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Polling errors – politicalbetting.com
Polling errors – politicalbetting.com
There’s three times more people who voted Conservative and are undecided than voted Labour and are undecided, and where these voters end up going will make a big difference. https://t.co/JkCGGkRhcp
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Two very different election strategies already developing. Tories with a flurry of major announcements to seize the agenda. Labour sitting back, saying very little, leaving them to it. Tories glad they’re making the running. Labour glad they’re making the running as well.
Apart from some very generous odds on less than 50 Tory seats at the moment I’m going to sit this election out.
What I’m curious about is the 165 seat max claim - was thinking the range was 20-200 so where does the 165 point come from
'I do believe the ‘don’t knows’ will vote in fairly large numbers, and the indications from local council results is that they are beginning to break towards the Conservatives.’
There’s no indication from the local council results of anything firm at national level and there’s no evidence that can be pulled out to show ‘they are beginning to break towards the Conservatives.’
And secondly, the ‘I believe’ comment shows that this isn’t based in evidence.
His belief may be right. It may not be.
Even when he repeats himself
I’m with @JosiasJessop - for me, the principle of forced Labour is wrong irrespective of anything else. If Tories want to bring back national service, the. They should do it and explain how they’ll pay for it. This policy is simply wrong and I think any other country that has a similar scheme is wrong irrespective of EU membership or free university tuition.
And it's subject to compulsion.
I asked how you would characterise it; I already know you don't like my honest appraisal.
Going back to Avanti and Llandudno - there is no overtime ban at he moment but that doesn’t stop people not accepting the offer (unlike the Tory scheme it’s not compulsory) but the issue will be lack of route knowledge if the issue is drivers - school holidays and sickness can knock any route off, and it’s not a route everyone knows
Germany’s No.1 rated tourist attraction, amazingly.
(you may already know it)
Essentially two poles of (relative, remember most people don’t think about politics much) electoral sophistication and of apathy.
At the moment I would imagine something like Natty Servs would increase the former and *perhaps* decrease the latter. So not really a tactical masterstroke (and fairly obviously terrible policymaking).
I almost prefer the American convention of omitting the dk’s and nv’s.
eek said:
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+1 would need to speak to my mate who lives there but I believe that train not working is a regular occurrence
But it’s a staff issue - very few drivers know the route and the train (both of which is required) so it’s possible that a combination of school holidays and someone being ill can knock the early morning train off.
Feck's sake , they don't know how to press a few buttons and turn a wheel , pampered arses right enough. Imagine lorry drivers saying "Sorry Boss I don't know that road". Useless overpaid lazy twats.
...In the summer of 2000, Frederik Braun, one of the two founders of Miniatur Wunderland, was on vacation in Zurich. In a local model train store he came up with the idea for the world's largest model railway. Back in Hamburg, he searched for email addresses online and started a survey on the popularity of real and fictional sights of the city. In the process, the Miniatur Wunderland, which did not yet exist, was ranked 3 by male respondents...
Part of what the unions are so upset about is the dead hand of the DfT meddling in basic operational issues to make it unworkable...
Against the mega tsunami and more 'opiniumish' downwards - local by elections, the '23 and '24 LEs, the PCCs, London elections, midlands and teeside mayoralties, Hayward isnt some n00b
DYOR
Morning all
We've gone well past the point of unions holding the public sector to ransom. It's that individual workers are voting with their feet and deciding that they would rather do other things with their time and skills.
I don't know how anyone fixes that, what with there being even less money than the time that there was no money. But foot stamping and saying that people should jolly well take what's on offer doesn't work.
The fix is always to reduce the need for overtime
ASLEF have been holding the railways to ransom and the question is will Starmer concede their wage demsnds
I would also comment that when they arrived 10 days ago the Euston Holyhead train was delayed by over 45 minutes in Chester due to lack of crew
https://www.forces.net/world/which-countries-still-have-conscription
No idea of the reliability of the source. I like the Dutch approach:
"Officially, the Netherlands has mandatory military service, however, it is not enforced.
