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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Polling should be more bottom up rather than top down
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Polling should be more bottom up rather than top down
The 2013/14 political season is now into its third week and from a poll watcher’s point of view there have been a couple of really good innovations which I think will help the process of election forecasting.
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And, under FPTP, fewer than half of ALL VOTERS get one of their choice...
Any wonder their ratings are so low?
The exception is LibDem incumbents, who are quite hard to predict based on the national numbers because of the way the voters seem to want to protect them, like ugly-but-endangered birds.
@toadmeister: RT @StephenMullen: Labour PR Team: "It's not a #jabtax it's a spare vaccine subsidy"
@toadmeister: So if a family on benefits neglects to get the MMR jab and child gets measles Labour will cut their benefit. Who's the nasty party now?
@IsabelHardman: Still, this is a nice new foray for Labour's slogan: it's the One vacciNation Labour party!
But then, you've always known that high standards are beyond your reach - which is why you're a socialist.
And it's quite common that your strongest preference is actually some way down the ballot paper. For example, I'd often have a hard time choosing between the various liberal-left options (Lab/Lib/Green), so the preference I'm bothered about doesn't kick in until a few places down. We have other people on this site who waver between Con and UKIP, and would be quite happy for either of those to win, and their strong preference is for one of those over any of the liberal-left candidates.
either
a) Lab MPs are better at the constituency level activity - housing problems etc
or
b) Con voters are less needful at that level and so weight their local MP's performance more on their national level activity
Just a guess.
The 'choice' presented by a list of preferred candidates is more often than not no choice at all. The appearance of positive choice under those circumstances is simply a smoke screen to allow parties to claim some mandate that they do not deserve.
But it looks like the Tories are rattled at the first set of policy proposals from Labour as they try feverishly to pick holes in them.But the general gist of Labour positioning will get through to the public eventhough the Tory supporting media will only try to focus on the faults of the policies rather than discussing the merits/demerits of them.
Junk.
Such areas tend to include the Scottish Highlands, Scottish Borders, Devon and Cornwall. Surprise surpise these areas have always had a disproportionate number of Liberal MPs even when their entire party could fit into a single minibus.
In my experience most people in cities and large towns struggle to know who their MP is. They vote for a party. In Scotland many people in urban seats are represented at Holyrood and Westminster by different parties and don't know which MP or MSP is which.
However if asking the question makes PB LibDems feel they are not looking over a cliff face in just over 18 months (barring any sudden change in circumstances) then let's help them feel comfy.
I expect we'll see more red meat in the run up to 2015. Popular red meat like welfare caps, vetoing of Eurononsense when we get the chance, some targeted tax cuts (business rates anyone?), etc. The Tory position is not unrecoverable, especially as UKIP have been set on 'self destruct' mode just lately. Lynton Crosby will be planning all of this very hard I expect.
Spot on - I also think that most LD voters are already bucking trends in not voting Tory or Labour - I expect most minority or single issue MPs do pretty well on voter satisfaction but I'm not sure the premise of the thread is correct either however much one might wish it to be so.
If you go to http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/subjects/immunising-your-children#a4 you will find there is a conscientious objection form which allows a parent to opt out if they have a "personal, philosophical, religious or medical belief that immunisation should not occur".
Regarding the apprentice story,ofcourse the position is open to EU applicants as is every other job in the UK.But in practice,they are likely to go mainly to locals.
They got on well with *most* immigrants as well.
However growing up they still moved three times a mile or so up the road away from their home because of a crime problem involving small numbers of individuals in gangs with knives that the media and political class wouldn't admit existed and the police wouldn't deal with because the media wouldn't admit the problem existed.
Assuming it took a year or two of things getting bad before they moved each time that would be only six years out of the eighteen they would have said crime was bad in that area and twelve years where they would have said it was okay where they were and bad elsewhere.
So the points in your original post aren't inconsistent. They're consistent with a continuous drift of people gradually moving away from serious crime problems (involving relatively small numbers of people) that the media and political class won't do anything about because they won't admit those problems exist.
Also, have you worked out how you are going to prevent companies redesignating all their recent hires as apprentices?
Ofcourse it creates problems for companies and there may be objections in terms of competitiveness but the scheme is not illegal as the Tories claim.
