politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ipsos MORI ends a morning of bad news for the Tories with the

foxinsoxuk said:

JonCisBack said:

Anecdote time

For literally the first time this campaign the election came up at lunch in the canteen. We have TVs on BBC news channel permanently with subtitles. Election came on, and someone said "surely May has got more than just "I'm not Jeremy Corbyn"". general laughter and "yeah it's a bit crap isn't it", "they seem to think that would be enough". The feeling that the tories have little to offer is getting through.

Still gobsmacked by how inept the tories have been, and dispirited, almost embarrassed by how crap May herself has been. Astonishingly unimpressive.

Maybe they want to lose??

I do wonder if May is producing "Springtime for Hitler", but that was a surprise hit so not an apt analogy.

Our clinic coordinators were talking positively over Corbyn yesterday. They see him as some hope for the future, though one of the patients (older male WWC) went off on a bit of a rant about terrorism. The other patients edged away a bit.

I get the Hope/change thing with Corbyn, but 30 seconds serious consideration of the labour policies are enough to rule them out as serious contenders for a vote.

Most people don't care about politics most of the time. And if you've only recently tuned in so to speak, and are not considering things in much detail, it's easy to see that Corbyn is more appealing than Grey May.

The worst thing is even if May does get a workable majority, she is apparently going to be Not Very Good.

Personally I am pretty much down to "She's not Corbyn". it's enough for me, but is it enough for a win?

:-/

david_herdson said:

Before Mike writes it, let me ask the question:

Would we be where we are had Boris withdrawn not prematurely 11 months ago?

I don't think anyone thought that May would be such a poor campaigner. Had she been exposed to the party membership (against a heavyweight opponent i.e. not Leadsom), this might have become clear before it mattered.

That said, *would* it have become clear? She didn't have a reputation as a poor interviewee before the election and her serious demeanour might still have proven enough against a Boris who still had (and has) several question marks against him.

All water under the bridge - perhaps (Boris is 8/1 with PP and 25/1 to be PM on 1 July with Ladbrokes) - but worth pondering all the same.

I still think May would have lost to Leadsom with the Tory members, had it gone that far...

Obviously there's going to be huge swing back on polling day when everyone remembers how much they want a red, white and blue brexit

GideonWise said:

Why are so many so bullish on the Tories? I can't see them bettering 2015 now, all the risk is on the downside.

Do people just not believe the polls anymore?

I think people do believe the polls, hence expectation of comfortable Tory majority. Take the polling average (from FT or Britain Elects or BBC) and type into one of the seat calculators, such as Electoral Calculus.

nunu said:

May knows how hard brexit is going to be, so has purposefully engineered a shit campaign so that Labour can win and take the blame when it all goes tits up. Obviously. Then the tories will win again with a 100+ seat landslide majority and rule for a lifetime. Genius. Utter genius.

there will be no country left to rule after Corbyn

Casino_Royale said:

I just don't know if May can handle tonight.

Well she's stuck with it. No way she can bail out of this one as well and have a milligram of credibility left.

Chris said:

AndyJS said:

I thought the LDs would be down to 5% with ICM but actually they're on 7%, only down 0.8 points since GE2015. UKIP and Greens must have been reduced to almost nothing.

But with the two main parties up so much, this would still be disastrous for the LDs in terms of seats.

As the LDs appear to be falling in the polls, will they really be taking SW seats off The Tories? Am also wondering if SLAB will really make any headway in Scotland. Corbyn is starting off with 1 not 41 seats in Scotland. Where would he be making headway in England and Wales to offset those losses?

Dura_Ace said:

jonny83 said:

Can't believe they are polling 40%, the issues about defense and security alone should be keeping them away from that even if you agree with their economic policy of increased taxation and borrowing.

How long are PBTs going to cling to this notion? NOBODY. CARES. ABOUT. IT. They just want the goverment that will give them large amounts of other people's money.

I expect there will still be people on here banging on about the IRA and Hamas as JC is being driven up the Mall to see HM the Q.

Shoot to kill, his stance on armed police officers, he won't use drone strikes to take out terrorists who could be plotting attacks on this country and his stance on the security services (though there are some with even more extreme views about MI5/MI6 in his party and close to him.) Total disrespect towards our armed forces when he was supportive of these people trying to prosecute and hound them for past events.

