Dear Prime Minister, I am afraid there is no money – politicalbetting.com

System · June 29

Dear Prime Minister, I am afraid there is no money – politicalbetting.com

graphic by @clara__murray pic.twitter.com/U3dKeS51Ut

Read the full story here

Sandpit · June 29

No money left.

Heathener · June 29

As they say, follow the money.

Although the canny among us make most by bucking that. Sometimes.

Pulpstar · June 29

1.2 million quid is an astoundingly small amount of cash to raise tbh

Foxy · June 29

The Tory PPB last week was dire. Clearly there is no budget for these things.

I do note with joy how tiny the sums raised are here. A candidate running for dog catcher in Palookaville, Idaho needs to raise more.

Democratic politics shouldn't be based around who can raise most from the plutocrats.

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Is this what happens if your approach is f##k business...then business people aren't very keen im puttimg their hands in their pocket to fund your campaign.

SMukesh · June 29

Probably the result of an election with a foregone conclusion.

Rishi has now taken the gloves off with Reform, too little too late?

Malmesbury · June 29

Nothing succeeds like success.

Nothing fails like failure, must the corollary.

In the minds of every group or company - “these guys are completely irrelevant now”.

DavidL · June 29

In our constituency we have now had 7 leaflets from the Tories, 2 from the SNP and 1 from Labour, Lib Dems and Reform.

Whether that will do them any good remains to be seen, and its frankly not hopeful, but there is not an obvious shortage of cash.

SandyRentool · June 29

If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Malmesbury said:
Nothing succeeds like success.

Nothing fails like failure, must the corollary.

In the minds of every group or company - “these guys are completely irrelevant now”.

The awful campaign and terrible manifesto isn't going to help to drum up whatever support you might have had left. Vicious circle, run shit, no money, run even shitter, even less money.

edmundintokyo · June 29

There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable

MisterBedfordshire · June 29

I see the Clacton ranter has been released without charge.

Have Equity commented or acted on one of their members expressing such views yet?

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable

Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries

Malmesbury · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

Malmesbury said:
Nothing succeeds like success.

Nothing fails like failure, must the corollary.

In the minds of every group or company - “these guys are completely irrelevant now”.
The awful campaign and terrible manifesto isn't going to help to drum up whatever support you might have had left. Vicious circle, run shit, no money, run even shitter, even less money.

Yes. Death spiral.

Malmesbury · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:
I see the Clacton ranter has been released without charge.

Have Equity commented or acted on one of their members expressing such views yet?

Hmm - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/equity-apology-laurence-fox-resignations

I would imagine that after that, they are parsing everything through a pile of All The Lawyers.

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Malmesbury said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Malmesbury said:
Nothing succeeds like success.

Nothing fails like failure, must the corollary.

In the minds of every group or company - “these guys are completely irrelevant now”.
The awful campaign and terrible manifesto isn't going to help to drum up whatever support you might have had left. Vicious circle, run shit, no money, run even shitter, even less money.
Yes. Death spiral.

I think its interesting how those that definitely could get money in e.g. Cameron, are invisible. And Boris is on vacation, who has different connections that have money e.g. JCB.

The Tory campaign is Sunak and...Sunak...looking lost most of the time.

IanB2 · June 29

FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.

And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.

edmundintokyo · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries

Right, you could fund the entire British election for the amount they just spent on a single New York primary!

Sandpit · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries

US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.

Foxy · June 29

On the subject of money, it does look as if Lab staffers were booking the advertising for the Mail Online front page this weekend while Tory staffers were still down the bookies. Top Trolling!

Stuartinromford · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries

And most of that money gets spent on fairly pointless parasitic stuff- a whole industry of consultants and fundraisers who fail just as frequently as they succeed but convince people that they're doing something clever.

There's an element of that in the UK. (Yes, Levido, I am looking at you.) If the Conservatives had more money, I suspect they'd be pumping out the same terrible messages, just with more panache and pizzazz. Millions spent on a campaign won't help with their real issues, namely:

1 They have not been a successful government, especially since 2019

2 They are in a closed bubble to such a degree that their interests have decoupled from what the country as a whole is interested in.

Foxy · June 29

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.

IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?

Malmesbury · June 29

SandyRentool said:
If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.

Some years ago, when I was active in politics, I was told that a nightmare scenario, for both main parties, was some loon zillionaire giving the other party a donation big enough to run the party in perpetuity. Then said party would haul up the drawbridge on donations for everyone….

My US relatives (New York Democrats, politically active, lawyers and teachers ) used to worry that one of the New Wave Billionaires would set up a party entirely internally funded - and end up directly controlling both houses and the Presidency. I thought the idea that lobbyists were an essential part of democracy an interesting opinion.

