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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If UKIP supporters had answered this Populus online questi
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If UKIP supporters had answered this Populus online question in a certain way they could have boosted the “value” of their views by a factor of 13
Yesterday afternoon I was at a polling seminar at the LSE attended by leading academics, pollsters and those, like me, with a keen interest in measuring political opinion.
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Asked “If you had to choose, which would you prefer to see after the next election, a Conservative government led by David Cameron or a Labour government led by Ed Miliband?”, 41 per cent chose the Tory option and 40 per cent Labour.
Wow, the tide really is turning!
Congratulations to Caroline Lucas on her short but sharp campaign:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24058609
Someone's really f'ed up with this one.
"The next time that a YouGov voting intention poll as listed on ukpollingreport.co.uk shows Conservatives in the lead by one point or more."
They are currently offering :
H2 2013 ......... 5/2
H1 2014 ......... 7/2
It's perhaps difficult to see the approx 4% current Labour lead disappearing over the next 3 months and therefore H1 2014 is probably the better bet imo. Covering both periods provides winning odds of evens if successful.
Looking further ahead, H2 2014 is on offer at 9/2 and H1 2015 at 5/1. Combining these latter two periods provides winning odds of approx 15/8.
"No Lib Dem fails to mention Eastleigh when you ask about the party's chances. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Lib Dems' strategy for 2015 is to fight 57 Eastleighs."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/liberal-democrat-wipeout-hunch-defy-polls?CMP=twt_fd
Oborne praising Clegg....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10303285/Romantic-Germany-risks-economic-decline-as-green-dream-spoils.html
They have sacrificed their future on the Green altar. Gullible idiots.
(p.s. I've cut out the stuff on AGW as I can't see a lot of relevance, no offence.)
Barring some unforeseen event, it is very likely that UKIP will do better than in 2009.
What is the push factor towards privatisation? What problem(s) is it meant to solve? There obviously are perceived to be problems, as Mandelson was trying to privatise nearly half of it five years ago.
As is often the case from governments of all stripes, they are giving a solution rather than discussing the problem.
It is different with HS2: the government have clearly stated what the problem is they are trying to solve, and have looked at other solutions. The previous government came up with the same solution as well ...
The nature of FPTP makes it inevitable that UKIP will get a smaller share of the vote in a GE than it's currently getting in polls.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2362082/Royal-Mail-Privatisation-The-prospect-Queens-head-juxtaposed-Virgin-ought-offend-care-dignity.html#ixzz2eerQsUEX
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
What is odd about the party ID question is that the preamble explicitly acknowledges that it is not invariant, but asks the poll respondents to act as though it is. There must surely be a better way.
Perhaps there are some fundamental philosophical dilemmas that divide down right/left lines that one could use as a discriminant?
We had the same discussion and push-factor with the railway privatisation; other countries did it differently.
(Note: I am neither for nor against RM privatisation at the current time: I just want to know the reasons from both sides).
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/SP/CodeofConduct_EN.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Falk
Interesting piece on Formula E (for electric) here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24053853
It starts in September 2014. Not sure about any UK broadcast.
I don't have a downer on electric power per se, but this does seem to perhaps be missing something (beyond petrol). The cars will be effectively silent, and battery power only lasts 25 minutes so drivers will drive two cars, and pit stop to swap vehicles halfway through the race.
Less importantly, the speed is also down on F1 (from, using horrid French measurements, 300kmh to 220kmh).
I do think it could be a good idea, but I'm not sure we're there yet technologically. In 5-10 years it might be a different bag of monkeys.
Oh, and something else I loathe: the 'circuits' aren't racetracks, but city streets. All 10 events are through city streets. Who the **** looked at F1 and though to themselves "I really like the Singapore race, but do we have to go to places like Spa and Interlagos?"
" and Heidelberg: 50th. How on earth did Germany manage to mess up its universities so comprehensively? "
It depends on what you regard as German universities.
Certainly Germany's most famous universities have certainly suffered a massive fall but I suspect that their lower order universities are more effective than the Scumbag universities in the London boroughs of Shitsville.
And why is UCL rated so highly? Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College I understand but what's so special about UCL apart from it being where SeanT didn't attend a lecture for two years?
Not seeing any immediate betting implications but it is fun anyway.
Colour me unconvinced.
And Sean Fear (who I used to regard as the voice of official Conservatism) now makes the sort of comments I was making 4-5 years ago.
By their very nature people who respond to surveys are different to those who do not. Weighting results to balance the sample is a problematic way of correcting for poor sampling that can bring in new errors and bias.
