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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The battle of the GE2015 predictors: Baxter versus Fisher
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The battle of the GE2015 predictors: Baxter versus Fisher
The chart shows the main predictions for GE2015 from the two leading predictors – the long-standing Electoral Calculus from Martin Baxter and the relatively new one from Stephen Fisher.
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Too close to call...
It's gradually converging on reality as the election approaches and Fisher's model does progressively less unskewing.
This is all the more surprising comparing him with Martin Baxter when one considers that, and I'm whispering this very quietly, whereas Fisher sees the LibDems winning all of 28 seats come next May, Baxter on the other hand sees them down and out with only 17, that's SEVENTEEN seats ..... barely four London Cabs full in Martin Day speak!
(Rather amusingly Baxter makes this 298/298/27/0 with 18 other (NI) and 9 Nats. I think that means no 2-way Coalition would work in theory, although excluding SF/Speaker you'd just creep over the edge.
I wish them well contesting the minor placings.
Milliband is right and Cameron is wrong on this key foreign issue.
Cameron is looking very isolated and quite frankly an idiot not to oppose the war crimes that Israel is committing.
Has political polling increased in frequency over the last few years, and if so by how much?
If there has been a significant increase could that be expected to influence in any way whether and how people vote, or indeed to make them more politically aware or loosen preconceived attitudes?
Could these queries themselves be studied by polling?
In July 2009 there were 8 (eight) Westminster VI polls conducted
In July 2014 there were 43 (forty three) Westminster VI polls conducted.
Edit: Another analysis
In July 2009 there were 5 (five) non yougov Westminster VI polls conducted
In July 2014 there were 20 (twenty) non yougov Westminster VI polls conducted.
Certainly Cameron has been more supportive of Israel, but he doesn't (yet) look isolated because most people in the UK are far too cynical of both sides. Accusing Miliband of playing politics should do enough for him. Nevertheless I'm sure even from a political perspective this is something he could do without.
As long as the US is willing to replenish their ammunition I am not really sure anyone's opinion matters.
Baxter is fighting 2010, Fisher 1997.
Some people don't understand that each election is unique under the circumstances of each historical period and past performance doesn't guarantee future success.
Actually a period of silence from Cameron after his pathetic posturing at the NATO summit last week should be welcomed.
I read about Miliband's odd attack on Cameron over Gaza. Given Miliband was too busy posing for piccies with Obama instead of attending the Commons statement on the matter perhaps he ought to consider the beam in his own eye.
Cameron should just replicate his views on Sri Lanka with regards Israel. What Israel is doing is exactly what Sri Lanka did...
What is yet to be proven is whether it will change the way that Fisher projects. Like OGH I have reservations about the use of history in this current unusual position. The evidence for the sort of swingback he is assuming has been pretty modest over the last 3 or so months, the tories having made some progress before that. This has resulted in an ever decreasing probability of a tory majority and an increasing probability that Labour will be the largest party. I expect these trends to continue over the next few months.
I still expect the tories to win the popular vote but not by as much as Fisher is projecting and probably not enough to stay the largest party in terms of seats. Something like 36-33 to the tories would be my current guess which makes Ed PM, probably of a minority government since I expect the electoral advantages for Labour to be less pronounced than they were in 2010.
He's very good at this sort of thing.
Whereas the Baxter model is a nowcast.
So it is possible for them to be both right.
Speaking of interesting comments, do check your Diplomatic inbox.
Baxter does not try to predict the future while Fisher is.
If the result on election day is different that Fisher's prediction today then it would be correct to say that Fisher was wrong.
However, who can forget his prediction a year or more back that the Tories had a 97% chance of getting an absolute majority. Yet now he barely manages a 26%.
What went wrong with the model ?
Con : 34.9 plus or minus 7.7 i.e. between 27 and 43
Imagine that the Tories poll 26%. All Fisher's model says is that the chance of that happening is some figure less than 2.5%. The fact it has happened does not disprove the model - if I win the lottery, that is not to say the odds weren't 13.8m to one. What we have to ask is, was Fisher wrong to think this was a particularly unlikely outcome. The best we can do is to say, look, nothing exceptional has happened (if it hasn't), and yet this has happened.
What we have been seeing week by week over the last 3 months is that the tories are not making the progress down that path they need to make to achieve their desired result. it is of course possible that they might "catch up" if things went their way. But they are well behind where they should be if they were going to achieve a comfortable majority and they are falling further behind week by week.
