This attitude is an absolute disgrace. Do you not think this matters?
Not really. It is not going to change a vote
The election is over - it is just a matter of counting the votes now
I didn't mean about changing votes, I meant about the fact the Tories have lied, again.
But you don't seem to care about lying, don't you think that's a worrying path we're going down?
You're truly in the Johnson reality distortion field, it's quite a sight to behold if I am honest.
Boris has many faults but he is the only option to defeat Corbyn who has so many faults he makes Boris look a saint
So yes, you do think the lying is okay. Thanks for being honest about it.
No more so than Corbyn and his fully costed manifesto
Fair point - so why don't you vote Lib Dem or Green then?
The point I am making is you're a hypocrite. If you're happy to accept that then fair enough. But you can't take the moral high ground on pretty much anything then.
I think we can take the moral high ground against anyone who wants to see a party infested with antisemites in power, thank you very much.
And yet you're voting for a party infested with Islamophobia. You are a hypocrite, end of story.
So my anecdata for the day. We've spent the day at my parents today and we had Labour canvassers on the road and a huge number of Labour campaigners on the green handing out leaflets to anyone who would have them.
This is Enfield Southgate. I'm honestly surprised there was such a huge Labour presence in this seat it should be fairly safe but it looks like we're making a much better fight of it than I expected.
Perhaps it's just an artefact of there being lots and lots of Labour members available to campaign in London? Do they just chuck them here, there and everywhere as a consequence?
The presence of canvassers doesn't necessarily indicate that a constituency is in play, of course. The only party I've seen campaigning in town is Labour (and the other Mr Rook saw the Labour candidate in the town centre yesterday.) But this is a rock-solid Tory safe seat. The only contest they're fighting here is with the yellows for a distant and useless second place.
It matters not a jot whether Labour has 10 or 200 warm bodies out on the door-knocker, if they are all hearing "your leader is shite - so no".
Trouble is there’s the antithesis of that which is, “I f-ing hate Corbyn but still voted Labour anyway. Soz.”
On that sentiment basically hinges this whole election.
I'm inclined to think it's the latter. People hate Corbyn, but they hate "the Tories" even more. I think Boris is personally quite popular, but he's a Tory nonetheless.
Perversely, I think this makes the anecdotes from labour canvassers sound much worse than they actually are.
From a psychological point of view, so long as people are actively telling you they hate your guy this time round, they are still on your team. They want you to get better. Like a football supporter being angry with the manager but still wanting his club to come good.
You see it in branding all the time when brands with huge amounts of loyalty make terrible mistakes. Corbyn is like when Twinings changed the recipe of their Earl Grey, or when Cadbury started putting less milk chocolate into their Creme Eggs.
It's when people stop shouting about how much they hate what Labour has become and silently vote Conservative that you'll see a Tory landslide. We're not there yet. People hate Corbyn, but the Labour brand remains strong.
I hear you but, in a lot of the WWC areas, Brexit seems to have supplanted Labour as your "brand". That is what is the problem for Labour. Not only is their brand hated but people have turned to an alternative which involves voting Tory.
The majority of PB breathes as a sigh of relief as a greater tory lead is posted.
However, that poll seems not in fact to be that up to date, as it seems to have been conducted largely, or completely, before a very close debate. Only 4 million watched, but it may take a point or two off that total.
I think at the moment we are maybe in a tory majority of 20 zone, with Labour having three days to do anything about that.
The Tories are on average about 10-11% ahead.
Even ignoring other factors (eg Boris' probable out-performance in Labour marginals) such a result would give them a significantly bigger majority than 20.
Not, though, if what people are saying are wild and unprecedently odd patterns of tactical voting are taken into account. A lot of people seem to be scrabbling around in the dark trying either to keep Corbyn or Brexit out. I don't think there's ever been an election like this, in that sense.
Sure. But I am saying: just look at the polls. Because, for every anecdote you can produce - there's a youthquake! - I can do the same - look at the feedback from canvassers and focus groups!
So let's just stick to hard data and the hard data we have are: regular polls, MRP polls, and constituency polls, and ALL of those are now pointing to a sizeable Tory majority. With three days to go.
326 politics has canvassed the canvassers and come up with a prediction of Con 326. Nice to see confidence intervals too.
I see Flavible have Con on 368 and Electoral calculus on Con 348. Flavible was fairly good on the Euros, and 326 on last GE, but could have been beginners luck.
Labour gaining Finchley & Golders Green on this model and Luciana Berger getting 11%. Neither of those will be reflected in the result.
If you think Corbyn is awful, fine, I have no problem with that. You think he's a racist and you have problems with racism fine. Don't vote Labour.
But you can't vote Tory either, because they have their own problems with racism. Their leader has multiple counts of racism and so do their candidates.
If you are happy with that then vote Tory. Fine. But don't pretend you give a toss about racism.
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Even when leaders visit marginal seats they tend to cling to safe areas, presumably aiming for a complaisant press rather than controversy. For example, Boris's nostalgic visit to Clwyd South (he fought the seat in 1997) saw him in Bangor-on-Dee - the epitome of rural Tory brexitism. He might have taken the fight to a Labour stronghold like Rhosllanerchrugog but obviously thought better of it. Pronunciation might have been an issue.
The same is quite likely to be true of Corbyn, though I haven't been following too closely.
Quite different from John Major and his soapbox back in 1992.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies are very popular even if Corbyn isn't and more crucially apart from voting for Brexit Labour Leave voters don't have much in common with Boris Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
I am not totally convinced that pollsters have made all the correct adjustments.
I think my point is like that anti-Brexit bloke that some people seem to like to retweet that has a small number of followers and posts "exclusives" every day as if he is a real journalist (and whose stories are 99% horseshit), I am very wary of randos off twitter presenting their reweighting of polls.
