Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Yeah it was totally crazy. The fourth man is usually the brake man, so as he crossed the line into the slowdown zone he shuffled himself to the back to grab the lever. Thankfully the safety systems on both vehicle and track worked well, and he stopped somewhere around the usual stopping point.
I bet he didn’t buy a drink in the bar that night.
I did a 2 man toboggan night run in Austria once, with a rather irresponsible trip from the Kings Ski Club. They said it wasn't covered by our insurance but reassured us that if anyone was injured they would lie and say we did it ski-ing.
We went to the top of the mountain one dark night, and had ample refreshments including drinking games with Jaegertee (black tea with schnapps) until we were welll lubricated, then set off down the run at 2 minute intervals 2 to a bob. As none of us had done it before and we were all a bit pissed nearly everyone came off at some point, at which point there was a risk of being hit by the next sleigh.
A number of us were hit, but when my sled crashed we waited for the next to pass (there was enough space on the piste through the forest) then I pushed us off as fast as I could with my mate on the front steering. Unfortunately I jumped for the sleigh a bit too entusiastically and leapfrogged him and was run over by my own sleigh which had about 80kg of future GP steering as well as 20kg or so of sled. We were rolling about bruised and doubled up with laughter as the next sleigh went by. Then carried on with the run. I did have fairly significant bruising the next day.
Much hilarity was had in the days before 'elf and safety
Do today’s medical students still participate in the same levels of craziness that their forebearers were famous for so doing?
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
"Assisted dying bill backers say it is ‘near impossible’ it will pass House of Lords Exclusive: Legislation thought unlikely even to be put to vote before timing out after delay tactics by opponents"
You have to get both houses to agree. I don't know if going thru the House of Commons twice is enough to force it thru: I've been told that the Salisbury Convention isn't applicable to private members' bills, which means the HoC can't force it thru the HoL nonconsensually.
Salisbury Convention is not applicable, but the Parliament Act could still apply.
It would rely on Starmer getting off the fence and doing the right thing though, so that won't happen. 😡
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
The kid was lucky he wasn’t shot resisting arrest/trying to escape.
Arrested for impeding the bullets of a Federal officer?
So the father and 5 year old have been rendered to a dark site in Texas presumably. The USa has regressed about 200 years in 12 months on civil rights.
Yes, it was assumed by many that those battles of the 60s and 70s had been won and left a lasting consensus around racial and gender equality. That assumption was wrong.
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
The kid was lucky he wasn’t shot resisting arrest/trying to escape.
Arrested for impeding the bullets of a Federal officer?
So the father and 5 year old have been rendered to a dark site in Texas presumably. The USa has regressed about 200 years in 12 months on civil rights.
Yes, it was assumed by many that those battles of the 60s and 70s had been won and left a lasting consensus around racial and gender equality. That assumption was wrong.
Indeed, I think it's even more than that. I think there was an attitude that even to discuss that consensus was beyond the pale, that arguments about women's rights, or gay rights, or whatever were distasteful (in fact I think they are) but recent history shows that, actually, these battles must be fought and refought again and again. There is no final victory.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
There must be some methodology issues one way or the other because the spread is absolutely massive.
If the spread remains like this 2029 is going to be an absolute belter of an election. Are all these first-time Reform voters actually going to turn up? And are all these former Labour voters going to really sit on their hands? We won't know until 10pm.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Yeah it was totally crazy. The fourth man is usually the brake man, so as he crossed the line into the slowdown zone he shuffled himself to the back to grab the lever. Thankfully the safety systems on both vehicle and track worked well, and he stopped somewhere around the usual stopping point.
I bet he didn’t buy a drink in the bar that night.
I did a 2 man toboggan night run in Austria once, with a rather irresponsible trip from the Kings Ski Club. They said it wasn't covered by our insurance but reassured us that if anyone was injured they would lie and say we did it ski-ing.
We went to the top of the mountain one dark night, and had ample refreshments including drinking games with Jaegertee (black tea with schnapps) until we were welll lubricated, then set off down the run at 2 minute intervals 2 to a bob. As none of us had done it before and we were all a bit pissed nearly everyone came off at some point, at which point there was a risk of being hit by the next sleigh.