After turning 17, a conscript receives a letter from the Ministry of Defence stating they are registered for military service. But, there is no obligation to show up.'
In Austria and Switzerland the basic obligation is military service, with alternatives only permitted to conscientious objectors. That makes more sense to me - we are (I assume) comfortable with the thought of conscription in time of war, and if it is necessary for national security we should be in peacetime too
Incidentally we already routinely force adult citizens into the most onerous, distressing and traumatizing labour imaginable called jury service. Another case where it's a horrible job but someone has to do it.
Military conscription or alternative service in various European countries: you get paid.
The Tories’ national service: apart from the military route, everyone else doesn’t get paid.
But let's remember that 200 seats is a very bad defeat. Fewer than Foot got in 1983, roughly on a par with Howard in 2005 or Corbyn in 2019.
Now it's possible to recover from that in a term. But you need a lot to go your way. In 2005-10, we had the GFC, the rise of Brown and Cameron and ended up with a hung parliament. In 2019-24, we have had... all of this.
And that seems like the best case scenario for the Conservatives. Though I still want to see where on the swingometer Rishi's battlechopper is landing.
And always use so large a fan that they could not be seen."
Lewis Carroll
The hope, then, is that the people choosing to participate ate still representative of everyone else in the same demographic groups. The old people are representative of the old, and the young people of the young, etc.
I think a failure of this hope might help to explain the high opinion polling for Greens and Reform, in the event that these parties both fail to match their polling. Rather than these voters being squeezed during the election campaign, they may simply have been over represented by their supporters greater willingness to respond to opinion polls.
Would Conservative to Labour switchers be over represented in a similar way? I think that the evidence from some of the huge by-election swings is that the answer to this is no.
I’ll even waste todays photo on it:
It's very far from obvious that there's any military case for the UK introducing peacetime conscription, and certainly not with the current level of military capacity to deal with it.
The idea that Rishi's post it note, zero consultation election policy makes any kind of sense at all, is for hard core Tory loyalists and elderly nostalgics only.
Could have been 45 minutes at Stoke.
Of course, they were all 'rich' enough to live the lives of eternal students.
(*) That may be wrong; memory and all that...
You don't get paid for jury service you get £65 a day for not getting paid which ok comes to the same thing (but not very much of the same thing). But I was addressing the compulsory rather than the unpaid aspect.
Except they don’t exist…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/vat-private-schools-labour-low-income-kids-tax-bursaries
I would just say that because of the timing of the election the number of children leaving private schools for the state sector will become very apparent by the Autumn and I expect it will not be good news for labour's calculations on the funding available from this decision
Exclusive:
— Leaked internal Conservative Party polling reveals more than 100 Tory MPs could lose their seats solely due to the rise of Reform
— Documents seen by @BloombergUK show senior aides fear huge losses caused by Reform splitting Tory vote
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1795349195442069817
The "don't knows" are currently pretty high. 3x as many voted Tory as Labour in the past. It is reasonable to surmise that a proportion of them will vote and that the majority of them will vote for their previous party. To put numbers on this if something like 20% are currently "don't know" then maybe 70% of that group who have voted before (those who don't normally vote are different and all too likely not to vote again) will vote. Given their make up they may break something like 10% Tory and 4% Labour.
It sounds plausible to me. It doesn't stop a comfortable Labour victory but it does stop a massacre. Of course, this time it could be different.
I must admit that if I was building a massive model railway, I wouldn't make it of the WCML at Milton Keynes, or in the modern era! Then again, those choices probably made building it easier.
Do you think Jury Duty is forced labour?
Mel Stride out and about this morning to promote the Tories expanding the pension triple lock.
Which is quite funny, given he said it was "unsustainable" last year.
Then take a further 5% off minor parties and give this to the Tories.