1. No free lunches at school if your child has a BMI of 30+.
2. No state pension if you have a caravan and drive slowly in the West Country.
3. No free NHS service for smokers.
4. No tax credits if you don't vote Labour.
All sound, reasonable and progressive policies for a forward looking Britain.
Looking good for a bingo day
and you were doing so much better trying to defend an actual Labour policy, must be more comfortable to get back to your normal job of Mcbriding.
...Mr Twigg, promising apprenticeships for all those who do not attend university, bulged his eyes. ‘Aspiration for all,’ he hollered.
But when might those apprenticeships happen? Not immediately. Mr Twigg admitted that ‘getting there will be a big, big challenge, none more so than in facing up to the fiscal reality we will inherit. But fiscal reality does not mean losing sight of our long-term vision.’
Translation: ‘Fiscal reality does not stop us making absurd, unworkable, dishonest claims in our party-conference speeches.’
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was on cracking form.
She suits a party-conference stage, does Yvette. The House of Commons has proved beyond her in recent months – her oppo’, Theresa May, has outsmarted her repeatedly – but here in front of the Left-lurching party faithful her routine of elfin outrage, all puppy-eyed when she mentions poverty, works well. She accused David Cameron of having it in for disabled people. Er, hang on, did Mr Cameron not himself have a severely disabled son? Miss Cooper also claimed the credit for putting gay marriage through Parliament. See how easily history is rewritten?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429648/Sunk-policies-Mere-details-mes-braves-QUENTIN-LETTS-stormy-waters-Labour-conference.html#ixzz2fhAOnudB
I am so looking forward to today..
@benedictbrogan
Oh dear @edballsmp. Is that a cock crowing? @BBCr4today
Brilliant
"...in the past three years, Labour has come up with intriguing concepts that it then seems unable or unwilling to explain. Immediately after his speech on responsible capitalism, Mr Miliband couldn’t say how he would distinguish between the predatory capitalists he had attacked and the productive ones he’d praised. He sounded defensive and uncertain. “Squeezed middle” was a ringing phrase that wasn’t accompanied by adequate policies to address it. On Syria or on Falkirk Labour started off taking a principled stand, then descended into muddle as circumstances changed.
Just as importantly, even when Mr Miliband and the Shadow Cabinet have a policy to discuss, they rarely sound as if they own their ideas. Far too often they go into studios with a handful of prepared phrases that they cling to even when pushed, as Mr Miliband did on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday. “Let me explain,” they say, or “Let me be clear,” before simply repeating themselves. It’s as if they’re standing precariously on a rock in the middle of the sea, petrified of falling in if they take a single step in any direction.
This is a deeply ineffective way of practising politics in the fast-response age of Twitter, Facebook and texting. Politicians need to parry and respond to challenges or queries and to do so deftly and quickly because they are sure of their ground. Mr Cameron and much of his Cabinet can do it. So can Nigel Farage, so could Tony Blair..."
From the article:
"Lastly, responses differ depending on whether someone has contacted the MP or not, and, even more importantly, on how satisfied they are with the response they get. Based on data from the 1970s, Ivor Crewe once wrote that familiarity appeared to breed content. Partly. Around 21 per cent of respondents said that they had contacted their MP in “the last two or three years”; among that group the net score was +5 – of those who hadn’t, the net score was -8 – but we also asked whether those who’d contacted the MP were satisfied with the response, and this provoked the biggest differences of all. The graph shows the huge range of responses:
Of those who had contacted their MP and were ‘Very Satisfied’ with the response, 86 per cent said that they were satisfied with the MP, and just 3 per cent were not, a net score of +83. At the other end of the scale, of those who had contacted their MP and were ‘Very Dissatisfied’ with the response, 93 per cent said that they were dissatisfied with their MP, a score of -93.
In other words, the views of those who’ve contacted their local MP about that MP are almost entirely dependent on how satisfactory the contact was. This relationship holds true regardless of the party leanings of the constituent.
Unsatisfactory contact, it would seem, produces a worse outcome than if they had never contacted the MP in the first place."
http://www.totalpolitics.com/opinion/416802/polling-not-love-actually.thtml
„ Haha, nein - man hat ein fucking Recht darauf, in einem fucking Rechtsstaat mit einer fucking beachteten Verfassung zu leben
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/faz-net-fruehkritik/der-wahlabend-im-fernsehen-neuwahlen-wenn-die-kanzlerin-keinen-koalitionspartner-findet-12586359.html
Certainly different from my O level German course.
