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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Introducing the PB weekly average of YouGov daily polls
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Introducing the PB weekly average of YouGov daily polls
The biggest in terms of volume of output is, of course, YouGov which carries out five surveys each week – four for the Sun and one for the Sunday Times. Sometimes these get reported at other times they don’t.
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Averages are fine for the time being.
They were always going to have to draw a line sooner or later. They must be wishing they'd done it sooner so they weren't lumbered with all the stupid that they've already pretended to agree with.
http://m.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c1d92086-7a13-11e3-8211-00144feabdc0.html
My guess is that folk will still hyperventilate when things spike for a day when the daily figure comes out, the calming reassurance of the weekly poll will only come round the next Monday.
Not that I'm knocking OGH's plan, I think it's a good one. Perhaps more so that the old PAPA "poll of polls" (was AndyJS resurrecting that one?) since the YGs it's averaging are more regular and comparable.
Free the Thailand One!
Bring back SeanT!
Overthrow the oppressive tyranny of Old Grumpy Head!
Anyway, it's odd how the results of mid-term opinion polls (of how people say they would vote in a general election "tomorrow") are always different from the eventual result. It's almost as if a significant minority of people are giving an answer to a different question from the one they are actually asked. A bit like the 2011 referendum, in which a lot of people thought that the question was "Do you like Nick Clegg?".
The difference between mid-term opinion polls and actual general election results is a measure of the thickness of the peasants and the dimness of the proles.
"Labour created a culture of low expectations for state school pupils, Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary has admitted.
He said it was a ‘great crime’ that the last government had failed to pushed children more than simply aim for them to achieve a C grade at GCSE level.
He also admitted that exams had been dumbed down in recent years, saying ‘yes, there are elements of grade inflation’.
Labour now wants to introduce licences for teachers, stripping them of their right to be in the classroom if they fail assessments carried out every five years.
In a startlingly frank admission, Mr Hunt said: ‘The great crime was an awful lot of effort being put on kids getting a C at GCSE, then not going further. There should be no limits - the system should be saying how far can this child go?’
Schools were too focused on the pass grade, ‘C’, because of its significance in league tables.
He said that education should not just be about exam results.
‘What do people who send their children to private school want? It’s not just smaller class sizes. It’s the playing fields and the after-school stuff like music and drama because they help to build confidence and character.’
He told the Times: ‘We need to work out how we can generate all those elements for everyone within a broad education and value them alongside academic rigour.’
Labour would not shut surviving grammar schools but Mr Hunt said their social mix should be questioned.
‘If they are simply about merit why do we see the kind of demographics and class make-up within them?’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2538260/Labour-admits-great-crime-education-Tristram-Hunt-says-previous-Government-failed-push-children-excel-dumbed-exams.html#ixzz2qFVrcXrK
“If national parliaments all around the EU were regularly and unilaterally able to choose which bits of EU law they would apply and which bits they wouldn’t, the European single market wouldn’t work,” said William Hague
Memo to Bald Billy: the Tory backbenches have no desire whatsoever for that to happen. They want the English to have a privileged position because we're English. Haven't you got a clue what's driving UKIP in the polls?
Not just Tory backbenchers
"all that these hundred or so MPs have done (I should add I am one of them) is pick up and endorse the unanimous conclusion of the all-party Commons European Scrutiny Committee."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglascarswellmp/100253602/im-one-of-the-mps-who-signed-that-letter-why-does-hague-think-our-veto-plan-is-unrealistic/
This looks like a way for parliament to bind the way British ministers vote at the Council of Ministers, not a proposal to allow individual countries (via their parliaments) to randomly veto stuff.
If the tories are not going to be rewarded for their economic success (as per 97) they have a major problem. What else can they do to make sure that they at least remain the major party? Benefit reform remains popular in concept even although support soon weakens when the individuals affected are paraded before the media. The education reforms seem to be becoming more popular too but as with the economy there is little, in fact no sign of the tories benefitting much. Will Hunt's mea culpa today help? I doubt it as not enough people will pay attention.
The tories are left hanging on to the idea of swingback. At the moment the government is unpopular and having to make unpopular decisions. Will it be different if (it is not a when) Labour have to make choices too?
The prospects of an easy tory win delivered on the back of an economic recovery are fading. There is much for the tories to do.
This looks like a way for parliament to bind the way British ministers vote at the Council of Ministers, not a proposal to allow individual countries (via their parliaments) to randomly veto stuff.