Then bump up the Tory vote by a further 2% for good luck.
I’ll probably still underestimate the Conservative vote though, because no pollster can factor in someone taking a privatised train service after 14 years of Tory rule, being delayed, and demanding what the Labour leader’s going to do about it.
The biggest difference in about ex-Tory DKs and ex-Tory Reform preferences. Together they are 38% approx of 2019 Tory voters. That is 5 million voters. The gap between Con and Lab in 2019 was 3.5 million voters.
If about a third of this group vote Tory in July, the Tories will do OK, though hopefully not win.
I still think NoM is very likely.
The penalties for (and social stigma around) avoiding conscription are considerable.
Lots of businesses and private citizens who are planning to vote for him are going to feel had in 12-18 months time.
Having said that, I do wake up in a cold sweat that somehow the Tories pull this off. If they do - I'm giving up, sod it, th country will deserve all it gets.
After the election: "30% don't vote."
For many people, saying that they don't know is a polite way of saying that they can’t be arsed.
They'll be breaking for the sofa, not the Tories.
Countries: Military service (with alternatives bolted on as an afterthought) for paid adults
Sunak's school: CCF and alternatives on an equal footing, unpaid minors and you have a stern word with the parents if the minors refuse to cooperate.
He is a Peter Pan figure. Headboydom went to his head and he is reliving it
I think this may well be Starmer's first problem
And in this case, it's an utterly futile scheme.
Which is why I went for Tories less than 50 seats. It’s not likely to happen but it’s more likely than the 4% chance the odds suggested.,
Given the small percentage of the population in private schools, even with a fall in private school numbers, existing state schools should easily be able to absorb the slack. So no increase in cost from the current position, and an increase in tax revenue.
Demographics on Labour's side here.
I quite like the railway modeller's rule one: "It's my model, and I can run what I like!".
Everything points to the Conservatives not pulling anything off. But if I didn't live here and like the UK, I'd almost like to see them try and govern for another five years. It would be 1992-7 on some illegal drug.
Yes, everybody is talking about it.
And they all think it's shit
It sort-of has a basis in history although that’s highly selective: 2019 over say 1931, 1945, or 1997.
As some of you may recall, I’ve argued that 2019 was a unique set of circumstances and a VERY bad baseline to use if you are betting money. It was ‘almost’ a referendum on Get Brexit Done following a remainer Parliament that made even me exasperated.
Go back to 2017 or 2015 which were true General Elections.
It’s really poor psephology to use 2019.
What happens when that goodwill evaporates? The service can't run fully. Then add into the mix some bizarre DfT dictat that drivers should have route restrictions - meaning more crew needed to operate a single service - and you're asking for trouble.
The solution? The Shapps - Williams plan is a start. A wholesale restructure to simplify the utter chaos which is he current structure. The Tories have had this on the planner since 2021 and other than spending money on competitions as to in which Tory maginal the HQ should be have done *nothing*.
So yes, its clearly the fault of the unions. Of people. How Dare They not work on a day off. Who do they think they are, putting family first?
Its an outrage.
@paulhutcheon
Private school moaning and carping is in overdrive on Labour’s policy to impose VAT on school fees.
Labour will be delighted with the optics of the top 5pc in society demanding their tax breaks are maintained.
And 100% against would be amazing
I am actually quite astonished at the lazy way some people are pulling local election voting into national intention to vote.
This is even more suspect than using 2019 GE, which was at least a national vote.
It looks more like 1.7 million DK and a further 1.7 million Reform, 0.5 million will not vote and 1.2 million Deceased on these figures from January:
https://x.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1745742534104535306?t=yC34sKa4LohRAFoaEdXcFA&s=19
Of course it serves everyone to take up a close race, Tories, Labour, pollsters and pundits.
But what if it isn't, and the polling is right? 1992 is a long time ago, and since then polls have been more accurate.