Those are things that concern me more than the IRA/Hamas/Hezbollah hell even the Trident issue.

I genuinely will feel less safe as a British Citizen under his watch and so should millions.

We could be looking at a country more horribly divided young against old than it seemed it would be Brexit against remain. If this is close, there will be huge ill feeling on both sides.
Brexiteers will be livid if it's a HP.

The punk in me is suddenly very awake and very excited.

Tony Adams endorses Kate Hoey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHXlmn9Xgyw

Sounds like he's has diction lessons from Robert Peston too.

Charles said:

DanSmith said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

DanSmith said:

Labour lead by 3 in that IpsosMORI before turnout filters are applied.

Link please.

https://twitter.com/BobbyIpsosMORI/status/870598290659844096

SNP + Plaid on 4%

I thought the working assumption for them was 5/6%?

I think the Nats are going to lose a lot of their central belt Catholic vote to Corbyn.

Brom said:

A Tory majority of 50 seats and keeping Corbyn in charge of the oppostion would be a nice result for the blues. Ensures the benches aren't too crowded and might lead to a split in the Labour party.

It's terrible for the country...This GE has legitimised corbynism, it's here to stay now...That scary is as hell...

SeanT said:

Pulpstar said:

Wake up. This is Trump, Brexit all over again.

AS I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR WEEKS.

If the Tory vote share was sliding away then I'd agree. At the moment all the emphasis is on proving that Labour are really in the high 30s, otherwise they lose convincingly.

SeanT said:

BETTING ADVICE

Given the polls, and the trend, the chances of a Hung Parliament are about 2/1, or 5/2 which means the 7/2 on offer is VALUE?

5/1 available on betfair exchange

TravelJunkie said:

AndyJS said:

One explanation for the Labour share being so high is that in the 1990s the turnout in many safe Labour seats collapsed from an average of about 70% to around 55% and hasn't really ever recovered since. It could be that Corbyn is once again enthusing the voters in those seats and turnout could be back up to 70% again. It would have a significant effect on Labour's vote share but it wouldn't win them many seats. Most of the Merseyside seats are good examples of this.

As someone with a 1st in mathematics at a top redbrick university I disagree with you.

Reading your posts, you seem to be very bullish about conservative prospects and very bearish towards labour. I haven't seen one negative post about conservative polling and you seem to be of the belief that the polls are wrong.

1) In Tory wards turnout was 85% in 2015. Labour ward turnout was 45-50%. Had Labour turnout been similar, the tories would have lost 28 seats in the midlands/northern england. Tory enthusiasm is down compared to 2015, labour enthusiasm is up.
2) 3/4 labour voters in the midlands/northern england are ex-labour voters. There is no evidence now that these same UKIP voters are voting heavily for conservative.
3) There are a lot of seats where the tory vote has a very low ceiling. Plymouth, Southampton, Walsall, Stoke, Weaver Vale, Carlisle and any increase in vote enthusiasm could easily see a labour gain. As mentioned on the conservative home website, the tories are campaigning in labour areas they haven't done so in decades and its ok getting 2-3k votes for council elections but to get to 20k to win a seat is very, very hard. The labour vote is not going to down. There aren't enough seats like Tamworth, Burton that are moving away from Labour.

I think the average of recent polls is probably very accurate, I haven't said otherwise. Interesting points you make.

Have not been in the Midlands or North but knocking in marginals in the South. At first there was a lot of usual Labours with very positive things to say about Mrs May with very cool views about Corbyn. Now the negative thoughts about Corbyn haven't really gone away, but now it's framed as "I quite like Jeremy Corbyn but..." then there's IRA or just not seeing him as strong enough. But what is noticeable is that I don't hear any good feelings about May, the best you get now is "She's better than Corbyn". I don't really understand the polls because it feels like a Tory collapse (relatively, from a very high base) rather than a Labour surge but the Tory vote share in polls looks completely solid.

Beverley_C said:

dyedwoolie said:

We could be looking at a country more horribly divided young against old than it seemed it would be Brexit against remain. If this is close, there will be huge ill feeling on both sides.
Brexiteers will be livid if it's a HP.