Of course Bloomberg blew that possibility up in some style….

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Malmesbury said:

SandyRentool said:
If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.
Some years ago, when I was active in politics, I was told that a nightmare scenario, for both main parties, was some loon zillionaire giving the other party a donation big enough to run the party in perpetuity. Then said party would haul up the drawbridge on donations for everyone….

My US relatives (New York Democrats, politically active, lawyers and teachers ) used to worry that one of the New Wave Billionaires would set up a party entirely internally funded - and end up directly controlling both houses and the Presidency. I thought the idea that lobbyists were an essential part of democracy an interesting opinion.

Of course Bloomberg blew that possibility up in some style….

Didn't Zuckerberg toy with the idea of doing this?

TheScreamingEagles · June 29

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.

Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.

wooliedyed · June 29

Malmesbury said:

SandyRentool said:
If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.
Some years ago, when I was active in politics, I was told that a nightmare scenario, for both main parties, was some loon zillionaire giving the other party a donation big enough to run the party in perpetuity. Then said party would haul up the drawbridge on donations for everyone….

My US relatives (New York Democrats, politically active, lawyers and teachers ) used to worry that one of the New Wave Billionaires would set up a party entirely internally funded - and end up directly controlling both houses and the Presidency. I thought the idea that lobbyists were an essential part of democracy an interesting opinion.

Of course Bloomberg blew that possibility up in some style….

The Quantitative Easing Party of the UK

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.

I have been in the US in the run up to GE & it unbearable....you go to sleep and all you can hear is ....approves this message.

highwayparadise306 · June 29

Phil Green. Ask him for some Dosh. Wait no. He lives in Monaco. Lion heart is the name of his speed boat. Hmm Rees Mogg. That posh accent guy with the nhs glasses. He is not short. Maybe he can help. That Tesla bloke. He could help out the Tories. Take over their PR.

IanB2 · June 29

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.

Presumably boosting the economy in a way similar to Keynesian holes?

eek · June 29

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.

From memory the most profitable time for a TV channel in the states is when an election is on, to get their ads on Tv the price for slots often triple in price

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

IanB2 said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Presumably boosting the economy in a way similar to Keynesian holes?

A form of wealth distribution from the super rich to the rich....

IanB2 · June 29

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?

Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.

Roger · June 29

FPT.

Roger said:

boulay said:
The Mail’s editorial comment is saying what many of us thought it would. Don’t allow a “Starmageddon”, seriously don't vote reform, the Tories have actually done well under the circumstances. Labour will win but vote Tory to ensure a proper opposition to stop the worst of Starmer is a summary.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13581819/Tories-say-right-angry-partys-errors-dont-let-anger-blind-perils-Starmerism.html

The Sun will likely say exactly the same and I’m guessing the Times, Telegraph and Express too. “Its lost but you need to still vote Tory to rein in Labour”.
Interesting that those Tory Papers so openly admit their current irrelevance. Be interesting to see which of them are no longer around in their current form when the next election happens

Sandpit · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

Malmesbury said:

SandyRentool said:
If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.
Some years ago, when I was active in politics, I was told that a nightmare scenario, for both main parties, was some loon zillionaire giving the other party a donation big enough to run the party in perpetuity. Then said party would haul up the drawbridge on donations for everyone….

My US relatives (New York Democrats, politically active, lawyers and teachers ) used to worry that one of the New Wave Billionaires would set up a party entirely internally funded - and end up directly controlling both houses and the Presidency. I thought the idea that lobbyists were an essential part of democracy an interesting opinion.

Of course Bloomberg blew that possibility up in some style….
Didn't Zuckerberg toy with the idea of doing this?

There’s a few of them that have been politically active, but mostly within the normal political structure at least in the US. Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, all large political donors. It’s not difficult to imagine Elon Musk starting up a party and funding it with billions, if the Establishment politicians upset him over something.

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Roger said:
FPT.
Roger said:

boulay said:
The Mail’s editorial comment is saying what many of us thought it would. Don’t allow a “Starmageddon”, seriously don't vote reform, the Tories have actually done well under the circumstances. Labour will win but vote Tory to ensure a proper opposition to stop the worst of Starmer is a summary.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13581819/Tories-say-right-angry-partys-errors-dont-let-anger-blind-perils-Starmerism.html

The Sun will likely say exactly the same and I’m guessing the Times, Telegraph and Express too. “Its lost but you need to still vote Tory to rein in Labour”.
Interesting that those Tory Papers so openly admit their current irrelevance. Be interesting to see which of them are no longer around in their current form when the next election happens

Telegraph and Mail are profitable for starters, successfully moving to subscription model. Times is profitable as well.