In other words the all party committee are simply advocating that Parliament, rather than the government of the day, has at least a bigger say in how the UK votes are cast. There is much to be said for this although it is foolish to ignore the trading reality of votes in the EU where quid pro quo is very much the name of the game. The risk is that Parliament stops the UK ministers from playing that game effectively.
If those behind the latest proposal cannot see the difference between that and Parliament reasserting sovereignty by determining what EU legislation applies to the UK I really despair. They are either beyond stupid or just seriously dishonest.
If those behind the latest proposal cannot see the difference between that and Parliament reasserting sovereignty by determining what EU legislation applies to the UK I really despair. They are either beyond stupid or just seriously dishonest.
TBF the report is a little bit strangely phrased. Maybe they made it deliberately ambiguous so all the parties could sign off on it.
That said, I assume Carswell knows this and is playing games.
If those behind the latest proposal cannot see the difference between that and Parliament reasserting sovereignty by determining what EU legislation applies to the UK I really despair. They are either beyond stupid or just seriously dishonest.
It is a little bit like suggesting that parliament should have a line by line veto of any treaty the government agrees too, when it must either be straight-up or straight-down.
Agreed. OTOH I personally would like to go down this line. The fantasy that the European Parliament gives any kind of democratic legitimacy to EU legislation is one almost no one in Europe believes, hence the appalling turnouts. There is much to be said for its alleged role to be taken over by a body representing Parliaments around the EU. I would give up on the direct elections and have a body made up by representatives of the Parliaments in a similar way to some of the Social bodies that existed in the early days of the EEC.
This is why the EU has a parliament. Turnout will get better as it becomes more influential and more politically polarised.
I think many people who complain about the EU thought they'd joined a football club and now find they have to play darts.
The pre-cursor to defections?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/12/george-osborne-cuts-young-poor
Happy days ?!? .... your hair brushes weren't obsolete, I wasn't on nursing agencies blacklists, Michael Howard was still stalking graveyards for votes and Gordon Brown was flogging off the nations gold on a BOGOF basis.
Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be !!
A fabulous post.
It should reduce somewhat the unfortunate tendency for some of our more cock-eyed colleagues to squeal about swingback and crossover when one poll shows a 4pt Labour lead only for it to revert to 8pts the next day and be greeted by silence. This happened many times last year. Comfort blanket polls are dangerous.
The backbench idea is for random opt-outs, which is fundamentally incompatible with any Treaty.
On the Parliament, I'm against indirect democracy - people completely lose track of who is representing them, whereas even with the EP they vaguely know how to find out. After all, council elections often have even lower turnout. Would you abolish local councils?
We are in a very unusual electoral situation. This is the first time in decades that we have had a full term coalition government. Dissatisfaction with the ruling parties means that the protest can go to only one major party and a plethora of minors (UKIP included). As the GE campaign starts in earnest (after the Euros and irrelevance of the Scottish plebiscite), I think we will see a re-establishment of traditional party support. This is where any benefits of the improving economy will start to show in VI figures.
There will be a quirky town council two-seat by-election later this month. Labour isn't putting up a candidate at all, preferring to endorse the independent who I've known for many years - an approach I've used in other areas before (at town/parish level I'm not convinced candidates should be party representatives at all). The other candidates are Tories and LibDems so we'll get some measure of how they're doing.
That also seems like a "sensible measure".
Each to their own.
I'm not against averaging of polls as an additional tool in the punters armoury. Indeed prior to the 2005 GE yours truly published an average of polls, twas the genesis of ARSE, much to the chagrin of OGH who was a non believer in those heady days of the infancy of PB.
You are right that as it becomes more influential turnout will go up: a lot more people in this country will be be heading to the polls so they can vote for UKIP...
The issue here is that as well as the individuals representing the countries, it's useful to have direct parliamentary involvement in legislation. This helps make sure the concerns of individual constituencies aren't overlooked - both geographical ones (say coal mining areas in Wales) and functional ones (say free software developers who have an interest in copyright issues). The question is then whether they should be national parliaments or a single European parliament. I'm saying the latter is better, because:
1) All the parliamentarians are in one place which makes for better communication.
2) As Nick Palmer says you have less indirection, so it's easier to tell who to vote out if they don't represent you the way you want.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10567425/Trust-the-people-to-decide-on-Europe-Whatever-next.html
"It is quite obvious that Labour is not going to give the public a vote on Europe. Miliband has plainly made up what passes for his mind."
