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Latimer_Road_tube_station#/media/File:Latimer_Road_tube_stn_look_east_2012.JPG
This blog from residents concerned about the fire risk is also going to make this a political scandal:
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/
The brand new local MP is going to be busy.
Can we just ban polls? Then, we might be able to discuss the issues during general election campaigns rather than just speculate about who is winning when clearly we have no idea!
The difference in this election was that this time many more of the under 30's voted bringing the age influence to the fore.
Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
It is also the second election in a row where a false polling narrative has completely distorted the campaign and the public debate. Last time out we were told it was neck and neck when it almost certainly wasn't throughout. This time we were told it was a walk in the park and it never was. Had people known that would the Labour offering been looked at a bit more critically? Who knows?
Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the young use Facebook to fill their day devouring every post. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel. Woe betide anyone who tries to tell them its bollocks. They claim they read it for the cat pictures but still read every post.
There has been a weak correlation with age before, but compare the 2015 and 2017 voting behaviour by age cohort and you will see that the different is striking. In 2015 the only standout factor is the lean towards Tory amongst the retired. In 2017 there is a straight-line correlation between rising age and propensity to vote Tory, with the young leaning Labour like never before. This is unconnected with changes in turnout (indeed early data on turnout suggests younger voter turnout was up, but not dramatically so?)
Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.
The Tories won almost 43% of the vote.
They wouldn't be closed to winning if it was only the grey vote they were securing.
And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.
Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.
Despite Osborne's efforts we are still overspending and any government elected for the next several years would have to face the consequences.
Did I miss anything?
Hope the fire can be extinguished soon.
I think Mortimer makes some good points when it comes to George Osborne. While much of the Conservative campaign issues stem from May and her advisors, a lot of the 'bread and butter' issues which made things difficult for the Tories go back to Osborne's time as Chancellor. He, like Brown, made the mistake of viewing everything through a short-term political lens which meant that the calculation was made to place the burden of austerity far harshly on the working age population than those who are retired. The result is many of the working age population are now turning their backs on the Conservative Party. That is the real divide in terms of demographics: not simply 'naive' 18-24-year-olds versus 'sensible' over 65s. To act as though only my generation entertain fantasy economics is just a nonsense. Voters across the board have been shown to possess some level of cognitive dissonance and to believe in fantasy economics. It was Over 65s after all, who overwhelmingly voted Leave a year ago - a campaign which told us that there would be £350m per week for the NHS if we left the EU.
Take out pensions, health, schools and benefits, and you will see that even the severe cuts everywhere else were never going to outweigh rising spending on the big budgets. Plus of course we have a rising interest bill as government debt goes up.
http://tinyurl.com/y8jpt545
http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/north-kensington-estate-benefits-10m-11329924
Residents not happy:
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/minutes-from-the-grenfell-tower-emergency-residents-meeting-170315/
GE2015 and GE2017 have been disasters for the polling industry, to lose one GE may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Will there be another inquiry?
It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
Polling is always fighting the last war. Just two short years ago in GE2015 the star performer was the Crosby-Textor private polling for the Conservative Party. We can imagine this year Crosby-Textor gave massive Tory leads else why risk calling the election in the first place? Even as we speak, the "wrong" pollsters will be tweaking their weightings so the right answer pops out but the right answer for 2017 may not be the right answer for 2022 -- or even for this October.
Oh, and Survation just texted me to say their poll was the most accurate by dint of believing self-reported likelihood to vote -- vindicated before the election by the Prosser and BES research that was posted on pb before polling day.
I discovered only recently that they stopped using humans as ship's ballast in the 17th century.
I find it almost possible to believe that anyone would have been allowed to use flammable panelling in the last 50 years but I saw down thread a reference saying it was not illegal. Given the limitations on getting water above 100 feet or so that is really astonishing.
For example would anyone notice if we got rid of the Department for Transport, which runs a branch line in East Anglia and practically nothing else? Or the Department for Education? Or OFQUAL? Actually they might notice a distinct improvement if we axed that last one given the abysmal quality of this year's exams. Yet they all survive while 8,000 nurses go.
It's almost as though our brave and selfless civil service are unwilling to bear cuts themselves...
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-fire/
The main 'root' cause: a fridge explosion?
Flammable panels, allowing fire to spread along the exterior
Means for the fire to get from the outside to interior - or did fire spread internally?
Alleged signs stating residents should remain in their flats in case of fire.
Inadequate fire suppression and escape mechanisms.
The timing of the fire, when the flats will be full and residents asleep.
And I daresay there will be many more.
It seems unfair to comment on the emergency services' response: it's early days and there are others on her better equipped to do so. I just hope that as many people as possible are safe, including firefighters.
If those are borne out, although it will be too little too late, somebody needs prosecuting.
"Any future “mass Labour surge” needs to be make a bigger difference to maximise the seats gained rather than making already big majorities bigger"
https://moreknownthanproven.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/some-analysis-of-the-labour-surge/