Brexit largely WAS young against old.

this election could be the revenge of the young against the old for voting brexit

AlsoIndigo said:

SeanT said:

ThreeQuidder said:

SeanT said:

BETTING ADVICE

Given the polls, and the trend, the chances of a Hung Parliament are about 2/1, or 5/2 which means the 7/2 on offer is VALUE?

If the Tories get 44%+ it won't be a hung parliament.

The trend, my friend, the trend.

The trend of the Tory vote share is it has been 45% within margin of error for ages. There is no trend.

yes there is, ever increasing labour share.

Pulpstar said:

Wake up. This is Trump, Brexit all over again.

NO IT IS NOT!!!!!!!

At most it is Hillary v Sanders which Hillary won, May has the white working class which Hillary did not against Trump and Remain did not against Leave and 45% for the Tories would be their highest voteshare for half a century even if Labour is also up

david_herdson said:

Before Mike writes it, let me ask the question:

Would we be where we are had Boris withdrawn not prematurely 11 months ago?

I don't think anyone thought that May would be such a poor campaigner. Had she been exposed to the party membership (against a heavyweight opponent i.e. not Leadsom), this might have become clear before it mattered.

That said, *would* it have become clear? She didn't have a reputation as a poor interviewee before the election and her serious demeanour might still have proven enough against a Boris who still had (and has) several question marks against him.

All water under the bridge - perhaps (Boris is 8/1 with PP and 25/1 to be PM on 1 July with Ladbrokes) - but worth pondering all the same.

As I said yesterday, if there'd been no Tory leadership contest in 2005 it would have been David Davis as leader, not Cameron. No one even knew who DC was before that campaign.

Leadership elections are very healthy things to have.

In their impatience for party unity, the Tories may have lost the country.

DecrepitJohnL said:

You can make a case for general taxation, as we used to do. My point is the current loans system practically is a graduate tax but with the added disadvantage of saddling with debt people who will never be called upon to repay it anyway.

Effectively it's debt in name only, in that situation.

For me the biggest problem with it is that it discourages some students from going to uni who would benefit from doing so but aren't financially literate enough to understand that it works in their favour and that if things don't come off and they end up in lower-paid work, then the debt doesn't really "saddle" them anyway. The people disadvantaged in this way tend, disproportionately, to be from lower socio-economic backgrounds

There's a flip side to this. One problem with providing things for free is they tend to be over-consumed. If the theoretical possibility of having to pay for your degree crosses your mind, it may put people off from consuming an "unnecessary" degree - e.g. I know young people who did accountancy straight out of school rather than go to uni to study it (in some cases with the hopes of employers funding them to do to do uni later if necessary) which is actually rather a more sensible use of their and society's resources; similarly, if it encourages people into degrees in engineering, nursing and others where you have a stronger chance of a graduate job at the end of it. With government paying for uni, there will clearly be more people going because it's "free" and they can't think of anything else to do for the next year (they may not have a clear idea of opportunity costs of what they could do instead!) and are less motivated to seek a degree with good employment outcomes at the end.

Another disadvantage of free undergrad education is that a lot of the point of a degree is just economic signalling - many people don't use what they studied (applies more to some subjects than others, obviously) but it gives them greater credibility with potential employers. A credentialism arms race is actually counterproductive in this respect, particularly if people aren't taking subjects which are useful in their own right. The issue then gets shunted up to postgraduate study - jobs that used to require a bachelors degree, and could realistically be done, with training, by a bright school-leaver, start needing a masters before you can get an interview. Then all the funding/debt arguments kick in again (definitely easier to afford another year of study if you have well-off parents and so on).

nielh said:

SeanT said:

Pulpstar said:

Wake up. This is Trump, Brexit all over again.

AS I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR WEEKS.

To back these statements up you need to identify the 93 plus seats that Labour need to gain to form a majority government.

Now we're into all the talk of "firewalls". If the shares are as given in the "all to vote", the seats will fall.

Casino_Royale said:

I just don't know if May can handle tonight.

she needs to say why we should vote for her instead of just against corbyn, because it clearly just isn't enough.

SeanT said:

kjohnw said:

SeanT said:

Pulpstar said:

Wake up. This is Trump, Brexit all over again.