I would say the biggest liability is Reach group i.e. Mirror. Mirror is irrelevant, and they bought all those regional newspapers that are failing.

eek · June 29

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.

To be clear - to show that 30 second advert once would cost more than what was allowed for spending in a single constituency.

Of course - to reach all voters that ad (and similar ones) will be shown a few hundred times

highwayparadise306 · June 29

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Malmesbury said:

SandyRentool said:
If only the PM knew someone with several hundred million in the bank he could ask to chip in.
Some years ago, when I was active in politics, I was told that a nightmare scenario, for both main parties, was some loon zillionaire giving the other party a donation big enough to run the party in perpetuity. Then said party would haul up the drawbridge on donations for everyone….

My US relatives (New York Democrats, politically active, lawyers and teachers ) used to worry that one of the New Wave Billionaires would set up a party entirely internally funded - and end up directly controlling both houses and the Presidency. I thought the idea that lobbyists were an essential part of democracy an interesting opinion.

Of course Bloomberg blew that possibility up in some style….
Didn't Zuckerberg toy with the idea of doing this?
There’s a few of them that have been politically active, but mostly within the normal political structure at least in the US. Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, all large political donors. It’s not difficult to imagine Elon Musk starting up a party and funding it with billions, if the Establishment politicians upset him over something.

Entirely possible.

IanB2 · June 29

Roger said:
FPT.
Roger said:

boulay said:
The Mail’s editorial comment is saying what many of us thought it would. Don’t allow a “Starmageddon”, seriously don't vote reform, the Tories have actually done well under the circumstances. Labour will win but vote Tory to ensure a proper opposition to stop the worst of Starmer is a summary.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13581819/Tories-say-right-angry-partys-errors-dont-let-anger-blind-perils-Starmerism.html

The Sun will likely say exactly the same and I’m guessing the Times, Telegraph and Express too. “Its lost but you need to still vote Tory to rein in Labour”.
Interesting that those Tory Papers so openly admit their current irrelevance. Be interesting to see which of them are no longer around in their current form when the next election happens

I was in London at the beginning of the week and was surprised how much puff stuff for Sunak there was in the Standard. Based on a sample of one day's issue.

SandyRentool · June 29

I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.

DecrepiterJohnL · June 29

I've had only one leaflet this election. It arrived yesterday by post. It was from the Labour Party.

Now I realise this is a safe seat but candidates get a free mailshot and printing leaflets is cheap so what's going on? Is the next scandal that parties are spending money in one constituency but accounting for it in another, or do they just not care any more in these social media days?

It opens with a big red banner saying Change, Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, so I imagine Labour's marketing is run by Corbynistas or people who know HIGNFY is off the air.

Speaking of which, there is a compilation of HIGNFYs from previous elections at:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tASp2Hd3XVk

IanB2 · June 29

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.

The real issue in the US is that the big corporations funnel money to the political parties at election times and then when elected the governing parties funnel public money back towards those same corporations and/or or legislate to maximise the earnings of said corporations. Creating somewhere between a cartel and closed shop.

TheScreamingEagles · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.
I have been in the US in the run up to GE & it unbearable....you go to sleep and all you can hear is ....approves this message.

The worst thing about it them all is they are not very subtle.

Sandpit · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.
I have been in the US in the run up to GE & it unbearable....you go to sleep and all you can hear is ....approves this message.

Makes a change from “ask your physician for…”

IanB2 · June 29

I wonder why Ladbrokes has suspended its market on IDS's seat?

highwayparadise306 · June 29

IanB2 said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
The real issue in the US is that the big corporations funnel money to the political parties at election times and then when elected the governing parties funnel public money back towards those same corporations and/or or legislate to maximise the earnings of said corporations. Creating somewhere between a cartel and closed shop.

Exactly. You have described the system perfectly. Ten out of ten!

FrancisUrquhart · June 29

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries
US political spending is totally out of control, IIRC Hillary Clinton spent nearly $3bn on her 2016 campaign.
Thank God we do not allow paid for TV advertising.

I know a Tory staffer who went to the 2008 Dem convention and pointed out a 30 second TV advert in Pennsylvania was roughly the same cost as the entire 2005 UK general election and Pennsylvania wasn't even in the top 10 media markets in America.
I have been in the US in the run up to GE & it unbearable....you go to sleep and all you can hear is ....approves this message.
Makes a change from “ask your physician for…”

.....side effects including vomiting, diarrhea, migraines, heart failure, blindness, impotence, hair loss, instant death syndrome....

Foxy · June 29

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.

Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Wulfrun_Phil · June 29

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.

Yes and I know of no more prolific spam generator than the national Labour Party in communication with its members at election time.

