If Boris doesn't get a majority it'll be the most counterintuitive political event of modern times. He's got the kind of charisma that demagogues would die for, and he's got a split opposition.
Compare the ITV coverage on the NHS to the BBCs utterly disgraceful attempts to spin the story to Johnson’s advantage . Coupled with the AN fiasco and it’s pretty clear the BBC is now just the media wing of no 10.
Excellent news!
Perhaps the execs have worked out how much Corbyn will cost them in tax and the middle managers in mortgage interest payments at the Beeb ? A commercial future has never looked so appealing under the Tories.
Compare the ITV coverage on the NHS to the BBCs utterly disgraceful attempts to spin the story to Johnson’s advantage . Coupled with the AN fiasco and it’s pretty clear the BBC is now just the media wing of no 10.
Cuckoo!
Watch the BBC coverage more carefully they ‘attempt’ to project both sides of an argument. This does go wrong on occasions when they debated the future of the car industry in the UK post brexit and the only one they could find to put the positive view was that automobile industry expert of the global crap pub operation called Tim Martin. They are not biased, look how they are castigated every day from left AND right. I take that as an indication of an attempt to be balanced.
"If Boris doesn’t get a majority, then Corbyn will take control of No10 on Friday 13th in alliance with Sturgeon plus the Liberal Democrats. And if this Corbyn-Sturgeon alliance takes control, their official policy is to give millions of EU citizens the vote in the second referendum. They don’t plan to lose again and they’ve literally written into their manifesto that they will cheat the second referendum — apart from giving millions of foreign citizens the vote, they will rig the question so the ‘choice’ is effectively ‘Remain or Remain’, they will cheat the rules, they will do anything, supported by the likes of Goldman Sachs writing the cheques like they did in 2016, to ensure Remain win."
For the record, before the YouGov MRP is published, I have updated my English constituency model to reflect two factors as well as the latest polling: firstly the effect of the Brexit Party standing in selective seats only and secondly to reverse a flaw in the model which tended to unwind PREVIOUS tactical voting. The changes now put the prospect of a Conservative majority on a knife-edge.
The Conservatives are starting from 297 English seats won last time (including Bercow).
As usual, I've applied shifts in VI by party/referendum group according to the 12-20 Nov YouGov (for example, that 52% of 2017 Con Remain voters will currently still vote Con). I've scaled up/down to apply the recent ICM results of 41% Con, 34% Lab, 13% LD, 4% BXP across GB (adjusted for England only) which would on its own give 354 Con seats in England.
However, the BXP are generating that 4% despite their contesting only 273 of the 633 GB seats, equivalent to over 9% in the seats they are standing in. So I've scaled up the BXP vote in the English seats they're contesting, and scaled down the Conservative lead over Labour by nearly as much in those seats. And I've done the opposite in the other Conservative-held seats, scaling up the Conservative lead over Labour.
What is striking is that the effect is not neutral - the net Conservative seat count drops to 21 to 333. The BXP standing still puts a lot of Labour held marginals out of reach for the Conservatives, whilst helping them keep only a handful more seats they already hold.
I've also corrected for the tendency of the model to unwind previous tactical voting thanks to the use of average shifts in 2017 voting patterns. For example, while YouGov's mega poll is telling us that 12% of LD 2017 voters nationally will end up voting Labour, it's implausible for the percentage in say Richmond upon Thames to be as high. (The consequence without adjustment would be that in Richmond there would be a swing from LD to Con even in a strong Remain seat, when nationally the swing is the other way.)
So building in some continued tactical voting into the model takes the Conservative seat count down further to 311, a net gain of 14. Assuming that the Conservatives gain as many seats in Wales as they lose in Scotland, that would just about give Johnson a majority on a 7% national poll lead.
In summary, Johnson needs a polling lead of about 7% to deliver a bare majority similar in scale to that which May would have got with a 3.5% lead (as opposed to the 2.4% lead she actually got in 2017.
That sounds very plausible.