On point 2, firstly, we'd have to have a lot better coverage of European parliament procedures for it to be easier to tell. Realistically, this isn't going to happen, as European media is national-based. That's why national parliaments make more sense.
Secondly, even if you can tell who to vote out, it's pretty impossible to do that because of the party list PR system. The chronically terrible Andrew Duff has dragged the Lib Dems as low as 11% of the vote before now, but still gets in because party elites put him first on the list.
Before or after non discretionary spending ?
or just pick a definition that suits a narrative ?
I would not worry about the Liberals. They will be propped up in battles with the Conservatives by Labour supporters. Their vote will only collapse in seats they cannot win.
Normal poll averaging involves taking the latest numbers from all the pollsters.
What I am doing here is to take the numbers produced in a six day period from one pollster using the same methodlogy.
I also want to create a good reference point for YouGov. They do so many polls it is hard to determine what YouGov was showing at a particular time.
If you don't like the closed list system you should be complaining to the British government, it's their call. Either way you have more chance of getting rid of Andrew Duff than you would have of shifting a British MP in a safe seat.
The difficulty is that you are combining polls which have different systematic errors, and if you change the weighting of polls in the average (or even have different time delays from the same polls), you don't know if the trend is due to the different systematic errors, or a genuine movement. At least if you are averaging the same polling method, then the systematic error should be the same.
Of course that's their tactic.
Even the most wild-eyed Eurosceptic who signed that letter can't have seriously expected Cameron to reply "fair enough, I'll make that my red line on renegotiations, I wish you had told me this earlier"
*chortle*
The know perfectly well the Cameroon strategy is to obfuscate desperately on what it would take for Cameron to actually support staying OUT. The Cameroons have to leave a huge amount of wiggle room so any old toot can be passed off as a 'triumph' and a reason to support staying IN should it actually get to any referendum.
They also see Cameron and Hague's pledge of an EU referendum Bill diminishing fast and going the same way as all the other half-hearted posturing that left so many of them looking like gullible fools time and time again.
So they start with this pie in the sky nonsense and will then work their way in by increments in trying to nail down any 'red lines' and concrete details for renegotiations.
That way when the EU election results have tory MPs and the tory base and panicking sufficiently they issue their demands and they do so by prefacing them with all the things that the Cameroons and the likes of Hague have already refused to give them. (probably adding such things as the failure of the EU referendum Bill and all the other times they were sold a pup) If the tories really do start running about like headless chickens over the EU again and if Cammie starts emulating John Major again in response then who knows what kind of unrealistic concessions they will be able to get from a fearful Cameron? If the concessions are for after 2015 he can, after all, promise them the earth and worry about wriggling out of it later.
Nor is it just the likes of Carswell or Cash anymore. That's a big chunk of the tory backbenches who signed that. Well above 46 as I'm sure Cammie knows.
The Oscar betting tho this year looks more wide open than I can remember it. Not at all sure the Golden Globe winners are going to get the nod by the Oscar voters....
Mr. Scout, you appear to have accidentally completely forgotten what I said to you yesterday regarding the debt.
Except by cutting expenditure by a colossal sum immediately (and assuming that tax receipts would not decline or growth be adversely affected) debt necessarily had to rise because the deficit was so enormous. Given Labour attacked the Coalition for cutting 'too far, too fast' it is not so much disingenuous as rancidly hypocritical to then attack them for cutting 'too little, too slow'.
A sad indictment of the Broxstowe Labour party.
I don't think we should put up candidates for every town/parish election, personally - if there's a good independent, it's better to support them, both objectively and strategically; putting up one candidate is also an option but again risks looking like an alternative to the indie who we favour. In general I've always favoured a broad electoral coalition approach - hence the whole LibDems/Tories for Palmer thing. But from your knowledge of "Broxstowe" (where's that?) you and Mark are free to disagree. We'll see in 2015 how it works out!
If Labour cannot define what they mean, then the argument is based on sand. "whatever makes them feel richer" is utterly emotional, and liable to manipulation - as happened with education grades, which we have now learnt, from Labour's shadow ed sec, were prone to grade inflation.
Definitions are vital.
I don't agree with the argument that journalists don't understand the difference between the debt and the deficit, as I find it is often reported on correctly in the media.
It's why I've backed Ed to be next PM and Balls to be next chancellor !
Lib to Lab 11.7
Lib to UKIP 12.0
Lib to Con 4.7
Con to UKIP 7.5
Con to Lab 7.2
Lab to UKIP 0.3
Some major headaches after the May Locals and European elections.