The emails we send out at local level are by contrast limited and focused, but they are being drowned out by a sea of national emails. The national ones have become utterly counterproductive and the upshot is that many members just unsubscribe from emails and become impossible to contact easily.

MartinVegas · June 29

FrancisUrquhart said:

edmundintokyo said:
There's a lot wrong with the British political system but the fact that they do it on such a tiny budget is both magnificent and adorable
Where as you look at US and they spent billions with a B, the GDP of some countries

I just googled a random US city, Cleveland. Nothing special. The mayor spent more than the Tories have this election on his election campaign in 2021:

https://www.ideastream.org/community/2021-12-13/mayor-elect-justin-bibb-raised-and-spent-1-6-million-in-cleveland-mayoral-race

This isn't even for a statewide or national office. I've never heard of him and I doubt anyone outside of Cleveland has.

If you want to run for congress, the numbers go up astronomically. Jackie Rosen, senator for Nevada (population 3 million) will easily spend more by November on her campaign than all the UK parties combined:

https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/jacky-rosen/summary?cid=N00038734

It's crazy. The dirty secret is that it keeps TV stations afloat. Why were they so keen to keep Trump viable in 2016? God forbid a forgone conclusion as no-one would donate and the ad dollars would dry up.

kjh · June 29

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.

Well you will be pleased to know they are wasting it. In Guildford they have paid for ads covering the local buses for their candidate. In Guildford? Why?

Their candidate is also delivering and canvassing in one very small Labour enclave. Why isn't she in Aldershot?

This stuff just muddies the water. Labour are also claiming they are the challengers in Guildford and Woking yet there is no other activity, particularly Guildford. They haven't even sent out an addressed Royal Mail leaflet. Just one per house. Yet they pay for huge ads on buses!

The LDs are flooding these places so why are Labour wasting their resources and potentially cocking up the result.

IanB2 · June 29

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Sounds like your extended family could swing the seat by themselves? You should be telling me how it's going to go...

Roger · June 29

Interesting watching Fiona Bruce with Farage and the leader of the Greens last night....... An excellent audience. As good as I've seen. Extremely well informed and articulate It was quite life affirming to see how much they loathed farage and how little they tolerated his confected bullshit

Though the audience will have been selected to represent different views I doubt they tried to balance their ages so Farages older cohort in all likelihood wouldn't have been able to make it. Not a single clap for him in half an hour

highwayparadise306 · June 29

kjh said:

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.
Well you will be pleased to know they are wasting it. In Guildford they have paid for ads covering the local buses for their candidate. In Guildford? Why?

Their candidate is also delivering and canvassing in one very small Labour enclave. Why isn't she in Aldershot?

This stuff just muddies the water. Labour are also claiming they are the challengers in Guildford and Woking yet there is no other activity, particularly Guildford. They haven't even sent out an addressed Royal Mail leaflet. Just one per house. Yet they pay for huge ads on buses!

The LDs are flooding these places so why are Labour wasting their resources and potentially cocking up the result.

A waste of time and money for Labour in Guildford.

Carnyx · June 29

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?

eek · June 29

So today Labour have the border of the Mailonline homepage

This is from a guide on online advertising

Buying ads to take over the homepage of MailOnline is the sort of thing you do when:
- Your campaign budget is very healthy indeed
- You're feeling pretty confident about the result
- You want to block your opponents doing it and generally annoy them for the lolz.

Story is at https://x.com/whotargetsme/status/1806923920148197409?s=46&t=cxkq0jndvkhIwWZCCEL3QQ

And rumour is they have if all week until Thursday - and that Labour were very surprised the Tories hadn’t booked it

highwayparadise306 · June 29

Roger said:
Interesting watching Fiona Bruce with Farage and the leader of the Greens last night....... An excellent audience. As good as I've seen. Extremely well informed and articulate It was quite life affirming to see how much they loathed farage and how little they tolerated his confected bullshit

Though the audience will have been selected to represent different views I doubt they tried to balance their ages so Farages older cohort in all likelihood wouldn't have been able to make it. Not a single clap for him in half an hour

Brillant. I wonder if he will care. He has nothing to offer apart from costing the Tories a lot of seats. Hopefully he gets another job offer after the election. I am not sure anyone wants him. Toxic twat.

Chris · June 29

DecrepiterJohnL said:
I've had only one leaflet this election. It arrived yesterday by post. It was from the Labour Party.

Now I realise this is a safe seat but candidates get a free mailshot and printing leaflets is cheap so what's going on? Is the next scandal that parties are spending money in one constituency but accounting for it in another, or do they just not care any more in these social media days?

It opens with a big red banner saying Change, Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, so I imagine Labour's marketing is run by Corbynistas or people who know HIGNFY is off the air.