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
Maybe the bigger surprise might not be on the Tory/Labour battles but on the LDs.
The fact that some constituency polling for them is actually quite good but at odds with the national polling still hasn’t been properly explained.
What if they surprise significantly on the upside and walk away with 35 seats?
That could be a BONG! exit poll surprise on Thursday night.
What feels like months ago (but was probably only about a fortnight back) I did some back-of-a-fag-packet reasoning and came up with a guess for the Lib Dems of around 20-22. I still wouldn't be surprised if they got that far, but 35 is implausible. They've a very limited pool of evenly vaguely marginal seats to fish in (of which a decent proportion are Leave-leaning,) so if they were to win a total that healthy they'd need to be taking down quite a lot of Tory seats on massive swings.
To put it another way, if you think they could do as well as 35 I'd be fascinated to see your opinion on exactly which seats they're meant to lose and gain in order to arrive at that figure.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies are very popular even if Corbyn isn't and more crucially apart from voting for Brexit Labour Leave voters don't have much in common with Boris Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
Hmm. I agree with some of that (the popularity of free stuff) but not all of it (having no stuff in common with Boris). You’re overstating the money/economics and understating the values/culture divide.
I think you’re too coloured by your personal dislike of Boris and his Tory party.
This attitude is an absolute disgrace. Do you not think this matters?
Not really. It is not going to change a vote
The election is over - it is just a matter of counting the votes now
I didn't mean about changing votes, I meant about the fact the Tories have lied, again.
But you don't seem to care about lying, don't you think that's a worrying path we're going down?
You're truly in the Johnson reality distortion field, it's quite a sight to behold if I am honest.
Boris has many faults but he is the only option to defeat Corbyn who has so many faults he makes Boris look a saint
So yes, you do think the lying is okay. Thanks for being honest about it.
No more so than Corbyn and his fully costed manifesto
Fair point - so why don't you vote Lib Dem or Green then?
The point I am making is you're a hypocrite. If you're happy to accept that then fair enough. But you can't take the moral high ground on pretty much anything then.
Who do you think you are. I am content to do everything to see Corbyn defeated
I am not a lib dem or green and neither are you but you are going to vote lib dem.
Who is the real hypocrite?
You pretend to take the moral high ground on loads of issues like racism - and yet you vote Tory.
You are a hypocrite, whether you want to admit it or not.
I am also a hypocrite, I'm happy to accept that. Are you?
I may be repeating myself again but I don’t see backing a Tory majority in the 1.3-1.35 box as value.
It might look like it, with hindsight, in four days time but there’s plenty of risk in there.
It’s worth bearing in mind a hung parliament is now rated as about the same chance as Leave / Trump in 2016, and we all know what happened next.
Casino ... as we approach the big day, what is your Nap bet right now, or perhaps you don't have one? Actually, compared with your previous considerable GE betting comments/views, you do seem rather less interested in such aspects this time.
Not so, I don’t think I’ve ever been more interested! I’ve got more on this election than ever before. My strategy is to look for value outside the central herding of 340-360 Tory seats, on both sides of the pyramid.
For example, my most recent play is buying up Con seats on the upside (landslide) side on Betfair exchange.
Have a look at 370+ ups on the Conservative Seats 2 market. The odds on offer there easily beat the bookies.
Casino - Sorry to have misunderstood your betting interest as regards the current GE. On reflection this probably reflects my own greatly reduced time on PB.com to which I only really returned a few weeks ago after the GE was announced. That's not to say that my own betting activity has diminished however! I'm grateful for your suggestion to look at the 370+ up market which is an area I have not previously considered. Since the general consensus this time is that Tory seats might potentially end up anywhere across a 100 seat band, this sounds well worth a look.
Corbyn should have resigned in 2017 on a high, it seems so obvious in hindsight. It's clear he's a drag on Labour and I am ashamed I didn't see that earlier.
Maybe the bigger surprise might not be on the Tory/Labour battles but on the LDs.
The fact that some constituency polling for them is actually quite good but at odds with the national polling still hasn’t been properly explained.
What if they surprise significantly on the upside and walk away with 35 seats?
That could be a BONG! exit poll surprise on Thursday night.
I don't think that will happen, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them make it into the 20s.
Ultimately, they are going to have put on five to eight percentage points of vote share, and that has to go somewhere. Sure, mostly it'll be saving deposits, but the LDs in Scotland mastered maximising their efficiency of their vote, and 2017 showed the LDs in England managing something similar again.
Finally: I think people (by which I mean Labour voters who aren't BJO) are starting to forget about the coalition. And I think that means tactical voting is going to begin to come back. In 1997, the LDs saw their vote share go backwards, and they got (percentage-wise) barely more than they'll manage this year. Yet they got a staggering 46 seats.
I said 21 seats at the start of the campaign, and I still think that's probably a reasonable centre point.
(As an aside, in 1997, when the LDs increased their seat total from 20 to 46, the BBC exit poll only forecast they'd pick up two seats.)
This attitude is an absolute disgrace. Do you not think this matters?
Not really. It is not going to change a vote
The election is over - it is just a matter of counting the votes now
I didn't mean about changing votes, I meant about the fact the Tories have lied, again.
But you don't seem to care about lying, don't you think that's a worrying path we're going down?
You're truly in the Johnson reality distortion field, it's quite a sight to behold if I am honest.
Boris has many faults but he is the only option to defeat Corbyn who has so many faults he makes Boris look a saint
So yes, you do think the lying is okay. Thanks for being honest about it.
No more so than Corbyn and his fully costed manifesto
Fair point - so why don't you vote Lib Dem or Green then?
The point I am making is you're a hypocrite. If you're happy to accept that then fair enough. But you can't take the moral high ground on pretty much anything then.