Put it another way, if the Fisher projections are correct the tories are already running out of time.
It is relatively easy.
Th
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/it-s-not-the-usa-that-made-libya-the-disaster-it-is-today.html
"We did not have much involvement with Libya under Gaddafi, we did not launder his money, and we did not have boots on the ground in the revolution. For the most part, Europeans flew the NATO bombing runs that pounded Gaddafi’s troops; we refueled them."
9 11 11 9 9 8 7 6 5 6 7 6 6 6 4 4 3 4 3
It astonishes me that so much energy is devoted to extrapolating counterfactual nowcasts - an indefensible procedure - and so little to extrapolating the trend when the trend is as clear as this.
Fisher is trying to project forward. Let's get 6 weeks time over and done with first. The result of the Indy Ref will have a huge bearing on the outcome of the GE regardless of whether it is a YES or a NO.
Israel is a whole different kettle of fish.
I've read his articles on it.
For there not to be a gap at the current point would be highly unusual and would indicate that no swing (either way) is expected from now till May 2015.
Personally I think Fisher is slightly closer to the actual result than Baxter right now - in particular for Labour seats. My estimate of 312 fits between the two which makes sense to me.
Cam can afford to look more like an onlooker (reflecting the UK's position, as others have noted) as he has far fewer Estonians in has cabinet than in years gone by.
Worth recalling 2011 when everything seemed to happen out of nowhere. Tsunami, earthquake, nuclear meltdown (almost), and the Arab Spring.
Ebola still isn't contained.
If "swingback" does not take place [ we should have been in it since the budget ], he could have egg on his face ! Being an academic, it would probably be free range eggs !
Nick Sutton ✔ @suttonnick
Monday's Independent front page "Miliband warned of Ukip
threat to Labour majority
Some wise and modest fellow did tip UKIP taking Grimsby at 16/1
http://tinyurl.com/HannnibalWasRubbish
The Lab MP is standing down, and he's very eurosceptic/Old Labour.
But the 2010 Tory candidate is now the UKIP candidate, but UKIP are crazy to select her, because she's erm interesting
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2653896/UKIP-councillor-accused-racism-send-lot-video-chosen-stand-party-target-seat-Great-Grimsby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grimsby_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
Has the potential to become an interesting three way
Using Fisher's idea of a past performace predicting the future I can spin the past like this:
In the past 10 elections with regular polling only 5 had swingback, from those 5 two were special circumstances like war (1983) and leadership change (1992), only 3 (1987, 1997 and 2010) were due to the economy, from those 3 only 1 gave a government it's re-election (1987).
So by past performace, the chances of the Tories staying in power after the next general election is 1 out of 10.
On average swingback for economic reasons started 15 months before an election.
And the closest swingback started was 6 months before an election.
We are now 9 months away so we are getting close to the point of no return.
This assumption is as accurate as any past performance average you can get.
Not the other kind of three way.
Mr. 1983, zero evidence is open to dispute.
Miliband might have heard Cameron's views if he'd bothered to turn up to the Commons statement on the matter.
6, 6, 4, 4, 3, 4, 3
So the Lab lead has halved in 6 months. At that rate the parties would be level in Jan 2015 and Con would be 2% ahead in May 2015 at the GE.
Of course that's a very crude analysis but it is clear the lead has narrowed over the last 6 months.
I can't believe I'm having to sit through this for Kylie!
This is not a particularly profound observation.
Judaism race or religion? We really don't have the time and I don't care; as mentioned, Hitler wouldn't have dallied long on the distinction.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11008940/Labour-MPs-reluctant-to-advertise-Ed-Miliband-online.html
.. but the figures for Dave would be interesting
ps...Is ED on Nick Palmer's website?
Most recent anonymous press briefing discussed:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-22/us-state-department-confident-mh17-mistakenly-downed-separatists-finds-no-direct-lin
As for hearing Cameron's views, it's not about him expressing 'a view'; it's about him taking a stand against a wholly unjustified and disproportionate military campaign, which is causing a humanitarian disaster. He's quite hot on condemning 'slaughter' of a regime's 'own people' usually.
The distinction between being racially and religiously Jewish is pretty easy for most people, if not for you.
In terms that for example SeanT can hang his hat on for future posts.