Speaking of which, there is a compilation of HIGNFYs from previous elections at:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tASp2Hd3XVk

I have also been struck by the lack of 'literature', in what should be a Con-held Lib Dem target seat. Some from the LDs - though less than in previous elections. Nothing at all, not even Freepost, from any other candidate, including the defending Tory.

Foxy · June 29

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Sounds like your extended family could swing the seat by themselves? You should be telling me how it's going to go...

Uncle in Lake: Tory
Aunt in Bembridge: Tory
Cousins in Lake x2: ? Labour
SiL St Helens: not sure, Reform possible
Cousins in Wooton x2: Lab/ Green

Would be my guess, Uncle and Aunt nailed on Tory.

Sandpit · June 29

eek said:
So today Labour have the border of the Mailonline homepage

This is from a guide on online advertising

Buying ads to take over the homepage of MailOnline is the sort of thing you do when:
- Your campaign budget is very healthy indeed
- You're feeling pretty confident about the result
- You want to block your opponents doing it and generally annoy them for the lolz.

It’s still amazing that the MailOnline, having deliberately broken their website in so many other ways, don’t host adverts on their own servers to frustrate adblocking.

Cookie · June 29

I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.

PedestrianRock · June 29

https://x.com/peterrambles/status/1806757974238470596?s=46

Hmm. Not so sure about this one, Survation. (North Shropshire going Tory)

https://x.com/survation/status/1806772335883530501?s=46

We'll be using a different method for final predictions in N Shropshire as the MRP model cannot account for the by-election - is it a General Election to General Election model. NS will be a Lib Dem win.

https://x.com/survation/status/1806742446417629659?s=46

Survation’s final MRP projection will be published on Tuesday, followed by our final call on Wednesday.

Looks like Survation will manually update their projections at the last minute and perhaps they will be a lot worse for the Tories than the 85 seats they gave them yesterday?

Foxy · June 29

Carnyx said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?

Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.

Morris_Dancer · June 29

Good morning, everyone.

F1: once again, I'll probably not watch the sprint race as it's not on at a convenient time. While I loathe the format it's undoubtedly useful for picking out pace, however.

IanB2 · June 29

kjh said:

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.
Well you will be pleased to know they are wasting it. In Guildford they have paid for ads covering the local buses for their candidate. In Guildford? Why?

Their candidate is also delivering and canvassing in one very small Labour enclave. Why isn't she in Aldershot?

This stuff just muddies the water. Labour are also claiming they are the challengers in Guildford and Woking yet there is no other activity, particularly Guildford. They haven't even sent out an addressed Royal Mail leaflet. Just one per house. Yet they pay for huge ads on buses!

The LDs are flooding these places so why are Labour wasting their resources and potentially cocking up the result.

Labour wrecking operations to ensure they maintain the cosy two-party duopoly.

Sandpit · June 29

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.

Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.

highwayparadise306 · June 29

Morris_Dancer said:
Good morning, everyone.

F1: once again, I'll probably not watch the sprint race as it's not on at a convenient time. While I loathe the format it's undoubtedly useful for picking out pace, however.

My Fiat 500 could whip the lot of them.

Roger · June 29

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.

Me too. Aren't they good? So well written and a slightly different gimmick every day. I'm not even a member but £5 once a week doesn't hurt and it's worth it for the creative writing. A good example from Angela Rayner

"Roger,

I’m about to take the stage and debate Penny Mordaunt, Nigel Farage and co.

Today of all days, when we released our manifesto, I'm proud to be able to take the stage and represent our party to deliver our message of change. The truth is, everyone I'm up against tonight wants to see Labour falter. But I’m well up for it and honestly, I’m determined to do you proud.

I’m going to give it my all, but it would mean a lot to me to know that you are standing with me. Please will you donate using my link below at: "

Pulpstar · June 29

IanB2 said:

kjh said:

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.
Well you will be pleased to know they are wasting it. In Guildford they have paid for ads covering the local buses for their candidate. In Guildford? Why?

Their candidate is also delivering and canvassing in one very small Labour enclave. Why isn't she in Aldershot?

This stuff just muddies the water. Labour are also claiming they are the challengers in Guildford and Woking yet there is no other activity, particularly Guildford. They haven't even sent out an addressed Royal Mail leaflet. Just one per house. Yet they pay for huge ads on buses!

The LDs are flooding these places so why are Labour wasting their resources and potentially cocking up the result.
Labour wrecking operations to ensure they maintain the cosy two-party duopoly.

Probably the same reason they've given up in Clacton. I know a prior example in a council election where Conservatives put an extra shift into an unwinnable ward so that Labour would get in and not the Lib Dems also.