A number of us were hit, but when my sled crashed we waited for the next to pass (there was enough space on the piste through the forest) then I pushed us off as fast as I could with my mate on the front steering. Unfortunately I jumped for the sleigh a bit too entusiastically and leapfrogged him and was run over by my own sleigh which had about 80kg of future GP steering as well as 20kg or so of sled. We were rolling about bruised and doubled up with laughter as the next sleigh went by. Then carried on with the run. I did have fairly significant bruising the next day.
Much hilarity was had in the days before 'elf and safety
Do today’s medical students still participate in the same levels of craziness that their forebearers were famous for so doing?
I hope sux races are still a thing (if they were ever a real thing)
(On topic another opportunity to lay Starmer at better than evens for leaving this year. That market is a very silly price. DYOR.)
Greens aren’t going to poll 17% in a GE. You can easily add 10% to Labour . Unless that is we get the purists who decide they’re happy to have a Reform government by voting Green and splitting the votes .
I tu ni it's equally likely that these votes go L D or abstain.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting threads. The irrefutable point in the second one is that if FON is correct the eight others are wrong.
Yup
FON are making one set of assumptions about how their sample converts into vote shares. Other organisations make a different set. Looking at those assumptions, it's not surprising that FON gets higher Reform/lower Labour than the others.
What doesn't help is that FON report weekly, and most of the traditional polls don't. That means that they contribute a bigger share of the chatter than they really should.
(Was it 2015 that YouGov reported every day? What was that about?)
@tpfkar - many thanks for your comment earlier. Our plan, I think, is to stay in Zell am See (we are close to booking but have not done so yet). With thanks to the many comments yesterday, I think we are probably leaning towards flying and hiring a car: our kids are excellent and uncomplaining travellers, but realistically a two day drive through Germany is more a holiday for me and the wife than it is for the three passengers in the back. With a slightly heavy heart I will park the slow pootle through Germany - whether by car or train - for when it is just me and the wife in a few years time (*sob*).
Good plan. There are so many parts of central and southern West Germany that are enjoyable for a couple touring but less so for a family, e.g. the castles and towns of the Romantische Strasse.
If you do find yourself heading from the Channel to Bavaria in a car with kids in tow though, can recommend the museum at Sinsheim as a stopoff: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Labour blocking a relatively popular local mayor from standing simply gives Labour members and voters an additional reason to protest by deserting their party at the by-election. And I suspect the truth is that those around the PM would rather the Greens won it than Burnham did, even if the former risks giving the Greens the best possible launchpad into the urban local elections in May.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky Someone on a trading floor just messaged
“The Burnham angle to the Gwynne story was very interesting for markets as we saw a sudden sell off in GBP and gilts. Nothing huge in real terms but it certainly confirmed how the market would react to Burnham potentially having a pathway into Parliament and then putting in a leadership challenge.
“The underlying political risk view for markets is that as bad as Starmer and Reeves may be, there's potentially something worse waiting in the wings, of which Burnham is but one.”
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting threads. The irrefutable point in the second one is that if FON is correct the eight others are wrong.
Yup
FON are making one set of assumptions about how their sample converts into vote shares. Other organisations make a different set. Looking at those assumptions, it's not surprising that FON gets higher Reform/lower Labour than the others.
What doesn't help is that FON report weekly, and most of the traditional polls don't. That means that they contribute a bigger share of the chatter than they really should.
(Was it 2015 that YouGov reported every day? What was that about?)
I think it was The Sun funding the daily YouGov for clickbait.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Potentially a lean towards gullibility. The big problem with all non random polling (which is all polling now as response rates are too low to deliver a random sample) is that you rely on weighting by observable characteristics to try to match the underlying population. But there are all kinds on unobservable biases that can skew your sample towards one party or another. As a BPC member we can observe their methodology and see their numbers add up. This doesn't mean their methodology is actually likely to deliver an accurate sample. Personally I'd reserve judgement on them until they've covered at least one full electoral cycle. The key thing is that if they're accurate then everyone else has suddenly become inaccurate, all in the same direction.