I think we can take the moral high ground against anyone who wants to see a party infested with antisemites in power, thank you very much.
And yet you're voting for a party infested with Islamophobia. You are a hypocrite, end of story.
For there to be an infestation, I think there would have to be an EHRC investigation into the party. Like there was into the BNP, and there now is into the vile cesspit of the Labour Party that you want to rule us.
I have always been suspicious of self reported canvassing anecdata. Apart from @david_herdson in his famous Tuesday night PB wobble (partly retracted the following day as I recall) people seem to report stuff that matches their bias.
I haven't been able to do any canvassing myself this year, owing to work and church commitments so have only social anecdata to report. That seems to show a lack of interest in the GE, so I forecast a low turnout, which in turn probably means a Tory majority. Interestingly it is the WWC that seem least motivated to vote, so could play the other way.
I reckon Con on 355-360 seats, unchanged from my position at the start of the campaign, but I don't see much value in the markets at present as that seems the consensus.
There is a huge false analogy built into your use of "anecdata." In a scientific context you have Mrs Miggins saying she is sure her cancer is getting better since she started taking x, and then you have a study of 100 Mrs Migginses taking x, vs another 100 taking placebo, and you are making objective measurements of Mrs Miggins which are independent of her state of mind. Polling is NOT analogous to your study; it has the numbers, but it has neither the control nor the objectivity. It is like giving x to 100 Mrs Migginses and asking them if they think it makes their cancer better. It is just anecdote aggregation.
Here is a possibility: perhaps people are much, much more likely to lie to a pollster on the phone than to a canvasser face to face. I know I am, because I am not a convincing actor. If that is true of other people then it is perfectly possible that anecdotal accounts of face to face encounters are inherently more likely to be correct then polling results.
And your "apart from Herdson" sounds a bit like "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
I am perfectly aware of the risks of anecdata, but by the nature of my job I do rub shoulders with a fairly broad spectrum of society, both patients and staff. While Leicester is younger, poorer, and more BME than the nation, the county is much more typical of Shire and small town Middle England.
It is qualitative, not quantitative, but so are focus groups.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
You have to hope they have adjusted their modelling after last time though...
They adjusted their methodologies after their failure in 2015.
Yes, and over-corrected as it turns out.
Which suggests that if they are wrong, it would be the other way, or at least would have reduced the Labour understatement vis a vis last time.
I don’t hang too much on the polls though. They’ve not had the best track record of late.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies are very popular even if Corbyn isn't and more crucially apart from voting for Brexit Labour Leave voters don't have much in common with Boris Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
Hmm. I agree with some of that (the popularity of free stuff) but not all of it (having no stuff in common with Boris). You’re overstating the money/economics and understating the values/culture divide.
I think you’re too coloured by your personal dislike of Boris and his Tory party.
This was based on polling.
You ask 10,000 Labour voters who voted Leave and their views/hopes for Brexit is not to see the UK become Singapore on the Thames.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies are very popular even if Corbyn isn't and more crucially apart from voting for Brexit Labour Leave voters don't have much in common with Boris Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
I am not totally convinced that pollsters have made all the correct adjustments.
I think my point is like that anti-Brexit bloke that some people seem to like to retweet that has a small number of followers and posts "exclusives" every day as if he is a real journalist (and whose stories are 99% horseshit), I am very wary of randos off twitter presenting their reweighting of polls.
He tweeted some 'Breaking News' earlier than Lab were retreating from marginals and into seats they hold as good news in terms of a HP. Not sure I would read it as such.
Has anyone got any views on who will get the most votes between the Brexit party and the Greens? A couple of bookies have this as a market and I like to bet on these kind of things but cannot make my mind up (they are both about 5/6)
So... The Brexit Party is not standing in 320-odd seats, while the Greens are not standing in perhaps 40. That means that BXP needs to get almost twice the vote share of the Greens in their seats.
I also suspect that Mr Johnson's "Get Brexit Done" means that BXP is more likely to get squeezed by the Greens.
Given both parties got very similar vote shares in 2017, I'm going to go Green.
I've just been feeding the latest BMG polling data into Baxter, which came up with a meagre Tory majority of 24. I'm convinced that Baxter has significantly changed his methodology recently since the regular 60-90 seat majorities we were seeing just 6-8 weeks ago are no more and instead we are fed a regular diet of 12-45 seat majorities, very seldom outside these parameters. What I *did* find interesting however was in playing with the seat prediction options, one can select the so-called 2018 boundaries, based on a 600 seat, instead of the present 650 seat configuration. On running this option out of curiosity, I was amazed to discover that this produced a Tory majority of no less than 110 seats, with the Tories winning 355, Labour fewer than half as many on 174 and the LibDems bringing up the rear on just 12 seats. Bring on the 2024 GE is what I say, always assuming that the Tories, if re-elected, actually finally get around to implementing the boundary changes which are now EIGHT YEARS OVERDUE!
Just goes to show how outdated the boundaries are if they change the result by such a huge margin.
Or how Gerry mandered they are going to be!
No idea, haven't read enough about it, just pointing out an alternative interpretation
Neither of you is right.
If there were only one seat, the Tories would have 100% of the MPs.
If there were a million seats, the Tories would have (say) 42% of MPs
600 seats is a significant quantum closer to the former than 650.
(Further proof that Clegg didn’t understand what he was doing edit/ or rather that he did, eventually)
Beg to differ. The movement from existing to "2018" boundaries does three things:
1) redraws boundaries based on more recent census data 2) equalises seat sizes to within +/- 5% (or is it 10%?) of each other 3) reduces from 650 to 600 seats total
The projected increase in Tory majority from one to the other is some function of these three factors. My guess would be that the first factor is basically a wash, and the second factor outweighs the third, maybe 60:40. I'm sure Baxter himself would have a better guess.