Clay cross north, 2017 was the ward

Monksfield · June 29

kjh said:

SandyRentool said:
I have been receiving emails from Labour every day of the campaign asking for donations.

Plus the national and local emails asking me to do this, that and the other.

It is much easier to just sit back and let Sir Philip shoot himself in the foot.
Well you will be pleased to know they are wasting it. In Guildford they have paid for ads covering the local buses for their candidate. In Guildford? Why?

Their candidate is also delivering and canvassing in one very small Labour enclave. Why isn't she in Aldershot?

This stuff just muddies the water. Labour are also claiming they are the challengers in Guildford and Woking yet there is no other activity, particularly Guildford. They haven't even sent out an addressed Royal Mail leaflet. Just one per house. Yet they pay for huge ads on buses!

The LDs are flooding these places so why are Labour wasting their resources and potentially cocking up the result.

They’ve been campaigning fairly actively in the Labour enclaves of South Shropshire as well.

MisterBedfordshire · June 29

Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)

eek · June 29

Sandpit said:

eek said:
So today Labour have the border of the Mailonline homepage

This is from a guide on online advertising

Buying ads to take over the homepage of MailOnline is the sort of thing you do when:
- Your campaign budget is very healthy indeed
- You're feeling pretty confident about the result
- You want to block your opponents doing it and generally annoy them for the lolz.
It’s still amazing that the MailOnline, having deliberately broken their website in so many other ways, don’t host adverts on their own servers to frustrate adblocking.

It’s a long time since I worked in online advertising (I know the person who invented the surround ad Labour have today back in the 90s, the ad was on the register but I can’t remember the client) but from memory advertising has dedicated software that doesn’t sit well with anything else - it’s a proxy server with bid engine attached

Foxy · June 29

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.
Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.

Yes, it's featured on all leaflets and posters.

More tanks parked on Tory lawns.

The PLP is going to be very interesting next parliament, much less based around inner cities and their issues, much more on ordinary suburban and rural folk.

It will not be the same Labour Party that we are used to.

Carnyx · June 29

Foxy said:

Carnyx said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.

Just reading a book on the sinking of the Mary Rose over breakfast, and puzzling this morning over a comtemporary painting of the French navy outside an estuary on the eastern tip of the Island till I realised it was Bembridge!

wooliedyed · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:
Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)

If they were to make a red wall breakthrough, that's a possible location but I think not

SandyRentool · June 29

People were expecting an autumn election.

Looking outside, it appears that we have one.

IanB2 · June 29

Carnyx said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?

Very localised to the Undercliff, being Europe's largest urban development on a landslip; the Victorians were so eager to sample the air recommended by Queen Vic's doctor that they just threw up houses wherever they could build them.

After the wettest winter since the 1940s we've had at least ten landslips this year so far, including the major one that has closed, for at least the medium term, the main road into town. Indeed there are four roads into the town, one permanently closed to vehicle traffic after being ruptured by the landslip of 2014, one closed for the foreseeable due to this year's landslip, one closed temporarily while Southern Water repair the cracked sewer due to land movement (re-opening is imminent), and the last remaining access road, really just a country lane, was closed yesterday morning due to an accident involving a van and a motorcycle, such that for several hours you were all cut off.

So of course all the parties are campaigning for funding to protect the town. We already have £millions being spent on coastal defence works and more on a research project hoping to reduce the risk by pumping out groundwater from deep below the town.

MisterBedfordshire · June 29

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.
Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.
Yes, it's featured on all leaflets and posters.

More tanks parked on Tory lawns.

The PLP is going to be very interesting next parliament, much less based around inner cities and their issues, much more on ordinary suburban and rural folk.

It will not be the same Labour Party that we are used to.

A Labour supermajority is actually better for middle England than a Labour majority. CLPs and their candidates in such places are far more moderate and a supermajority means the sundry trots in the inner cities can't hold the party to ransom by threatening to vote with the opposition.

Jonathan · June 29

One MRP put Labour ahead in Guildford. I know!

Pro_Rata · June 29

At the house, three mailshots from Labour, different ones at different times addressed to each voter in the house in turn, and two from the Green party.

I wasn't going to mention the locally permitted fly poster campaign again, as I've covered it a handful of times already, but I notice two giant posters of the Green candidate on a garage from the Community Action Group - not sure if they are election posters officially as no mention of voting, no party designation, non-Green colouring, only the candidate's name and face identify it as election relevant. Possibly in response to Labour buying advertising time on the electronic billboard on the ring road.

For a 1/50 Labour shot, the campaign is a very live one.