Five minutes of analysis from Star Sports. Note that at the time of recording the Labour price does not assume Burnham will stand; it would shorten if he does.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
There must be some methodology issues one way or the other because the spread is absolutely massive.
The methodological issues all pollsters are struggling with is that most people don't want to answer opinion poll questions. The non-response rate is huge. This means that all polls are very far from the theoretical basis of being a random sample.
Now it turns out that the weirdos in each demographic group who do respond to opinion poll surveys are similar enough politically to everyone else that the opinion polls aren't massively out by 20+pp or something silly. But it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen one day.
I haven't been able to think of a way to fix the non-response problem. Even if you start abducting people at random and waterboarding them to force them to answer the questions you face the issue that they might give you the answer they think you want, rather than their genuine voting intention. Plus, y'know, it would be unethical.
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
Anyone here live in Manchester? Has Burnham actually done a good job as mayor there? I saw something today that he has got more council houses being built than are being sold off which sounded impressive...
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
I think it would be remiss if a site like this didn't consider why one pollster is almost always so out of kilter with all the others.
Are you talking about YouGov?
I agree that we ought to be thinking about methodology and the differences. But IMHO at this length of time away from a GE the only use of polling is to average out the polls and look at the direction of travel on the graph party by party.
Anyone here live in Manchester? Has Burnham actually done a good job as mayor there? I saw something today that he has got more council houses being built than are being sold off which sounded impressive...
I had great reservations about him when he came in, and posters may know I don't often credit Labour politicians - but I'd say he's done a good job; he's a great advocate for the city region. GM has grown faster than anywhere over the last five years. Now maybe it would have done anyway - but it's hard to find much against him.
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
It’s also procedural, rule book ruthlessness. Which is the very centre of his wheelhouse.
Imposing an all women short list - what’s the betting?
Of course he will make it worse for himself - a furious campaign of claiming that imposing the all-women shortlist was the only possible moral solution. And had absolutely nothing to do with Burnham.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Potentially a lean towards gullibility. The big problem with all non random polling (which is all polling now as response rates are too low to deliver a random sample) is that you rely on weighting by observable characteristics to try to match the underlying population. But there are all kinds on unobservable biases that can skew your sample towards one party or another. As a BPC member we can observe their methodology and see their numbers add up. This doesn't mean their methodology is actually likely to deliver an accurate sample. Personally I'd reserve judgement on them until they've covered at least one full electoral cycle. The key thing is that if they're accurate then everyone else has suddenly become inaccurate, all in the same direction.
Poll herding is a thing - we’ve seen it previously.
I would say that I have no idea which polling methodology is most accurate.
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
Starmer ostensibly believes that Labour are in the fight of their lives to stop Britain electing a fascist government in the form of Reform. Blocking someone who might be more popular from being able to challenge him shows the true measure of the man.
Good grief the nation is losing its mind . Maybe the public want to be Trumps gimp and can’t get enough of the traitor party .
In a way I can't help but be impressed by the Lib Dem numbers. Even in a scenario where the country is heavily shunning the big two parties in a potentially historic way, and the whole political landscape is threatening to be re-written, the Lib Dems are still getting LESS popular. That is absolutely top work.
What are the implausible sequence of events that lead to them actually being a major player? Do they need to wait for the whole country to finally get sick of both Labour and the Tories after decades of them switching between Government and Opposition, and then wait for Reform to crash and burn, and *then* potentially wait for the Greens to have their shot all before someone says "well I guess we should give these guys a shot"? Or does one need to wait for the Monster Raving Loony government to fail first?
Anyone here live in Manchester? Has Burnham actually done a good job as mayor there? I saw something today that he has got more council houses being built than are being sold off which sounded impressive...
I had great reservations about him when he came in, and posters may know I don't often credit Labour politicians - but I'd say he's done a good job; he's a great advocate for the city region. GM has grown faster than anywhere over the last five years. Now maybe it would have done anyway - but it's hard to find much against him.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
There must be some methodology issues one way or the other because the spread is absolutely massive.