The fact that different polls all give broadly similar results may mean that they are all correct, but it can also mean that they are all making the same biased corrections.
Part of my interest here on PB is that gamblers are better at predicting the results than anyone else, by putting their money where their mouth is.
My theory on why the SNATs kept quiet about it is not because it was a Scottish defeat.
But because it was during a Scottish invasion of England.
Sort of ruins the line of brave little Scotland always being the victim of English aggression.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eei259XupvM&feature=player_embedded
"Including why it is unfair because if he is having a party and his friends in Essex come round they won’t be able to stay over and will have to pay for a cab home."
Reminds me a bit of some warmists who consider every change in the weather to confirm their beliefs, yet refuse to acknowledge the clear inaccuracies (no more snow) in their forecasts.
Dylan Sharpe @dylsharpe
Ed-Wallace/Wallace-Ed? Double-take of the day in @TheSunNewspaper pic.twitter.com/Gl2tate5qJ
I don't want to go back to the days of straw bales lining the track, but it'd be nice to get F1 nearer to the public. And the Olympic Park is easier to get to that Silverstone.
Bernie's outline circuit for a London GP would be... well, let's just say, wow! Shame that it's probably unachievable.
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2012-06-28/plans-for-a-london-grand-prix/
Brian: the case for subsidised public transport (whether privately or publicly owned) is, briefly:
1. It's evident that cities will grind to a halt without it. Rather than close rail lines, build roads and houses on them, then find that you need them after all, the government anticipates the problem by subsidising them. We pay governments to do this sort of thing - because rail has a 10-20-year timelag, you can't safely just leave it to the market.
2. The way we tax cars wildly distorts usage. You pay lots of tax when you buy a car, and some more when you pay your annual tax disc. The marginal cost of making another trip is low, despite the general belief that petrol taxes are high. By contrast, all the consumer payments for rail are made per trip or per year. So if you leave it to the market, you get a distorted result.
3. Not everyone can drive (children, very elderly people, some disabled people, etc.). It's thought to be in the public interest that the Government should ensure they can still get around.
4. The level of pollution from universal use of cars will be much higher, especially in cities. This would breach our global warming commitments, and even if we didn't care about that it would markedly increase pollution in the cities - hello again, London fog.
You do have to draw the line somewhere, and I don't think there is a human right to live up some remote glen and have a bus run past your door. But if your major cities will grind to a halt without public transport, you do need it, subsidies and all.
As for ownership, I think there's a reasonable case for privatisation where genuine competition results (as with rail freight). I see very little case for it where it's a monopoly and people just bid for the right to extract profit from it. It's certainly true that e.g. nationalised rail suffered from under-investment, but you know who to blame in that case and have a recouurse if you feel strongly - vote them out. What do you do if Deliveries plc decides to stop delivering to you and make you pick up your post at a collection point half a mile away (a perfectly rational economic decision)? Complain? Good luck with that.
If we're going for slow racing I'd sooner watch chariot racing than Formula Slow. Besides, just because they might be able to go through areas a faster F1 car cannot does not mean they should. Street circuits, as a rule, are tedious affairs. Spa, Interlagos etc are exciting. Why are they only going to street circuits? Convenience to get an audience, I'd guess, but if the races are rubbish then who'll watch? I can see why they might avoid Spa for logistical reasons, but Interlagos is in the middle of Sao Paulo.
As an aside, the official F1 website often has a poll. The current one is for who'll score more at Ferrari next year. Interestingly, Raikkonen's ahead.
http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2012/06/video-a-lap-of-the-imaginary-london-gp-track/
Please let it happen.
Do you think Labour will abolish both the Labour and the Coalition bedroom taxes?
Thanks for giving me my first ever troll badge. What an honour!
The "cabbies' sweetheart'".
I doubt she will ever advocate for a true free market in taxis.
It's the "knowledge" innit, despite Satnav etc....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2114899/Nissans-Batmobile-car-change-motor-racing-forever--hit-Le-Mans-year.html
Along with energy-recovery cars, diesel cars, and next year, an all-electric car. The technology from LMP also trickles down to road cars much faster than it does from F1.
EiT - Yes, it's not unusual for mainstream political parties to become victims of metropolitan group-think about what defines 'mainstream' (or, by contrast, 'extreme'). Public opinion often moves ahead of political or journalistic thinking in such cases and I think this is one. There are other reasons why the FPD aren't polling spectacularly well. That said, the Greens are clearly the keenest on pro-renewable energy and cutting carbon footprint and even if the support for parties opposed to the government's energy policy isn't rising rapidly (it's not like it's the only issue of the election!), there's clearly a decline in support for those demanding more of the same.