"Very plausible" ... so what's your current seats forecast please rcs?
Well, that was a fun and fascinating day. Drove Carrie Symonds and Dilyn about the South Hams. They had a drink with half a dozen canvassers and the candidate. Some fascinating bits of gossip that would be very indiscreet to share.
However, people might like to know that Dilyn loves to shred paper into tiny bits. And he gets given Dominic Cummins' hate mail to savage!
This may be your last chance to vote in the UK. Enjoy!
The Conservatives plan to extend the vote for overseas citizens indefinitely, and Labour plan to extend the franchise to the whole planet; so either way that's unlikely.
Plans, just plans.
‘‘Twas promised by Cameron they just never get round to it.
"If Boris doesn’t get a majority, then Corbyn will take control of No10 on Friday 13th in alliance with Sturgeon plus the Liberal Democrats. And if this Corbyn-Sturgeon alliance takes control, their official policy is to give millions of EU citizens the vote in the second referendum. They don’t plan to lose again and they’ve literally written into their manifesto that they will cheat the second referendum — apart from giving millions of foreign citizens the vote, they will rig the question so the ‘choice’ is effectively ‘Remain or Remain’, they will cheat the rules, they will do anything, supported by the likes of Goldman Sachs writing the cheques like they did in 2016, to ensure Remain win."
Well, that was a fun and fascinating day. Drove Carrie Symonds and Dilyn about the South Hams. They had a drink with half a dozen canvassers and the candidate. Some fascinating bits of gossip that would be very indiscreet to share.
Well, that was a fun and fascinating day. Drove Carrie Symonds and Dilyn about the South Hams. They had a drink with half a dozen canvassers and the candidate. Some fascinating bits of gossip that would be very indiscreet to share.
However, people might like to know that Dilyn loves to shred paper into tiny bits. And he gets given Dominic Cummins' hate mail to savage!
I have read the various comments about the BFB MRP (and other MRPs) with some interest. Why people insist on placing any reliance on individual constituency forecasts is beyond me. Whilst these models are a big step forward in forecasting overall results, they have similar weaknesses to traditional models in looking locally. In many ways they are similar to the general linearised models used in insurance pricing (and now superseded by more sophisticated models). These used many more variables, had a dataset comprising millions (often tens of millions) of risk years (rather than tens of thousands of respondents) - and still there were significant variances between postcodes (their equivalent to constituencies) which were forecast to produce a similar result.
I suggest everyone focus on the big picture from MRPs and not get excited about individual constituencies. The variations will largely cancel out overall (although this may not be the case for smaller parties where factors not in use may become more important - the equivalent of age tails in pricing).
Its been about 5 years since I was near that kind of thing, and I'm always wary of obsolescence. So, what has replaced GLM in the hearts of the shoegazers? Is it that fancy-dan XGBoost (extreme gradient boost) thing in Python, or do I have to learn yet another bloody acronym?
Comments
A commercial future has never looked so appealing under the Tories.
"If Boris doesn’t get a majority, then Corbyn will take control of No10 on Friday 13th in alliance with Sturgeon plus the Liberal Democrats. And if this Corbyn-Sturgeon alliance takes control, their official policy is to give millions of EU citizens the vote in the second referendum. They don’t plan to lose again and they’ve literally written into their manifesto that they will cheat the second referendum — apart from giving millions of foreign citizens the vote, they will rig the question so the ‘choice’ is effectively ‘Remain or Remain’, they will cheat the rules, they will do anything, supported by the likes of Goldman Sachs writing the cheques like they did in 2016, to ensure Remain win."
https://dominiccummings.com/2019/11/27/on-the-referendum-34-batsignal-dont-let-corbyn-sturgeon-cheat-a-second-referendum-with-millions-of-foreign-votes/
However, people might like to know that Dilyn loves to shred paper into tiny bits. And he gets given Dominic Cummins' hate mail to savage!
‘‘Twas promised by Cameron they just never get round to it.