The methodological issues all pollsters are struggling with is that most people don't want to answer opinion poll questions. The non-response rate is huge. This means that all polls are very far from the theoretical basis of being a random sample.
Now it turns out that the weirdos in each demographic group who do respond to opinion poll surveys are similar enough politically to everyone else that the opinion polls aren't massively out by 20+pp or something silly. But it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen one day.
I haven't been able to think of a way to fix the non-response problem. Even if you start abducting people at random and waterboarding them to force them to answer the questions you face the issue that they might give you the answer they think you want, rather than their genuine voting intention. Plus, y'know, it would be unethical.
That’s always been the case, though, hasn’t it? Accosting people in the high street has a bias toward the sort of people likely to be out and about, varying by time and place, and the sort of people who will stop and talk rather than refuse and stride on. And probably a bias towards friendly looking people that the polling people choose to approach. Calling door-to-door has a bias towards people more likely to be in, more willing to open the door and less likely to close it again straight away. Phoning people originally had a bias towards people owning telephones, now potentially a bias towards people with landlines, depending on how they get the numbers, and a bias towards people likely to answer and be willing to talk.
The sorts of bias inherent in online surveys aren’t dissimilar in nature, but will likely fall in different ways. If I were a pollster I’d be tempted to use a mix of methods, both averaging them together hoping some of the biases are minimised or cancelled out, and to be alert for glaring differences between the subsamples. But that all sounds very expensive.
The other thing you can do, if you get a decent sample that has produced accurate results before, is try and retain it by going back to the same people, on the basis that changes of mind by people are meaningful even if the overall sample isn’t fully balanced. This is essentially what good local election agents do, looking at canvass data; in my campaigning days I always started the election canvass with the same street, and had records going back years for all the long term residents. Coming home that first night and I usually had a pretty good feel for how things would pan out, simply going on any changes of mind from last time. A pollster with a big survey base like YouGov is better placed to do this than those pollsters that assemble fresh samples every time.
An issue with FON is their fieldwork is conducted over just one day . You’d generally poll for longer , several reasons there . You might have to do more up/down weighting as you could lack sufficient responses for your demographics . One day catches just that one news cycle .
Their sample is likely to skew as your group are only those who take part in the free lottery . The methodology re intention to vote is likely to over sample voters who generally are less likely to vote .
Murders plummeted more than 20% from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and 2025's might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a new study found.
Anyone here live in Manchester? Has Burnham actually done a good job as mayor there? I saw something today that he has got more council houses being built than are being sold off which sounded impressive...
I had great reservations about him when he came in, and posters may know I don't often credit Labour politicians - but I'd say he's done a good job; he's a great advocate for the city region. GM has grown faster than anywhere over the last five years. Now maybe it would have done anyway - but it's hard to find much against him.
That's roughly what I hear, plus it is one of the very few places in the country taking integrated transport seriously.
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
It’s also procedural, rule book ruthlessness. Which is the very centre of his wheelhouse.
Imposing an all women short list - what’s the betting?
Of course he will make it worse for himself - a furious campaign of claiming that imposing the all-women shortlist was the only possible moral solution. And had absolutely nothing to do with Burnham.
Problem is if anything is done to stop Burnham from standing and Labour doesn't win - all the blame is going to be pointed at SKS
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
Potentially a lean towards gullibility. The big problem with all non random polling (which is all polling now as response rates are too low to deliver a random sample) is that you rely on weighting by observable characteristics to try to match the underlying population. But there are all kinds on unobservable biases that can skew your sample towards one party or another. As a BPC member we can observe their methodology and see their numbers add up. This doesn't mean their methodology is actually likely to deliver an accurate sample. Personally I'd reserve judgement on them until they've covered at least one full electoral cycle. The key thing is that if they're accurate then everyone else has suddenly become inaccurate, all in the same direction.
Poll herding is a thing - we’ve seen it previously.
I would say that I have no idea which polling methodology is most accurate.