Balls on McBride I dont think world is helped by Gordon Brown saying anything about this. It's in the past. It's irrelevant. It's depressing
I heard Yvette say much the same to Pienaar y'day - it was v bad but it's ancient history now, we've moved on etc etc.
Only problem is the Labour frontbench hasn't, Mr. Brown's boys are now the Leader and the Chancellor-elect and I'd guess 60% of them at least were in the last Labour Cabinet - time has moved on but the vast majority of the people around at the time remain running the potential next Govt..
I was comparing compulsions..something that is forced on the individual or a punishment will take place... the Germans of the day were rather extreme ... but it must have started off as an idea on a piece of paper at one time and may even have been laughed at as a stupid idea.
It appears that what is compulsory in Oz is that you at least record your objection.
What is the phrase? Oh yes. "Idiotic and empty" Suck it up.
So his time at Harvard did not improve his arithmetic - thought Alan Johnson resigned from the post of Shadow Chancellor for similar reasons?
25 hrs free childcare/week say Labour. How will we pay? Bank levy of course. How many times have they spent that now? news.sky.com/story/1145244/…
I quite like him but it wasn't his finest hour.
Well known feature of the consumer world. Deal with a complaint well, and the customer will come back happy, and indeed is more likely to recommned the supplier.
Deal with it badly and they'll not only not come back, but tell all their friends to avoid you!
It's a shame you based your understanding of the story on a total misunderstanding of the situation in Australia ....
O/T: the German media are pretty unanimous that a Grand Caolition is coming. There is a nod in the direction of a possible CDU-Green pact but it's not seen as likely.
Now it looks likely.
I find it staggering that little Ed and labour watched the tories crash and burn in May after Crosby's disasterous flirting with dog-whistling, yet now little Ed's response to narrowing polling is to try dog-whistling himself??? Incredible.
Even Crosby cut down on that that counterproductive crap when it became all too obvious that, as usual, the last people it helped were those doing it. At Eastleigh and the May locals it quite clearly backfired on the tories and helped the kippers.
So now we have McBride reminding everyone of just how dangerous going down the factionalism route is for labour and little Ed's response seems to be to switch from the Brownite McBride style of discredited spin to the equally divisive Blairite "no-brainer" McTernan and his Australian dog-whistling style of spin?? Genius.
That the PB tories still haven't worked out what is going on is only to be expected.
Clearly nobody at labour HQ has worked out that "no-brainer" McTernan didn't exactly bring peace and harmony to the Australian labor party. Quite the reverse. Nor did his dog-whistling do anything other than help propel Abbot into power and give Australia's labor party one of their worst hammerings ever.
I fear copying Cammie with another vapid and well rehearsed "off the cuff" speech isn't going to cut it this time for little Ed. Dan Hodges is a joke but that certainly doesn't mean little Ed is doing well.
Got to love balanced reporting. Climate change and the BBC:
"This slowdown, or hiatus as the IPCC refers to it, has been leapt upon by climate sceptics to argue that the scientific belief that emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet, is wrong. "
Ah, the scientific belief. Good to know that we have Science in favour of the argument.
It's a practically Brownite approach to a scienitific debate. When a matter's uncertain it's entirely possible to have opposing sides with valid perspectives.
"The organisation's reputation was also questioned in the Climategate rumpus."
Rumpus? Incidentally, in the link above the word 'rumpus' links to a Guardian article which has the following header:
"The uproar that followed briefly shook the public's faith in global warming science, and prompted investigations that debunked sceptics' allegations that the mails showed the planet wasn't warming."
Oh no! Faith was shaken! Thank god the heretical sceptics were proved wrong yet again and the Earth is warming! [Except there's been a decade or so of no rise in temperatures...]
James Chapman (Mail) @jameschappers
.@DPMcBride set up fake 'Thatcher office' to convince voters Brown had moved into her old study. But computers and phones weren't connected
Most unfair - some clear leadership here:
Jim Pickard@PickardJE12m
Ed Miliband yesterday on EU ref. "We've set out a very, very clear position on this - but we'll set out our position at the election."
https://twitter.com/AlbertoNardelli/status/382028578440769536/photo/1
Breaking news - Labour to offer free.. everything in their manifesto. Paid for partly by the rich and the rest, well who cares. #voteLabour
Nothing to do with the political fact that until 2010 LD MP's never had a record in government to defend?