AS I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR WEEKS.

what is the best english speaking country to emigrate to?

Australia. Northern beaches near Sydney.

Wouldn't it get a bit boring living there after a while if you're used to living in London?

PeterMannion said:

david_herdson said:

Before Mike writes it, let me ask the question:

Would we be where we are had Boris withdrawn not prematurely 11 months ago?

I don't think anyone thought that May would be such a poor campaigner. Had she been exposed to the party membership (against a heavyweight opponent i.e. not Leadsom), this might have become clear before it mattered.

That said, *would* it have become clear? She didn't have a reputation as a poor interviewee before the election and her serious demeanour might still have proven enough against a Boris who still had (and has) several question marks against him.

All water under the bridge - perhaps (Boris is 8/1 with PP and 25/1 to be PM on 1 July with Ladbrokes) - but worth pondering all the same.

I still think May would have lost to Leadsom with the Tory members, had it gone that far...

You might be right, though Leadsom clearly didn't want it in the end and I think that would have shown through.

Boris did want it and had he run, would have made the run-off, with or without Gove.

Tbf, MORI were the FIRST pollster show the Labour surge before anyone else - they produced the poll which had Labour 8+ more than ten days ago.

The thing is there is so much more to attack jezza on than terrorism...I mean FFS he wants to ban Driverless trains. What a completely bonkers policy.

PeterMannion said:

david_herdson said:

Before Mike writes it, let me ask the question:

Would we be where we are had Boris withdrawn not prematurely 11 months ago?

I don't think anyone thought that May would be such a poor campaigner. Had she been exposed to the party membership (against a heavyweight opponent i.e. not Leadsom), this might have become clear before it mattered.

That said, *would* it have become clear? She didn't have a reputation as a poor interviewee before the election and her serious demeanour might still have proven enough against a Boris who still had (and has) several question marks against him.

All water under the bridge - perhaps (Boris is 8/1 with PP and 25/1 to be PM on 1 July with Ladbrokes) - but worth pondering all the same.

I still think May would have lost to Leadsom with the Tory members, had it gone that far...

Absolutely, said a similar thing a few days ago. Brown got a coronation and it did him no favours.

May has never been properly scrutinised under the lens of the public. It really shows.

It can't be allowed to happen again.

https://twitter.com/election_data/status/870612899974320129

SeanT said:

AlsoIndigo said:

SeanT said:

ThreeQuidder said:

SeanT said:

BETTING ADVICE

Given the polls, and the trend, the chances of a Hung Parliament are about 2/1, or 5/2 which means the 7/2 on offer is VALUE?

If the Tories get 44%+ it won't be a hung parliament.

The trend, my friend, the trend.

The trend of the Tory vote share is it has been 45% within margin of error for ages. There is no trend.

The Tories are very slowly edging down. Labour are surging. Extrapolating the trend on nearly all pollsters puts the Tories on about 42-44 by next Thursday, and Labour on, say, 39-42?

That is painfully close, and it means a tiny Tory majority or Hung Parliament with Theresa handing over to Amber or Boris as PM. And another election in a year?

Chaos. But there we are.

The trend can't continue: there aren't enough UKIP votes left: they were down to 2% in today's Mori. Some new trend must become established, even if that is 'no change'.

NickPalmer said:

And Ipsos-Mori, like ICM, does weight by past voting, doesn't it?

No, I don't think they do. This is what Anthony Wells wrote (admittedly quite a long time ago) about their methodology:

Alone amongst the pollsters Ipsos MORI do not use any political weighting at all (that isn’t to say they don’t weight, or their figures are unweighted. They do use all the normal demographic weights like age and gender). This has two important effects – firstly, the weighting used by ICM, Populus and so on nearly always reduces the proportion of Labour voters in a sample, so the absence of weighting in Ipsos MORI polls has historically helped Labour. Since they don’t weight by it, MORI do not as standard ask about recalled vote, but when they did it showed their samples contained roughly the same proportion of people who said they’d voted Conservative in 2005 as ICM and Populus’s polls… but far more people who claimed they had voted Labour.