This country is the pits, when a Brazilian can come here and show how massive the gap is between rich and poor you really know we are circling the drain..
http://www.channel4.com/news/nhs-hospital-death-rates-among-worst-new-study-finds
'NHS chief Sir Bruce Keogh says he is taking very seriously figures revealed by Channel 4 News which show that health service patients are 45 per cent more likely to die in hospital than in the US.'
F1's nearing its calendar limit (not in regulation but practical terms) already, so the organisers can afford to demand more money. Unfortunately, this means the beancounters might let Spa fall by the wayside.
Mr. Jessop, one could make a case that F1 needs to decide if it wants to put spectacle at the forefront or innovative. If the former, then reduce permitted aerodynamics and development thereof to promote overtaking and put more emphasis back on the engines and the like, if the latter, then allow more aerodynamic development and other technologies too (although, in fairness, I think KERS is being increased in power next year).
How did you commemorate the 500th anniversary of Scotland's greatest battlefield defeat and its failed invasion of England yesterday?
It just turns out to be amazingly impossible to take a truly random sample, and so aiming for a representative sample is something of a fall-back position.
In a situation such as the one with the Populus polls and UKIP party ID the aim for Populus would be to tweak the way in which they collect their sample, so that they do not oversample UKIP in the first place, and can then avoid down-weighting them so severely. The question remains as to whether party ID is a suitably invariant metric with which to aim for in constructing a representative sample.
The gap between rich and poor is irrelevant. What matters is whether the poor have sufficient. In short, I'd rather everybody became twice as wealthy than the rich became 10% wealthier and the poor 50% wealthier. That would narrow the gap, but both rich and poor would be worse off than in the other scenario.
Edited extra bit: incidentally, I'd undoubtedly be classed as poor. If you really want to narrow the gap then I can only advise that you buy Journey to Altmortis this instant.
Jim Murphy @jimmurphymp
I really like Tim Farron so don’t want to diss him. I don’t want join in with the public who compare him to a sanctimonious little plotter.
Politics home tweets:
.@ChukaUmunna tells @BBCNews says Labour "can't make any commitments" to renationalise Royal Mail.
Same reply goes to David Herdson incidentally.
It's ridiculous that F1 is limiting engine and tyre development into narrow fields that yield little benefit for the road user.
But I'm probably in a majority of one in wanting that. TV alone would be difficult to organise ...
The Globe is behind a paywall, but just google " boston taxi medallions" and you will see how corrupt the system has become over the years.
Mr. Jessop, I think your sprint race idea is a bit mental, to be honest.
However, you have (sort of) a famous ally! Luca di Montezemolo said last year that F1 should have two one hour races on a weekend rather than one two hour race. His reasoning was that people lacked attention spans suitable for a two hour race. I think his staff were too polite to point out that that's basically the length of a football match, or a film.
For handicapping, what d'you mean exactly?
Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn 6m
"It's perfectly possible that we will come back in such numbers that the people say we want you in govt again," Clegg says 2015 coalition.
Populus have an extreme version of the problem that all online pollsters as opposed to telephone pollsters seem to have .
Firstly a pollster must decide how it is going to weight it's sample whether past vote or party ID . It should then poll a number of voters pretty closely representative to it's expected sample and then correct for a non representative sample with minor adjustments .
Populus , and to a lesser extent Yougov have samples that are so far from their expected proportions that the effects of weighting are major reducing for example the number of UKIP voters from say 250 to 120 in a typical poll .
The solutions would seem to be twofold . Research why it is that online polling gives samples that are so far unrepresentative of the expected weightings . Is it the weightings that are wrong or is it online polling that is fundamentally flawed ?
I think wee Eck was feart because it was a Scottish invasion of England - not part of the "poor wee Scots oppressed by the English" narrative, don't you?
That and it was a disaster.
And you opponent was Catherine of Aragon......
norman smith @BBCNormanS
Labour say can't commit to re-nationalise Royal Mail if sell off goes ahead - but do not rule out
I think the Lib Dems could well be the big political losers from it.
How will you commemorate the 700th anniversary of one of England's greatest British battlefield defeats and its failed invasion of Scotland? And will you even get the date right?
Handicapping is putting weights into a successful car ("success ballast"). It is a way of levelling the field in series that have loose regulations, and would be a better solution IMHO than all this resource restriction nonsense. Loosen the regulations, let teams develop newer, innovative ideas, and handicap them if they gain too much of an advantage.
http://www.btcc.net/html/regulations.php