MisterBedfordshire · June 29

Any info about how Galloways lot are faring in the 150 or so seats they are standing in?

highwayparadise306 · June 29

wooliedyed said:

MisterBedfordshire said:
Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)
If they were to make a red wall breakthrough, that's a possible location but I think not

Is EdBalls her hubi running for reform? Ed has a creative mind.

highwayparadise306 · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:
Any info about how Galloways lot are faring in the 150 or so seats they are standing in?

The man with the cigar. He used to party with Nige on Rt.

rottenborough · June 29

wooliedyed said:

MisterBedfordshire said:
Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)
If they were to make a red wall breakthrough, that's a possible location but I think not

I thought the other day that she has been invisible in this campaign nationally. Obviously back at home fighting to keep seat.

IanB2 · June 29

Farooq said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:
I've had only one leaflet this election. It arrived yesterday by post. It was from the Labour Party.

Now I realise this is a safe seat but candidates get a free mailshot and printing leaflets is cheap so what's going on? Is the next scandal that parties are spending money in one constituency but accounting for it in another, or do they just not care any more in these social media days?

It opens with a big red banner saying Change, Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, so I imagine Labour's marketing is run by Corbynistas or people who know HIGNFY is off the air.

Speaking of which, there is a compilation of HIGNFYs from previous elections at:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tASp2Hd3XVk

The free leaflet thing has been bothering me, too. I've had contact from 4 of the 5 parties here, but not Labour. @RochdalePioneers have you had a Labour leaflet?

I know Labour have basically no ground game in this area, but they've a chance to build supportership here in this election. It makes a difference. I was open to voting for them this time if they could get a bit of moment going and oust the Tories here. But no campaign = no vote from me. With one week to go I've narrowed it down to SNP (likely) and Lib Dem (not likely).
Other candidates are Con (get fucked) and Reform (die).

The free leaflet isn't so free when you consider the cost of producing, printing and folding 30,000 leaflets, then meeting the Royal Mail requirements for either unaddressed (counting and bundling) or addressed (addressing, sorting, bundling) delivery. The election coming as a surprise caught some parties on the hop, which coupled with Royal Mail's staffing issues has meant a lot of the mailings are getting delivered after the postal votes.

Theuniondivvie · June 29

Farooq said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:
I've had only one leaflet this election. It arrived yesterday by post. It was from the Labour Party.

Now I realise this is a safe seat but candidates get a free mailshot and printing leaflets is cheap so what's going on? Is the next scandal that parties are spending money in one constituency but accounting for it in another, or do they just not care any more in these social media days?

It opens with a big red banner saying Change, Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, so I imagine Labour's marketing is run by Corbynistas or people who know HIGNFY is off the air.

Speaking of which, there is a compilation of HIGNFYs from previous elections at:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tASp2Hd3XVk

The free leaflet thing has been bothering me, too. I've had contact from 4 of the 5 parties here, but not Labour. @RochdalePioneers have you had a Labour leaflet?

I know Labour have basically no ground game in this area, but they've a chance to build supportership here in this election. It makes a difference. I was open to voting for them this time if they could get a bit of moment going and oust the Tories here. But no campaign = no vote from me. With one week to go I've narrowed it down to SNP (likely) and Lib Dem (not likely).
Other candidates are Con (get fucked) and Reform (die).

Haven’t Labour dropped official backing for their candidate in your constituency? I guess it makes supporting them publicly a bit awks.

wooliedyed · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:
Any info about how Galloways lot are faring in the 150 or so seats they are standing in?

Big canvassing push in Rochdale today for GG and they will be hoping for a couple/dusting of second places - Blackburn, Birmingham Yardley, Ealing North, Luton South most likely second places I think
Edit - they are also backing Yakoob in Ladywood who is going to run Mahmood close and (I think) Iqbal in Dewsbury who could pull it off but they aren't party members
Galloway needs a seat and 150,000 or so votes to get up the Parliamentary funding ladder

SandyRentool · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.
Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.
Yes, it's featured on all leaflets and posters.

More tanks parked on Tory lawns.

The PLP is going to be very interesting next parliament, much less based around inner cities and their issues, much more on ordinary suburban and rural folk.

It will not be the same Labour Party that we are used to.
A Labour supermajority is actually better for middle England than a Labour majority. CLPs and their candidates in such places are far more moderate and a supermajority means the sundry trots in the inner cities can't hold the party to ransom by threatening to vote with the opposition.

I have made this point several times. A rebellion by 50 Momentum types can just be ignored if you have a majority of 200.

DecrepiterJohnL · June 29

IanB2 said:
I wonder why Ladbrokes has suspended its market on IDS's seat?

At a guess, given the time of day, someone tried to place a big bet overnight when their politics trader is tucked up in bed, and their computer panicked. Their sister company, Corals, also has suspended the market but I think these days they are no longer even keeping up the pretence these are independent companies.

highwayparadise306 · June 29

Jonathan said:
One MRP put Labour ahead in Guildford. I know!