How the gerrymandering works: (2) and (3) combine to ensure that every seat has to be redrawn. (1) is to be based on registered voters rather than population, so electoral rolls not census. The point is to make Labour-leaning urban areas, with a large transient population, appear smaller, so there will be fewer Labour-leaning seats created.
That nymag.com article by Andrew Sullivan, "Boris’s Blundering Brilliance" is an excellent explainer of Boris for our cousins over there. But it also made it even clearer to me why Boris, for all his peccadillos, is such a popular and successful politician.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
If he wants to make a name for himself, he needs to produce a forecast that diverges from the herd and then hope for a piece of luck. Just saying.
So my anecdata for the day. We've spent the day at my parents today and we had Labour canvassers on the road and a huge number of Labour campaigners on the green handing out leaflets to anyone who would have them.
This is Enfield Southgate. I'm honestly surprised there was such a huge Labour presence in this seat it should be fairly safe but it looks like we're making a much better fight of it than I expected.
Perhaps it's just an artefact of there being lots and lots of Labour members available to campaign in London? Do they just chuck them here, there and everywhere as a consequence?
The presence of canvassers doesn't necessarily indicate that a constituency is in play, of course. The only party I've seen campaigning in town is Labour (and the other Mr Rook saw the Labour candidate in the town centre yesterday.) But this is a rock-solid Tory safe seat. The only contest they're fighting here is with the yellows for a distant and useless second place.
It matters not a jot whether Labour has 10 or 200 warm bodies out on the door-knocker, if they are all hearing "your leader is shite - so no".
Trouble is there’s the antithesis of that which is, “I f-ing hate Corbyn but still voted Labour anyway. Soz.”
On that sentiment basically hinges this whole election.
I'm inclined to think it's the latter. People hate Corbyn, but they hate "the Tories" even more. I think Boris is personally quite popular, but he's a Tory nonetheless.
Perversely, I think this makes the anecdotes from labour canvassers sound much worse than they actually are.
From a psychological point of view, so long as people are actively telling you they hate your guy this time round, they are still on your team. They want you to get better. Like a football supporter being angry with the manager but still wanting his club to come good.
You see it in branding all the time when brands with huge amounts of loyalty make terrible mistakes. Corbyn is like when Twinings changed the recipe of their Earl Grey, or when Cadbury started putting less milk chocolate into their Creme Eggs.
It's when people stop shouting about how much they hate what Labour has become and silently vote Conservative that you'll see a Tory landslide. We're not there yet. People hate Corbyn, but the Labour brand remains strong.
Yes, I think that’s probably right.
The truth is probably somewhere inbetween: a number of lifelong Labour voters will move over to support Boris, but nothing like the number that hate Corbyn.
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
I think it also that he finds "please leave my town" quite a common reception and doesn't want more of it on the media. An Etonian Southerner canvassing in Durham is likely to get quite a lot of that.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
If he wants to make a name for himself, he needs to produce a forecast that diverges from the herd and then hope for a piece of luck. Just saying.
I am not totally against weirdos from the t'interweb who make predictions e.g Rod Crosby. But I remember really querying him and pretty much all of the stuff he was doing he could point to peer reviewed academic papers, and he had a very good track record over many years.
Maybe the bigger surprise might not be on the Tory/Labour battles but on the LDs.
The fact that some constituency polling for them is actually quite good but at odds with the national polling still hasn’t been properly explained.
What if they surprise significantly on the upside and walk away with 35 seats?
That could be a BONG! exit poll surprise on Thursday night.
What feels like months ago (but was probably only about a fortnight back) I did some back-of-a-fag-packet reasoning and came up with a guess for the Lib Dems of around 20-22. I still wouldn't be surprised if they got that far, but 35 is implausible. They've a very limited pool of evenly vaguely marginal seats to fish in (of which a decent proportion are Leave-leaning,) so if they were to win a total that healthy they'd need to be taking down quite a lot of Tory seats on massive swings.
To put it another way, if you think they could do as well as 35 I'd be fascinated to see your opinion on exactly which seats they're meant to lose and gain in order to arrive at that figure.
This would be on the basis they took all of Wimbledon, Guildford, Winchester, Wokingham, Surrey SW, Esher & Walton etc.
I may be repeating myself again but I don’t see backing a Tory majority in the 1.3-1.35 box as value.
It might look like it, with hindsight, in four days time but there’s plenty of risk in there.
It’s worth bearing in mind a hung parliament is now rated as about the same chance as Leave / Trump in 2016, and we all know what happened next.
Casino ... as we approach the big day, what is your Nap bet right now, or perhaps you don't have one? Actually, compared with your previous considerable GE betting comments/views, you do seem rather less interested in such aspects this time.
Not so, I don’t think I’ve ever been more interested! I’ve got more on this election than ever before. My strategy is to look for value outside the central herding of 340-360 Tory seats, on both sides of the pyramid.
For example, my most recent play is buying up Con seats on the upside (landslide) side on Betfair exchange.
Have a look at 370+ ups on the Conservative Seats 2 market. The odds on offer there easily beat the bookies.
Casino - Sorry to have misunderstood your betting interest as regards the current GE. On reflection this probably reflects my own greatly reduced time on PB.com to which I only really returned a few weeks ago after the GE was announced. That's not to say that my own betting activity has diminished however! I'm grateful for your suggestion to look at the 370+ up market which is an area I have not previously considered. Since the general consensus this time is that Tory seats might potentially end up anywhere across a 100 seat band, this sounds well worth a look.
No probs, Peter.
Just to be extra especially unhelpful it’s possible the herders have got it bang on this time. But I still think the value (based on what we know and don’t know now) is out to the sides!
This attitude is an absolute disgrace. Do you not think this matters?