Not that it's ever going to shift many votes for labour. That isn't the point of it. The primary aim of such a policy would be to put the spotlight firmly on the EU and IN/OUT during the election campaign and hope tory backbenchers start losing their minds over it again while helping boost the kippers.
I presume that is also some of the 'thinking' on the current idiotic dog-whistling from labour. Though the wisdom of trying to shift the political narrative onto parties and issues other than your own after a summer of inaction, is just a bit hard to fathom.
At least wee Dougie helpfully waded in to let it be known that there was splits at the top of the shadow cabinet on this. Almost as helpful to little Ed as he was to sister Wendy.
"...The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, has said that Labour will not borrow more, but there is no real sense in the party that it has begun to understand that its vaulting ambitions for Britain are simply not affordable. Labour still sounds most authentically like itself when it is raising taxes and making spending pledges to match. The absence of any programme of reform on health and education, for example, shows how little serious thinking seems to have taken place. Mr Miliband talks in occasionally tough terms, but whenever he offers sight of a policy it is always to reverse a coalition cut.
It will not be enough to retail a list of items in the household budget that are expensive and promise piously to make them more affordable. That is not to minimise the difficulties that many households do face, it is to pour scorn on the notion that Mr Miliband has yet worked out whether he can do anything about it. It is also to point out that, before he will be asked his view on the household budget, he needs to be more persuasive about the nation’s budget. He cannot for ever continue to act as if they in no way relate.
The big question for Mr Miliband at this conference is not that the people of Britain have no money to play with. It is that he hasn’t and he does not yet appear to have understood the implications. > http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3876214.ece
Edited extra bit: in important news, my post-race analysis/grumbling is up here: http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/singapore-post-race-analysis.html
Almost a year after I was sacked from Downing Street, I was killing time in the Tally Ho pub in Finchley when I looked up at the TV, saw my face on Sky News, and thought: ‘Ah b******s, what’s happened now?’
The breaking news banner whooshed up on the bottom of the screen: ‘Darling says “Forces of Hell were unleashed” on him in August 2008.’
And my immediate thought was: ‘Will Alistair ever do one interview where he says something positive about the Labour Party or the economy, or does he set out to create bad headlines every single time?’ I wrote that out as a text message to send to a few old colleagues, stared at it a bit, sank what remained of my pint and pressed delete.
Letting the rage die down, I just sat there thinking: What is it with Alistair Darling?
As far as I was concerned, he was either catastrophically inept or misguided when it came to his public interventions in the press — or he was just totally out for himself...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429682/Useless-Darling-just-Damian-McBride-reveals-poor-Alistair-played-martyr-amid-2008-economic-crisis.html#ixzz2fhOPVQyA
"If Gordon happened to be doing the interview down the line, he’d begin miming acts of extreme violence in my direction, while giving the most desultory answers possible. Even worse, he’d bemoan the BBC’s failure to focus on important issues. When the interview ended, Gordon would unleash a tremendous volley of abuse — usually a stream of unconnected swear words.
I’m convinced he didn’t care that the BBC were still recording at the other end; he actually wanted them to hear. And I’ve always fantasised that someone at the BBC has kept all those clips and carefully spliced them together to play at John Humphrys’s retirement party.
In particular, I admired the professionalism of Nick Robinson (‘Bloody Tory’ was Gordon’s private opinion — but then he thought the BBC was run by Tories) when he delivered a mildly critical post-Budget analysis. All the way through, Gordon would be glowering at him across the desk, and occasionally throwing down his papers or tearing his headset. The worst times were when we had to do rounds of interviews, with one broadcast political editor after another giving him a ten-minute grilling.
This was never far from a Demolition Derby. Gordon wasn’t particularly fond of any of them, and felt downright hostile towards the big three — the BBC’s Robinson, Sky’s Adam Boulton and ITN’s Tom Bradby. On a bad day, after each political editor had finished, Gordon would want to scream a string of foul-mouthed abuse in his face. But I would always stand behind the camera, so when he looked at me, I’d purse my lips and jerk up an admonishing finger, like a stern librarian, and say: ‘Gordon, can I grab you for a moment?’
As soon as I’d taken him into an ante-room, he’d draw breath to begin his tirade. I’d shush him, whispering: ‘It was fine, it was good, you dealt with it well, it’s all OK. And, I know he’s a bastard — he’s a Tory, he can f*** off the next time he asks us for a favour — but let’s just do the next one and get through it.’