It's a phenomenon in lots of modelling fields where model comparisons are done frequently. Obviously, differences between models will attract interest, people will examine those differences, identify major causes and decide that one model, or another, is getting that detail wrong, and then fix it - reducing the difference between the models.
But there can often be loads of differences between the models that don't get examined if they largely average out, and so don't get noticed as causing a difference when the overall results are looked at.
This is particularly hard for something like general election polling when the models are only properly tested against reality two or three times a decade.
Labour may be hoping Starmer to Burnham works as well as Trudeau to Carney.
Of course, that one was helped by the formerly high polling opposition suffering due to the Trump effect. Whilst Reform are polling the highest and are as pro-Trump as it is possible to be in the UK (ie, moderately), presumably msot of Labour's losses have not been in that direction.
Labour may be hoping Starmer to Burnham works as well as Trudeau to Carney.
Of course, that one was helped by the formerly high polling opposition suffering due to the Trump effect. Whilst Reform are polling the highest and are as pro-Trump as it is possible to be in the UK (ie, moderately), presumably msot of Labour's losses have not been in that direction.
They'd need someone with the gravitas of having worked at the Bank of England for that to work. Maybe Rachel Reeves could pitch herself as Labour's Carney.
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
There must be some methodology issues one way or the other because the spread is absolutely massive.
The methodological issues all pollsters are struggling with is that most people don't want to answer opinion poll questions. The non-response rate is huge. This means that all polls are very far from the theoretical basis of being a random sample.
Now it turns out that the weirdos in each demographic group who do respond to opinion poll surveys are similar enough politically to everyone else that the opinion polls aren't massively out by 20+pp or something silly. But it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen one day.
I haven't been able to think of a way to fix the non-response problem. Even if you start abducting people at random and waterboarding them to force them to answer the questions you face the issue that they might give you the answer they think you want, rather than their genuine voting intention. Plus, y'know, it would be unethical.
That’s always been the case, though, hasn’t it? Accosting people in the high street has a bias toward the sort of people likely to be out and about, varying by time and place, and the sort of people who will stop and talk rather than refuse and stride on. And probably a bias towards friendly looking people that the polling people choose to approach. Calling door-to-door has a bias towards people more likely to be in, more willing to open the door and less likely to close it again straight away. Phoning people originally had a bias towards people owning telephones, now potentially a bias towards people with landlines, depending on how they get the numbers, and a bias towards people likely to answer and be willing to talk.
The sorts of bias inherent in online surveys aren’t dissimilar in nature, but will likely fall in different ways. If I were a pollster I’d be tempted to use a mix of methods, both averaging them together hoping some of the biases are minimised or cancelled out, and to be alert for glaring differences between the subsamples. But that all sounds very expensive.
The other thing you can do, if you get a decent sample that has produced accurate results before, is try and retain it by going back to the same people, on the basis that changes of mind by people are meaningful even if the overall sample isn’t fully balanced. This is essentially what good local election agents do, looking at canvass data; in my campaigning days I always started the election canvass with the same street, and had records going back years for all the long term residents. Coming home that first night and I usually had a pretty good feel for how things would pan out, simply going on any changes of mind from last time. A pollster with a big survey base like YouGov is better placed to do this than those pollsters that assemble fresh samples every time.
My understanding is that the non-response rate nowadays is much, much greater than in decades past.
Keir Starmer tells @GaryGibbon that Labour MPs must stop talking about potential leadership challenges from Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting
'My message is to my entire party, and that is that every minute we waste talking about anything other than the cost of living and stability in Europe and across the globe is a wasted minute
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
Burnham would be coming back to take over. Unless that pitch is rolled - by which I mean sufficient MP support to trigger a contest plus the membership polling favourably for him - he won't go for it, he'll stay as Mr Manchester.
Conversely, if those pieces are in place the message to Starmer from the party is they want him gone and Starmer would not be able to resist that. His authority to do so would have drained away.
So, Burnham standing for the by-election, just the fact of him standing, would be a hard sign that Starmer's days are numbered. That would be my take anyway.
Murders plummeted more than 20% from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and 2025's might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a new study found.