Not really. It is not going to change a vote
The election is over - it is just a matter of counting the votes now
I didn't mean about changing votes, I meant about the fact the Tories have lied, again.
But you don't seem to care about lying, don't you think that's a worrying path we're going down?
You're truly in the Johnson reality distortion field, it's quite a sight to behold if I am honest.
Boris has many faults but he is the only option to defeat Corbyn who has so many faults he makes Boris look a saint
So yes, you do think the lying is okay. Thanks for being honest about it.
No more so than Corbyn and his fully costed manifesto
Fair point - so why don't you vote Lib Dem or Green then?
The point I am making is you're a hypocrite. If you're happy to accept that then fair enough. But you can't take the moral high ground on pretty much anything then.
I think we can take the moral high ground against anyone who wants to see a party infested with antisemites in power, thank you very much.
And yet you're voting for a party infested with Islamophobia. You are a hypocrite, end of story.
I think if you actually read Boris's article, he was defending the right of Muslim women wear the niqab. I would remind you that most Muslim ladies in the UK choose NOT to wear it.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies are very popular even if Corbyn isn't and more crucially apart from voting for Brexit Labour Leave voters don't have much in common with Boris Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
Hmm. I agree with some of that (the popularity of free stuff) but not all of it (having no stuff in common with Boris). You’re overstating the money/economics and understating the values/culture divide.
I think you’re too coloured by your personal dislike of Boris and his Tory party.
This was based on polling.
You ask 10,000 Labour voters who voted Leave and their views/hopes for Brexit is not to see the UK become Singapore on the Thames.
Yes, but the Tories under Boris aren’t proposing that.
They’ve dressed to the economic left but kept their identity/cultural anchor firmly in the Leave camp.
This hinges on the “me grandad would turn in his grave” vote and how they react to/overcome that on Thursday.
I am not totally against weirdos from the t'interweb who make predictions e.g Rod Crosby. But I remember really querying him and pretty much all of the stuff he was doing he could point to peer reviewed academic papers, and he had a very good track record over many years.
Rod may have had some eccentric views, putting it very mildly, but when it came to polling, elections, politics, and statistics he really knew what he was talking about.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
You have to hope they have adjusted their modelling after last time though...
They adjusted their methodologies after their failure in 2015.
Interesting. At what point is Hung Parliament worth a nibble?
Of course, BoZo may not be bothered by the size of his majority as to whether they are true believers. That was certainly his approach to his parliamentary majority since becoming leader.
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
I think it also that he finds "please leave my town" quite a common reception and doesn't want more of it on the media. An Etonian Southerner canvassing in Durham is likely to get quite a lot of that.
Possibly. My question would be: where are these Tory-held marginals? Only Chingford is mentioned. Are they disproportionately concentrated in and around London?
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
I think it also that he finds "please leave my town" quite a common reception and doesn't want more of it on the media. An Etonian Southerner canvassing in Durham is likely to get quite a lot of that.
Well, I suspect the strategy represents caution; just find it odd that neither Johnson or Corbyn are visiting many, if at all, seats where the YouGov MRP model says are changing hands. As I said, worth pondering for betting purposes.
Has anyone got any views on who will get the most votes between the Brexit party and the Greens? A couple of bookies have this as a market and I like to bet on these kind of things but cannot make my mind up (they are both about 5/6)
So... The Brexit Party is not standing in 320-odd seats, while the Greens are not standing in perhaps 40. That means that BXP needs to get almost twice the vote share of the Greens in their seats.
I also suspect that Mr Johnson's "Get Brexit Done" means that BXP is more likely to get squeezed by the Greens.
Given both parties got very similar vote shares in 2017, I'm going to go Green.
That’s a good point.
BXP didnt stand in 2017. And Brexit looked like it had been achieved so UKIP vote was depressed.
It would be great if somebody could point me to the raw data that those crosses in the Chris Cook tweet is from...I am tempted to add it to the spreadsheet.
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
I think it also that he finds "please leave my town" quite a common reception and doesn't want more of it on the media. An Etonian Southerner canvassing in Durham is likely to get quite a lot of that.
That is curious info from Rentoul. NOW I AM WORRIED AGAIN
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
Although 2017 there were also very clear other trends i.e. gap closing week on week, supplementary closing. And we had some pollsters saying different / we had had Labour leads etc.
Also, this bloke in his basement has been told by YouGov bods what he is doing isn't valid before.
Indeed, Chris Curtis did comprehensive debunking, I did have chat with another pollster earlier on this week on why the polls might be wrong for different reasons this time.
Simple truth Corbyn's policies Johnson.
They want higher taxes and spending, they want economic protectionism, they want more benefits etc.
Hmm. I agree with some of that (the popularity of free stuff) but not all of it (having no stuff in common with Boris). You’re overstating the money/economics and understating the values/culture divide.
I think you’re too coloured by your personal dislike of Boris and his Tory party.
This was based on polling.
You ask 10,000 Labour voters who voted Leave and their views/hopes for Brexit is not to see the UK become Singapore on the Thames.
Yes, but the Tories under Boris aren’t proposing that.
They’ve dressed to the economic left but kept their identity/cultural anchor firmly in the Leave camp.
This hinges on the “me grandad would turn in his grave” vote and how they react to/overcome that on Thursday.
They're not proposing it openly. It may be there secret plan. Certainly, we know a lot of their major donors are into this kind of stuff. The truth is we have no idea what they will do with Brexit because they won't give us an honest answer. But if they have a majority they have five years to do whatever the fuck they like. That's why these people's grandads would never have voted for them. And neither will they if they have any sense.
Centrist Dad seems to do re-weighting as well. But not being a stats expert, I really have no idea whether what he is doing is "correct" or not.
I'm very much inclined to believe he's wrong - although he claims he called 2017 right from doing a similar thing on the polls then - but I posted it because I know some here like seeing their posts.