The same routine. After every single interview. Every single time.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429682/Useless-Darling-just-Damian-McBride-reveals-poor-Alistair-played-martyr-amid-2008-economic-crisis.html#ixzz2fhPOuPq7
Which is not a particularly mature way of doing things.
"The way he approached — fists balled and face like thunder — I genuinely thought he was coming at me. I took up a defensive stance, with my own fists balled. Not that I planned to hit him. I mean, you don’t ‘plan’ to hit your boss at the best of times, let alone when you’re brand new to the job and he’s the Chancellor. But I thought I might need to defend myself.
Then I thought of a different approach; I just went berserk — kicking a chair over and screaming about the ****ing idiots in the Department of Trade and Industry who’d given us bad advice on OPEC’s intentions. This had an instant effect. Looking at me in alarm, Gordon told me to calm down, and then — with a disapproving glare — picked up the chair. I’d learned an important lesson.
From then on, whenever there was bad news, I’d try to do my Incredible Hulk routine. This meant I had to look angrier than Gordon, even if that was sometimes near impossible.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429682/Useless-Darling-just-Damian-McBride-reveals-poor-Alistair-played-martyr-amid-2008-economic-crisis.html#ixzz2fhR6NSYO
tim has some extreme rightwing views , it's a short step from Toxic Tory to Toxteth Tory ;-)
@SophyRidgeSky The old Labour government DID play like a team - a team of Nobby Stiles clones.
Go Ed !
They've got someone covering Daves twitter account when he's asleep apparently.no wonder he wants to change the European Working Time Directive
TBF on Twitter it's easy to favourite things by accident, eg if you mean to do ctrl-f to do a search in the browser but the timing goes wrong and you just hit "f".
I often Favourite things on Twitter - its there to flag posts of interest to read later, not an endorsement of them.
THe headline of this thread runs against the collective wisdom of the PBTories. Their assumption is that the "incumbency dividend" will hand over a massive majority for the Tories. People like Aidan Burley.
Well tried, Plato. Didn't work !
A bit like Lisbon then. That certainly annoyed a fair few voters and would anger that group even more so again. But to the extent of putting the likes of a Godfrey Bloom in charge of economic matters when it comes down to a GE vote? Doubtful to say the least.
The kippers are hardly going to portray either side as being trustworthy on the EU during the campaign in the first place. Renegotiation is a fig leaf and will try to be spun as a stunning victory regardless of which side makes the promises. There's also the possibility of a referendum on a referendum (the mandate referendum) if things look particularly bleak.
That would then transition into a referendum proper so the timing can be mucked about to whenever.
After his blatant evasions on @BBCr4today earlier, Balls to update @LiamByrneMP infamous note. Dear Electorate: there's no credibility left
"...But he saved his real righteous indignation for the section of the interview on Damian McBride. ‘To be honest nobody ever came to me and complained about Damian McBride,’ he said. ‘I didn’t pass on those complaints to Gordon Brown. I didn’t complain about Damian McBride, because I don’t think until we saw the revelations in this book, we didn’t know what was going on.’
This sounds a bit implausible: one of the key points about the McBride extracts so far has really been that we did know that this was going on, but that the former spin doctor has brought a vague picture into sharp relief. His revelations haven’t been surprising, even though they have been horrifying. So it’s odd that while everyone else knew vaguely what the book would reveal, Balls claims ignorance entirely.
But the Shadow Chancellor didn’t quite finish there. He said:
‘I didn’t know that Damian McBride was doing personal briefings against ministers. The first time I’d found out was when I saw the test of that hideous email in 2009, and I said to Damian “what have you done? How could it come to this?”.’
So Balls did know something, clearly, by 2009. But his claim that he had no idea McBride was briefing against ministers seems to have left those journalists who were in the lobby at the time with a grim smile on their faces." http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/09/labour-conference-2013-ed-balls-i-didnt-know-mcbride-was-briefing-against-ministers/
a) they audit and find Lab plans are affordable, say, only with a 150% increase in council tax on homes over £500k.
b) they audit and find they are affordable with a 30% increase in tax on homes over £500k.
So what?
We are still back to the politics of how much Lab would increase council tax on homes > £500k.
Why not - if it adds up, then we as the electorate should know it does.... it would be some achievement mind you.