There are slight problems comparing the USA with the USA.
A reduction 2024 to 2025 from 5 murders per 100k people to 4 murders per 100k people is good, but looks less so when the best comparator (ie wealthy and in North America) has a basic figure for 2024 of 1.91 per 100k people which is well under half the USA rate.
And typical European rates are between 0,5 and 1.5 on the same scale.
They still need to get rid of at least 95% of their guns, which would still leave them with about 6x as many per pop as the UK.
I am neutral about Burnham being an MP, though fairly against him being PM. He has only served 20 months of a four year term in Manchester. Standing down to fight a very marginal by election for reasons linked with personal ambition looks like contemptuous treatment of Manchester. He knew in May 2024 that there was going to be a GE coming up soon in which he could walk into being an MP honourably. That decision should stick.
Starmer needs another 57 days to beat Sunak's tenure. Feels like he's been around a lot less than Sunak to be honest.
It's a proven fact that time moves quicker when nothing changes, the reason we feel like he's been around for a lot less than Rishi is because he's done nothing of note and nothing new. We've formed few to no memories of Starmer as PM other than "release the sausages".
I expect Burnham would do a bit better in by-election than you'd expect based on dire labour polling given he would be running under a backdrop of everyone saying he'd ultimately replace Starmer.
The BBC interviewee and former editor of Labourlist on R4 PM is saying she’s been told that the Labour leadership definitely intends to use party procedures to block Burnham from contesting the seat. DYOR before betting accordingly.
We know Starmer is pretty ruthless, so I think this kind of skullduggery is very plausible.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
It’s also procedural, rule book ruthlessness. Which is the very centre of his wheelhouse.
Imposing an all women short list - what’s the betting?
Of course he will make it worse for himself - a furious campaign of claiming that imposing the all-women shortlist was the only possible moral solution. And had absolutely nothing to do with Burnham.
Problem is if anything is done to stop Burnham from standing and Labour doesn't win - all the blame is going to be pointed at SKS
And the difference between that and all other scenarios for SKS is.........
Murders plummeted more than 20% from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and 2025's might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a new study found.
Presumably you understand President Trump's frustration that with things apparently going so well, so many American disapprove of him and his policies.
One way of handing over them seat to Reform. Nige would love that.
More likely to drive Labour voters to Green and make it less likely Reform will win. Reform needs a split left vote as much as the Greens need a split right vote.
One way of handing over them seat to Reform. Nige would love that.
More likely to drive Labour voters to Green and make it less likely Reform will win. Reform needs a split left vote as much as the Greens need a split right vote.
I'd say if it's not Burnham then Labour are nowhere. Green become the Not Reform party of the left.
Good grief the nation is losing its mind . Maybe the public want to be Trumps gimp and can’t get enough of the traitor party .
In a way I can't help but be impressed by the Lib Dem numbers. Even in a scenario where the country is heavily shunning the big two parties in a potentially historic way, and the whole political landscape is threatening to be re-written, the Lib Dems are still getting LESS popular. That is absolutely top work.
What are the implausible sequence of events that lead to them actually being a major player? Do they need to wait for the whole country to finally get sick of both Labour and the Tories after decades of them switching between Government and Opposition, and then wait for Reform to crash and burn, and *then* potentially wait for the Greens to have their shot all before someone says "well I guess we should give these guys a shot"? Or does one need to wait for the Monster Raving Loony government to fail first?
Weirdly, on those figures, Baxter has them comfortably beating Lab and Con on seats.
On topic and of course if this rule applies to Andy Burnham, it also applies to another aspiring Labour leadership contender, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
Last autumn, Khan apparently stated it was his "intention" (always a let out) to run for a fourth term as London Mayor and eschewed a return to Westminster politics. Now, we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions so could we yet see Khan return to Westminster?
IF he chose not to contest the 2028 London Mayoral election, he would be free to find a seat for a 2029 General Election - there may not be as many safe Labour seats in London as there used to be but I'm sure he could find somewhere - and either serve in a second term Labour Government or be a senior opposition MP and he's the same age as Burnham.