Polling average - Con +10% | "Centrist Phone" claims Actual Con lead: 2.84%
Bullshit....There is polling inaccuracies and there is...
To be fair
2017
Ipsos MORI - 8% Tory lead
BMG - 13% Tory lead
ICM - 12% Tory lead
ComRes - 10% Tory lead
Reality = Tory lead of 2.5%
You have to hope they have adjusted their modelling after last time though...
They adjusted their methodologies after their failure in 2015.
That is curious info from Rentoul. NOW I AM WORRIED AGAIN
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
I thought the North was full of men in cloth caps swooning over "Boris"? Odd that he's not showing his face there.
Maybe the bigger surprise might not be on the Tory/Labour battles but on the LDs.
The fact that some constituency polling for them is actually quite good but at odds with the national polling still hasn’t been properly explained.
What if they surprise significantly on the upside and walk away with 35 seats?
That could be a BONG! exit poll surprise on Thursday night.
What feels like months ago (but was probably only about a fortnight back) I did some back-of-a-fag-packet reasoning and came up with a guess for the Lib Dems of around 20-22. I still wouldn't be surprised if they got that far, but 35 is implausible. They've a very limited pool of evenly vaguely marginal seats to fish in (of which a decent proportion are Leave-leaning,) so if they were to win a total that healthy they'd need to be taking down quite a lot of Tory seats on massive swings.
To put it another way, if you think they could do as well as 35 I'd be fascinated to see your opinion on exactly which seats they're meant to lose and gain in order to arrive at that figure.
This would be on the basis they took all of Wimbledon, Guildford, Winchester, Wokingham, Surrey SW, Esher & Walton etc.
Places like that.
Would depend on rather a lot of "places like that" flipping in that case. The available evidence from two separate polling sources (the MRP, which has previous form for being reliable, and the Deltapoll constituency surveys, which have all produced data fairly close to the MRP predictions) does not suggest a cascade of posh commuter belt seats on the scale needed.
How much effect will a PM visit have on constituency voters? A small buzz but he’s in and out in an hour and there’s probably one or two hundred voters won round and a local Tory candidate who is buzzing. But far more important is the optics of the PM meeting every day folk, all the photo ops but with no protesters or car crash moments which are much easier to do in Tory seats. He’ll win over thousands of voters nationally via the papers and TV if he can pull a pint and crack a good joke without being heckled about the NHS. In the past 3 days he’s cancelled visits to Bolton and Rochester to avoid protesters and crap optics, we know what happened in South Yorkshire when locals accosted him over the floods.
With the exceptions of obvious marginals like Cheltenham and Chingford I wouldn’t take much notice about what seats he’s in, it’s all about the national campaign
Question....how many days out was it when Dave started to go to all the seats nobody thought he could win, but did? And Ed was found in seats he never should have been losing?
Maybe the bigger surprise might not be on the Tory/Labour battles but on the LDs.
The fact that some constituency polling for them is actually quite good but at odds with the national polling still hasn’t been properly explained.
What if they surprise significantly on the upside and walk away with 35 seats?
That could be a BONG! exit poll surprise on Thursday night.
What feels like months ago (but was probably only about a fortnight back) I did some back-of-a-fag-packet reasoning and came up with a guess for the Lib Dems of around 20-22. I still wouldn't be surprised if they got that far, but 35 is implausible. They've a very limited pool of evenly vaguely marginal seats to fish in (of which a decent proportion are Leave-leaning,) so if they were to win a total that healthy they'd need to be taking down quite a lot of Tory seats on massive swings.
To put it another way, if you think they could do as well as 35 I'd be fascinated to see your opinion on exactly which seats they're meant to lose and gain in order to arrive at that figure.
This would be on the basis they took all of Wimbledon, Guildford, Winchester, Wokingham, Surrey SW, Esher & Walton etc.
Places like that.
Would depend on rather a lot of "places like that" flipping in that case. The available evidence from two separate polling sources (the MRP, which has previous form for being reliable, and the Deltapoll constituency surveys, which have all produced data fairly close to the MRP predictions) does not suggest a cascade of posh commuter belt seats on the scale needed.
That is curious info from Rentoul. NOW I AM WORRIED AGAIN
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
But the Con strategy is to reel in those northern seats. It is Boris who can reach those parts, not the stereotypical Tory politician.
That is curious info from Rentoul. NOW I AM WORRIED AGAIN
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
But the Con strategy is to reel in those northern seats. It is Boris who can reach those parts, not the stereotypical Tory politician.
Well then that means we are potentially looking at a 2017 shocker
Boris hasn’t been on a straight campaigning visit to Labour held target seat since 20 November (County Durham). All his recent visits have been to Tory held seats (see Chingford today). Worried about Remainer votes in Souther England....?
Corbyn has been going to seats with narrow Tory majorities. If you closed your eyes to the polling, the two parties are behaving as though the Tories are losing seats to Labour.
Of course this might not be relevant with the war being fought on social media, but worth pondering at least.
Possibly. I suspect he also wants to keep an eye on his own seat.
Another possibility is that he wants to downplay the suggestion of a Tory landslide as it may mobilise anti-Tory voting. 2017 showed the dangers of thinking there would be a Tory landslide.
I think it also that he finds "please leave my town" quite a common reception and doesn't want more of it on the media. An Etonian Southerner canvassing in Durham is likely to get quite a lot of that.
Chippy lot up there stuck in the 50's class war.
No shortage of Etonians and Harrovians in Durham. But they don't like the Oxbridge types. Who wants to be reminded that they won the consolation prize?
That is curious info from Rentoul. NOW I AM WORRIED AGAIN
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
It's probably just Johnson not wanting to be complacent like the Tories were in 2017.