Following the 2008 London election when MORI wrongly showed Ken Livingstone ahead of Boris Johnson they conducted a review of their methodology. This found that their samples had too many public sector workers, something that presumably increased Labour support in their polls. Since then MORI have been weighting by public sector employment along with all their normal demographics.

(The whole description is well worth reading).

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/faq-weighting

How about this:

Tony Blair comes out and endorses Theresa May.

Would it help her?

logical_song said:

Casino_Royale said:

foxinsoxuk said:

Slackbladder said:

Sharon Hodgson @SharonHodgsonMP

Jeremy Corbyn: Labour could write off historic student debts| All those in early 20's with student debt #VoteLabour

I know May might be crap, but f*** me Labour are dangerous.

Fox jr has already voted, but would love that!

Tell me something: when precisely was it that you became an unhinged and pretentious socialist twat?

You voted Tory in GE2010, as I understand it, and were a fan of the coalition. Corbyn and McDonnell will be far worse than Brown and Darling ever were.

You know this (deep down) so there must be something deeply visceral going in inside what passes for your brain.

You're sounding a tad rattled.

Yep. And abusive...

I would have been watching QT tonight, but instead I'm going to be at a festival where the beers include "Red Admiral Corbynista Ale" and the entertainment programme features Mark Thomas.

When the election was called I was expecting a distinctly more subdued event than usual, but this morning's events have guaranteed a roaring atmosphere all weekend

jonny83 said:

Prodicus said:

AndyJS said:

One thing's for sure, the Labour campaign has been infinitely more clever and cunning than the Tories ever bargained for. And better presented too.

It's always a mistake to believe that your enemy is invincibly stupid. He is not.

He hold dangerous views that will put the country at greater risk, but he's not stupid.

Quite. Ditto the very dangerous coterie behind him.

david_herdson said:

kjohnw said:

SeanT said:

Pulpstar said:

Wake up. This is Trump, Brexit all over again.

AS I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR WEEKS.

what is the best english speaking country to emigrate to?

Yorkshire.

Failing that, Canada?

Whats the feeling on the ground in Wakefield & Morley ?

handandmouse said:

I would have been watching QT tonight, but instead I'm going to be at a festival where the beers include "Red Admiral Corbynista Ale" and the entertainment programme features Mark Thomas.

When the election was called I was expecting a distinctly more subdued event than usual, but this morning's events have guaranteed a roaring atmosphere all weekend

I saw mark Thomas last year, still funny, but middle age and family life has reduced his stunts and as such the quality of his tales.

The big question in the Craig Mackinlay case is the real possibility of flight risk ....

I mean Theresa May at the BBC Question Time grilling tonight .... she has form. I suggest she's taken into custody and held until 8:30pm. The police will require mug shots too .... Mind you, with the Tory campaign luck if Theresa did make a run for it she'd probably fly by BA during another "technical glitch".

Or .... she could claim political asylum in the Ecuador embassy. Getting crowded there ....

Titter ....

Richard_Nabavi said:

NickPalmer said:

And Ipsos-Mori, like ICM, does weight by past voting, doesn't it?

No, I don't think they do. This is what Anthony Wells wrote (admittedly quite a long time ago) about their methodology:

Alone amongst the pollsters Ipsos MORI do not use any political weighting at all (that isn’t to say they don’t weight, or their figures are unweighted. They do use all the normal demographic weights like age and gender). This has two important effects – firstly, the weighting used by ICM, Populus and so on nearly always reduces the proportion of Labour voters in a sample, so the absence of weighting in Ipsos MORI polls has historically helped Labour. Since they don’t weight by it, MORI do not as standard ask about recalled vote, but when they did it showed their samples contained roughly the same proportion of people who said they’d voted Conservative in 2005 as ICM and Populus’s polls… but far more people who claimed they had voted Labour.

Following the 2008 London election when MORI wrongly showed Ken Livingstone ahead of Boris Johnson they conducted a review of their methodology. This found that their samples had too many public sector workers, something that presumably increased Labour support in their polls. Since then MORI have been weighting by public sector employment along with all their normal demographics.

(The whole description is well worth reading).

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/faq-weighting

Ah, very interesting. Explains a lot about the poll we are seeing now.