If the former, would Khan be in position to take over as Prime Minister if Starmer retired halfway through his second term?
Lol SKS is going to "retire" less than halfway through his first term.
There is no 2nd term for Lab even without the massive drag SKS has become. With him the worst GE result ever awaits
Labour still has every chance of winning the next election. We are barely 18 months into the Parliament and nowhere near halfway. There are, whisper it quietly, some tentative signs the economy isn't plunging headlong into the abyss but the immigration question will retain salience until and unless it is sorted.
The question may swing from Labour vs Not Labour to Reform vs Not Reform as those currently keen to vent their frustration by opting for Farage look at what a Reform Government might actually look like and decide they are better off with the Devil they know.
It's possible that the next election with involve a car crash of variable geometry as several incompatible contests occur at once. These are: Reform v Not Reform; Labour (Government) v Anyone But This Government; Right of Centre v Left of Centre; Establishment (LabConLD) v Insurgent And Nats (RefGreenJezbollahSNP,PC etc).
Very roughly the figures for these four contests at the moment may be:
30 v 70 Reform v Not Reform 20 v 80 Govt v Not Govt 50 v 50 Right v Left 50 v 50 Establishment v Insurgent
It's almost impossible to predict what will happen, there are so many variables. The fact a party that only won five seats at the last GE are almost EVS to win most seats just throws any normal way of trying to solve the puzzle out of the window.
We have a party with seven MPs 14pts ahead on some polls and odds against to win most seats, EVS seems massive value, but on the other hand they are a party with only seven MPs, three years out from a GE, EVS seems a massive lay
Interesting how FON collect their samples. Seems to be for people who want to enter a quiz with prizes every day. That suggests it leans towards people who have bugger all to do each day.
I do not like this poll anymore than you do but we cannot chooee polls we like or dislike when done by BPC members
I think it would be remiss if a site like this didn't consider why one pollster is almost always so out of kilter with all the others.
I know we are not allowed to criticise a BPC pollster although TSE has said we can question the methodology, and FoN's inclusion of never voted respondents is a little bit odd. Oh and TSE also reminded us just before Christmas that it is not problematic to remember that Matt Goodwin does not have the very best track record when it comes to polling.
On the other hand FoN might be right and everyone else wrong.
Comments
I didn't have an article published in the Guardian this morning lauding my achievements as Mayor
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/10/17/this-is-why-find-out-now-polls-are-such-outliers/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/12/07/spot-the-outlier/
It would rely on Starmer getting off the fence and doing the right thing though, so that won't happen. 😡
The Lords should be abolished.
BPC membership means they need to be transparent.
They could be transparently right, or transparently wrong. Their methodology is untested as far as I know.
(On topic another opportunity to lay Starmer at better than evens for leaving this year. That market is a very silly price. DYOR.)
FON are making one set of assumptions about how their sample converts into vote shares. Other organisations make a different set. Looking at those assumptions, it's not surprising that FON gets higher Reform/lower Labour than the others.
What doesn't help is that FON report weekly, and most of the traditional polls don't. That means that they contribute a bigger share of the chatter than they really should.
(Was it 2015 that YouGov reported every day? What was that about?)
If you do find yourself heading from the Channel to Bavaria in a car with kids in tow though, can recommend the museum at Sinsheim as a stopoff: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/
Sam Coates Sky
@SamCoatesSky
Someone on a trading floor just messaged
“The Burnham angle to the Gwynne story was very interesting for markets as we saw a sudden sell off in GBP and gilts. Nothing huge in real terms but it certainly confirmed how the market would react to Burnham potentially having a pathway into Parliament and then putting in a leadership challenge.
“The underlying political risk view for markets is that as bad as Starmer and Reeves may be, there's potentially something worse waiting in the wings, of which Burnham is but one.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqPI-5aWasY
Five minutes of analysis from Star Sports. Note that at the time of recording the Labour price does not assume Burnham will stand; it would shorten if he does.
Now it turns out that the weirdos in each demographic group who do respond to opinion poll surveys are similar enough politically to everyone else that the opinion polls aren't massively out by 20+pp or something silly. But it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen one day.