That nymag.com article by Andrew Sullivan, "Boris’s Blundering Brilliance" is an excellent explainer of Boris for our cousins over there. But it also made it even clearer to me why Boris, for all his peccadillos, is such a popular and successful politician.
Get a room. If you're lucky BJ might even pay for it.
On the other hand, in 2017 May was being deployed into what turned out to be unwinnable Labour seats whereas keeping her on more marginal ground would have been more intelligent.
Since in this campaign the Tories have to both defend and attack, they may have chosen to deploy Boris to defend on the ground while doing their attacking from the air.
@TSE - looks to me like CCHQ are worried the late threat is to Tory seats in the SE and London from Lab/LD tacticals.
It’s possible the air war has already done its job in the north/midlands.
BoZo visited Cheadle Hulme (Cheadle constituency - very possible LD target) and Westhoughton (Bolton West constituency - very possible LAB target) yesterday so I don't think the 'job is done' in the North yet. The Westhoughton visit was aborted due to protestors.
I've just been feeding the latest BMG polling data into Baxter, which came up with a meagre Tory majority of 24. I'm convinced that Baxter has significantly changed his methodology recently since the regular 60-90 seat majorities we were seeing just 6-8 weeks ago are no more and instead we are fed a regular diet of 12-45 seat majorities, very seldom outside these parameters. What I *did* find interesting however was in playing with the seat prediction options, one can select the so-called 2018 boundaries, based on a 600 seat, instead of the present 650 seat configuration. On running this option out of curiosity, I was amazed to discover that this produced a Tory majority of no less than 110 seats, with the Tories winning 355, Labour fewer than half as many on 174 and the LibDems bringing up the rear on just 12 seats. Bring on the 2024 GE is what I say, always assuming that the Tories, if re-elected, actually finally get around to implementing the boundary changes which are now EIGHT YEARS OVERDUE!
Just goes to show how outdated the boundaries are if they change the result by such a huge margin.
The huge margin in question is an effect of the change from 650 to 600, not the change to boundaries per se
Does anyone know where RodCrosby is lurking today? Do we know what his predictions are? He rightly called Trump and Brexit....so he's worth tracking down....
I have always been suspicious of self reported canvassing anecdata. Apart from @david_herdson in his famous Tuesday night PB wobble (partly retracted the following day as I recall) people seem to report stuff that matches their bias.
I haven't been able to do any canvassing myself this year, owing to work and church commitments so have only social anecdata to report. That seems to show a lack of interest in the GE, so I forecast a low turnout, which in turn probably means a Tory majority. Interestingly it is the WWC that seem least motivated to vote, so could play the other way.
I reckon Con on 355-360 seats, unchanged from my position at the start of the campaign, but I don't see much value in the markets at present as that seems the consensus.
There is a huge false analogy built into your use of "anecdata." In a scientific context you have Mrs Miggins saying she is sure her cancer is getting better since she started taking x, and then you have a study of 100 Mrs Migginses taking x, vs another 100 taking placebo, and you are making objective measurements of Mrs Miggins which are independent of her state of mind. Polling is NOT analogous to your study; it has the numbers, but it has neither the control nor the objectivity. It is like giving x to 100 Mrs Migginses and asking them if they think it makes their cancer better. It is just anecdote aggregation.
Here is a possibility: perhaps people are much, much more likely to lie to a pollster on the phone than to a canvasser face to face. I know I am, because I am not a convincing actor. If that is true of other people then it is perfectly possible that anecdotal accounts of face to face encounters are inherently more likely to be correct then polling results.
And your "apart from Herdson" sounds a bit like "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
I am perfectly aware of the risks of anecdata, but by the nature of my job I do rub shoulders with a fairly broad spectrum of society, both patients and staff. While Leicester is younger, poorer, and more BME than the nation, the county is much more typical of Shire and small town Middle England.
It is qualitative, not quantitative, but so are focus groups.
You misunderstand; I was on about the value, rather then the dangers, of anecdote.
Question....how many days out was it when Dave started to go to all the seats nobody thought he could win, but did? And Ed was found in seats he never should have been losing?
Given the terrible approval ratings for both Corbyn and Johnson, I imagine their handlers are keeping them away from where it matters.
How much effect will a PM visit have on constituency voters? A small buzz but he’s in and out in an hour and there’s probably one or two hundred voters won round and a local Tory candidate who is buzzing. But far more important is the optics of the PM meeting every day folk, all the photo ops but with no protesters or car crash moments which are much easier to do in Tory seats. He’ll win over thousands of voters nationally via the papers and TV if he can pull a pint and crack a good joke without being heckled about the NHS. In the past 3 days he’s cancelled visits to Bolton and Rochester to avoid protesters and crap optics, we know what happened in South Yorkshire when locals accosted him over the floods.
With the exceptions of obvious marginals like Cheltenham and Chingford I wouldn’t take much notice about what seats he’s in, it’s all about the national campaign
This. In an age of vicious Momentumites and social media, pumping out joyful video in friendly surroundings is worth more than a brief trip to be be pelted with eggs on enemy soil.
I do feel rather neglected in all General Elections and locals. In 15 years we’ve only been canvassed once and that was the holding/completely dominant party. Ultra Safe seats don’t allow me to have fun others seem to. Not that I’m complaining. Our MP is a very nice chap.
Just sit back and let Worcester Woman (or whoever the swing voter has been identified as this time, Bolsover Brian?) decide for you who your next government will be. You’re just a spectator.
There was an Issac Asimov short story about an election which was decided by picking the most typical voter in the country and just asking them. Saved a lot of time and effort.
Does anyone know where RodCrosby is lurking today? Do we know what his predictions are? He rightly called Trump and Brexit....so he's worth tracking down....
While you are all obsessing over polls and, BTW, I still think a HP is a very real possibility, we appear to have missed the real story of the day.