No chance. Bollocks.

dixiedean · June 29

Leaflet score here.
2 from Reform. But they were identical.
1 from Labour.
1 Labour poster seen.
Number of references to the election heard
1 direct. 1 indirect.

IanB2 · June 29

Foxy said:

Carnyx said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.

A shame its very Tory

highwayparadise306 · June 29

SandyRentool said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.
Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.
Yes, it's featured on all leaflets and posters.

More tanks parked on Tory lawns.

The PLP is going to be very interesting next parliament, much less based around inner cities and their issues, much more on ordinary suburban and rural folk.

It will not be the same Labour Party that we are used to.
A Labour supermajority is actually better for middle England than a Labour majority. CLPs and their candidates in such places are far more moderate and a supermajority means the sundry trots in the inner cities can't hold the party to ransom by threatening to vote with the opposition.
I have made this point several times. A rebellion by 50 Momentum types can just be ignored if you have a majority of 200.

It will not stop Diane though.

Theuniondivvie · June 29

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:
I'm pleased, by the way, to see Labour's colour scheme this election. Red and white - or sometime red, white and blue - us both more pleasing to the eye and less threatening than the red and yellow they have traditionally used. I've been making this point for years - pleased to see they've finally come to the same conclusion.
Also good to see the flag on the MailOnline advert, something that other recent incarnations of the party would have hated with a passion.

The ‘flag’ on Labour ads?
Strangely absent from all SLab bumf.

Wulfrun_Phil · June 29

PedestrianRock said:
https://x.com/peterrambles/status/1806757974238470596?s=46

Hmm. Not so sure about this one, Survation. (North Shropshire going Tory)

https://x.com/survation/status/1806772335883530501?s=46

We'll be using a different method for final predictions in N Shropshire as the MRP model cannot account for the by-election - is it a General Election to General Election model. NS will be a Lib Dem win.

https://x.com/survation/status/1806742446417629659?s=46

Survation’s final MRP projection will be published on Tuesday, followed by our final call on Wednesday.

Looks like Survation will manually update their projections at the last minute and perhaps they will be a lot worse for the Tories than the 85 seats they gave them yesterday?

Well if by elections are ignored that also explains why Survation's current MRP has Tamworth reverting to blue.

IanB2 · June 29

MisterBedfordshire said:
Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)

Are we expecting snow or a heatwave, and have they found Diana's killers yet?

Taz · June 29

eek said:
So today Labour have the border of the Mailonline homepage

This is from a guide on online advertising

Buying ads to take over the homepage of MailOnline is the sort of thing you do when:
- Your campaign budget is very healthy indeed
- You're feeling pretty confident about the result
- You want to block your opponents doing it and generally annoy them for the lolz.

Story is at https://x.com/whotargetsme/status/1806923920148197409?s=46&t=cxkq0jndvkhIwWZCCEL3QQ

And rumour is they have if all week until Thursday - and that Labour were very surprised the Tories hadn’t booked it

I commented last Sunday that labour had the border ads on the Mails ‘This is Money’ site.

I’m sure they will tomorrow too.

Casino_Royale · June 29

On topic, I've had more Reform ads on Facebook than from the Conservatives.

And they don't come for free.

Casino_Royale · June 29

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

Carnyx said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

IanB2 said:
FPT:

LostPassword said:

Casino_Royale said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.

For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.

That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.

This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.

Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.

So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.

But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.

Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.

Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.

Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.

All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.

The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.

There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.

All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.

Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.

Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory

Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.

wooliedyed · June 29

rottenborough said:

wooliedyed said:

MisterBedfordshire said:
Express reports that Yvette Cooper's seat under threat (seemingly from Reform)
If they were to make a red wall breakthrough, that's a possible location but I think not
I thought the other day that she has been invisible in this campaign nationally. Obviously back at home fighting to keep seat.

Reform would need to cannibalise the Tory vote almost completely to get it I think so residual Tories probably save her

OldKingCole · June 29

Taz said:

eek said:
So today Labour have the border of the Mailonline homepage

This is from a guide on online advertising

Buying ads to take over the homepage of MailOnline is the sort of thing you do when:
- Your campaign budget is very healthy indeed
- You're feeling pretty confident about the result
- You want to block your opponents doing it and generally annoy them for the lolz.

Story is at https://x.com/whotargetsme/status/1806923920148197409?s=46&t=cxkq0jndvkhIwWZCCEL3QQ

And rumour is they have if all week until Thursday - and that Labour were very surprised the Tories hadn’t booked it

I commented last Sunday that labour had the border ads on the Mails ‘This is Money’ site.

I’m sure they will tomorrow too.

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