TravelJunkie said:

GarethoftheVale2 said:

Andy, as a market researcher I am concerned too.

The big problem with political polling is that it has to be all of 3 things:

- Accurate
- Cost effective
- Fast

The British electoral study has been shown to be very accurate but is also far too slow to be used in the same way as current polls are.

One thing I have been thinking about is the level of incentives that these studies pay. I work in healthcare research and if we do a 20 minute survey with a doctor we will pay them in the region of £20-30. If you do a 20 minute survey on a consumer site you will paid 50p or given a prize draw entry. This means these sorts of surveys will only appeal to people who are cash poor, time rich and to people who are very interested in doing surveys. As far as I am aware phone polls don't offer any incentive at all.

So you could put up incentives to say £5 per 5 minutes but this then clashes with point number 2 about being cost effective.

The other thing I would consider along with putting up incentives is trying to set up a closed panel for political research. By a closed panel, I mean rather than letting everyone join, use the electoral roll to segment the electorate by national demographics and then randomly invite people to participate within each segment. With an approach like this you would need to allow longer in field (say a week) and to be prepared to use phone to chase up people who don't participate straight away but this would hopefully prove more accurate.

Interesting you work in market research. Are you aware of ORB in Holborn who do a lot of phone work for the conservative campaign and also boris johnson?

I know of them but I don't know them. Healthcare tends to be a little bit cut off from the rest of market research as we have our own special conference and don't tend to go to the MRS.

An aside...

So, in short, Brown was right not to call the 2007 General Election.

Let me try and explain things for the hard of thinking. For the masses of the electorate about there life isn't brilliant. Its hard. Its been grindingly hard for years and they are sick of it.

The Brexit vote wasn't all about Europe, it was a protest vote against how shit things are. They want change for the better. For a little while May spoke their language on Brexit and the media had free reign to portray Jezbollah as a terrorist lover (fuelled by Jez's epic inability to do professional politics). So the polls pointed to a Tory landslide, and so May called an election to cash in for more seats.

And then it all changed. May assumed that because Jeremy was so hated and because she was so positively received on Brexit and JAMs that she could do what she liked. The Tory manifesto was genuinely stupid and nasty and reminded everyone how shit things really are right now. The Labour manifesto offering hope and change, and shooting the "uncosted tax and spend" meme dead at birth (helped by the Tory manifesto not being costed and them being very shifty on taxes).

And at the same time the media spin legally was swept away and more balance brought in. May isn't Thatcher after all, she's a socially inadequate loner unable to speak to people. Corbyn isn't Marx after all, he's this cuddly grandfather figure. And the anger that so many people have about their lives, Corbyn is articulating it.

So here we are. Your issues aren't necessarily the issues of the mainstream. Most voters vote based on their situation now and their wallet, and faced with more grinding austerity appear to have plumped for "bollocks to that".

GarethoftheVale2 said:

Andy, as a market researcher I am concerned too.

The big problem with political polling is that it has to be all of 3 things:

- Accurate
- Cost effective
- Fast

The British electoral study has been shown to be very accurate but is also far too slow to be used in the same way as current polls are.

One thing I have been thinking about is the level of incentives that these studies pay. I work in healthcare research and if we do a 20 minute survey with a doctor we will pay them in the region of £20-30. If you do a 20 minute survey on a consumer site you will paid 50p or given a prize draw entry. This means these sorts of surveys will only appeal to people who are cash poor, time rich and to people who are very interested in doing surveys. As far as I am aware phone polls don't offer any incentive at all.

So you could put up incentives to say £5 per 5 minutes but this then clashes with point number 2 about being cost effective.

The other thing I would consider along with putting up incentives is trying to set up a closed panel for political research. By a closed panel, I mean rather than letting everyone join, use the electoral roll to segment the electorate by national demographics and then randomly invite people to participate within each segment. With an approach like this you would need to allow longer in field (say a week) and to be prepared to use phone to chase up people who don't participate straight away but this would hopefully prove more accurate.

The other consideration is that political polls pay nothing or not very much in return for a substantial block of time. It should be possible to cut the time right back by dropping most of the supplementary questions. Who will you vote for? And one or at most two other questions to be rotated around respondents. Time taken, 20 seconds not 20 minutes.