Which is - TA DAH!!!
Boris has finally told the truth about Brexit.
Yes, really!
In an interview with Tim Shipman in today’s Sunday Times he describes Brexit as an “incubus”. As indeed it is. No wonder he wants to get it done. Still, why embark on the bloody thing in the first place if it’s such a nightmare.
I must admit that one reason I would find a HP fascinating would be to see the reaction of EU leaders. It would also serve the Tories right. They really do not deserve to win.
Anyway, thank God it will all over be soon. If I’d wanted elections every 10 minutes I’d have gone to live in Italy.
Comments
https://twitter.com/TNiskakangas/status/1203729511658995713?s=20
But you can't vote Tory either, because they have their own problems with racism. Their leader has multiple counts of racism and so do their candidates.
If you are happy with that then vote Tory. Fine. But don't pretend you give a toss about racism.
The same is quite likely to be true of Corbyn, though I haven't been following too closely.
Quite different from John Major and his soapbox back in 1992.
I think my point is like that anti-Brexit bloke that some people seem to like to retweet that has a small number of followers and posts "exclusives" every day as if he is a real journalist (and whose stories are 99% horseshit), I am very wary of randos off twitter presenting their reweighting of polls.
How workers split the week before Cameron won his majority in 2015
Conservative 29%
Labour 36%
LibDem 15%
How they split today, before Johnson may win his:
Conservative 48%
Labour 31%
Lib Dem 9%
YouGov data
#ge2019 #Brexit
To put it another way, if you think they could do as well as 35 I'd be fascinated to see your opinion on exactly which seats they're meant to lose and gain in order to arrive at that figure.
I think you’re too coloured by your personal dislike of Boris and his Tory party.
I'm grateful for your suggestion to look at the 370+ up market which is an area I have not previously considered. Since the general consensus this time is that Tory seats might potentially end up anywhere across a 100 seat band, this sounds well worth a look.
However, I still remain hopeful of a HP.
I am off to bed now, have a lovely evening all.
Ultimately, they are going to have put on five to eight percentage points of vote share, and that has to go somewhere. Sure, mostly it'll be saving deposits, but the LDs in Scotland mastered maximising their efficiency of their vote, and 2017 showed the LDs in England managing something similar again.
Finally: I think people (by which I mean Labour voters who aren't BJO) are starting to forget about the coalition. And I think that means tactical voting is going to begin to come back. In 1997, the LDs saw their vote share go backwards, and they got (percentage-wise) barely more than they'll manage this year. Yet they got a staggering 46 seats.
I said 21 seats at the start of the campaign, and I still think that's probably a reasonable centre point.
(As an aside, in 1997, when the LDs increased their seat total from 20 to 46, the BBC exit poll only forecast they'd pick up two seats.)
It is qualitative, not quantitative, but so are focus groups.
Which suggests that if they are wrong, it would be the other way, or at least would have reduced the Labour understatement vis a vis last time.
I don’t hang too much on the polls though. They’ve not had the best track record of late.
You ask 10,000 Labour voters who voted Leave and their views/hopes for Brexit is not to see the UK become Singapore on the Thames.
https://twitter.com/BryanDFischer/status/1203791958474252288
Does that mean we can have the Scottish National Party of England?
(You know, like Labour but without the racism and with a plausible leader.)
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1203791237280665601
The truth is probably somewhere inbetween: a number of lifelong Labour voters will move over to support Boris, but nothing like the number that hate Corbyn.
Places like that.
Just to be extra especially unhelpful it’s possible the herders have got it bang on this time. But I still think the value (based on what we know and don’t know now) is out to the sides!
They’ve dressed to the economic left but kept their identity/cultural anchor firmly in the Leave camp.
This hinges on the “me grandad would turn in his grave” vote and how they react to/overcome that on Thursday.
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/596426141847711745
Of course, BoZo may not be bothered by the size of his majority as to whether they are true believers. That was certainly his approach to his parliamentary majority since becoming leader.
They get an awful lot of political power for 1-2% of the vote.
They’re dead-centre so a regular coalition partner for both the left and the right.
All they really care about is Swedish staying an official language in Finland.
It’s possible the air war has already done its job in the north/midlands.
Yet it is entrely opposed by the polling, and I do NOT believe there is any private polling which starkly disagrees. Such private polling is an urban myth.
So why is it happening? Perhaps they have realised that Boris is genuinely an asset in Tory marginals, but not so much in long-shot seats in the North. That would make sense. You employ your best artillery where it reliably works, not where it might just take out the admiral of the fleet, on a 1000/1 chance.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1203797030583316483/photo/1
In the past 3 days he’s cancelled visits to Bolton and Rochester to avoid protesters and crap optics, we know what happened in South Yorkshire when locals accosted him over the floods.
With the exceptions of obvious marginals like Cheltenham and Chingford I wouldn’t take much notice about what seats he’s in, it’s all about the national campaign
I’m laying out plausible ‘shock’ scenarios.
If you're lucky BJ might even pay for it.
Since in this campaign the Tories have to both defend and attack, they may have chosen to deploy Boris to defend on the ground while doing their attacking from the air.
I hope!
Do we know what his predictions are? He rightly called Trump and Brexit....so he's worth tracking down....
Which is - TA DAH!!!
Boris has finally told the truth about Brexit.
Yes, really!
In an interview with Tim Shipman in today’s Sunday Times he describes Brexit as an “incubus”. As indeed it is. No wonder he wants to get it done.
Still, why embark on the bloody thing in the first place if it’s such a nightmare.
I must admit that one reason I would find a HP fascinating would be to see the reaction of EU leaders. It would also serve the Tories right. They really do not deserve to win.
Anyway, thank God it will all over be soon. If I’d wanted elections every 10 minutes I’d have gone to live in Italy.