I haven't been able to think of a way to fix the non-response problem. Even if you start abducting people at random and waterboarding them to force them to answer the questions you face the issue that they might give you the answer they think you want, rather than their genuine voting intention. Plus, y'know, it would be unethical.
Personally it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to do something like call all women shortlist for this purpose.
Imposing an all women short list - what’s the betting?
Of course he will make it worse for himself - a furious campaign of claiming that imposing the all-women shortlist was the only possible moral solution. And had absolutely nothing to do with Burnham.
I would say that I have no idea which polling methodology is most accurate.
What are the implausible sequence of events that lead to them actually being a major player? Do they need to wait for the whole country to finally get sick of both Labour and the Tories after decades of them switching between Government and Opposition, and then wait for Reform to crash and burn, and *then* potentially wait for the Greens to have their shot all before someone says "well I guess we should give these guys a shot"? Or does one need to wait for the Monster Raving Loony government to fail first?
The sorts of bias inherent in online surveys aren’t dissimilar in nature, but will likely fall in different ways. If I were a pollster I’d be tempted to use a mix of methods, both averaging them together hoping some of the biases are minimised or cancelled out, and to be alert for glaring differences between the subsamples. But that all sounds very expensive.
The other thing you can do, if you get a decent sample that has produced accurate results before, is try and retain it by going back to the same people, on the basis that changes of mind by people are meaningful even if the overall sample isn’t fully balanced. This is essentially what good local election agents do, looking at canvass data; in my campaigning days I always started the election canvass with the same street, and had records going back years for all the long term residents. Coming home that first night and I usually had a pretty good feel for how things would pan out, simply going on any changes of mind from last time. A pollster with a big survey base like YouGov is better placed to do this than those pollsters that assemble fresh samples every time.
Their sample is likely to skew as your group are only those who take part in the free lottery . The methodology re intention to vote is likely to over sample voters who generally are less likely to vote .
https://x.com/CBSNews/status/2014307054979027170
Murders plummeted more than 20% from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and 2025's might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a new study found.
But there can often be loads of differences between the models that don't get examined if they largely average out, and so don't get noticed as causing a difference when the overall results are looked at.
This is particularly hard for something like general election polling when the models are only properly tested against reality two or three times a decade.
Of course, that one was helped by the formerly high polling opposition suffering due to the Trump effect. Whilst Reform are polling the highest and are as pro-Trump as it is possible to be in the UK (ie, moderately), presumably msot of Labour's losses have not been in that direction.
@siennamarla
NEW: Allies of Keir Starmer say Andy Burnham will not be allowed to stand – and one well-placed source suggests an all-BAME shortlist could be used:
https://x.com/siennamarla/status/2014405010604302553
@Steven_Swinford
Keir Starmer tells @GaryGibbon that Labour MPs must stop talking about potential leadership challenges from Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting
'My message is to my entire party, and that is that every minute we waste talking about anything other than the cost of living and stability in Europe and across the globe is a wasted minute
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2014403435047579945
Conversely, if those pieces are in place the message to Starmer from the party is they want him gone and Starmer would not be able to resist that. His authority to do so would have drained away.
So, Burnham standing for the by-election, just the fact of him standing, would be a hard sign that Starmer's days are numbered. That would be my take anyway.
A reduction 2024 to 2025 from 5 murders per 100k people to 4 murders per 100k people is good, but looks less so when the best comparator (ie wealthy and in North America) has a basic figure for 2024 of 1.91 per 100k people which is well under half the USA rate.
And typical European rates are between 0,5 and 1.5 on the same scale.
They still need to get rid of at least 95% of their guns, which would still leave them with about 6x as many per pop as the UK.
I don't think that would work as well in 2026.
NEW THREAD
We have a party with seven MPs 14pts ahead on some polls and odds against to win most seats, EVS seems massive value, but on the other hand they are a party with only seven MPs, three years out from a GE, EVS seems a massive lay
On the other hand FoN might be right and everyone else wrong.