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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Polling Matters/Political Betting podcast: Your questions needed
This week Keiran will be interviewing James Morris on polling, Labour and the General Election campaign. As most will know, James was Ed Miliband’s pollster during the recent election.
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Nice work if you can get it.....Nigel Farage seen on the streets of St Peter port today, just off Cunard's Queen Elizabeth where he's giving a talk.... (last time I was on Cunard Rolf Harris was giving a talk - and very entertaining he was too - I later found out the police were raiding his home as we crossed the Atlantic....)
"Did Labour's polls show a different picture to the published newspaper ones? Since the election there have been claims that the Tories polls showed results closer to the actual outcome - did Labour's, and if not, do you have any thoughts on why?"
Look at the bloated DNV element for Labour, and the exaggerated number of 2015 Lab voters in the sample - and even then 20% say they won't vote Labour again.
Labour heading for sub 25 as the Scottish malaise spreads south.
I mean I died again on Election night. So, I'm not... I'm not... my cats' lives are out. I... I just wanna say sorry to all the fans and stuff, and uh, I'm glad to be alive, and sorry to me mum as well.
I just want them to know that it's not cool. It's not a cool thing to be an addict. It's not... you know, you're a slave to it, and it took... it's taken everything away from me that I loved, and so I'm going to rebuild my life.
http://www.tuug.fi/~jaakko/dm/dave.txt
"How much more faith do politicians place in private polls than public ones? Why?"
"What effect do private polls have on a politicians' actions? Are there any behaviours that are tip-offs that a politicians' private polls are showing them behind or ahead?"
"Are there any types of questions asked in private polls that aren't asked very often in public ones?"
Hannibal: a cannibalistic serial killer; the leader of the 'A Team'
Caesar: a salad; a boring play
No contest, really.
Richard_Tyndall said:
Bloody hell. Imagine growing up knowing that your father put his career before your own well being.
I said:
Pathetic.
In contrast Ken McIntosh, a candidate for the Scottish Labour leadership allowed his son to take up a scholarship at Merchiston, probably the poshest school in Scotland, an all boy boarding school. And quite right too. Its a fantastic opportunity for the lad who is obviously quite bright.
'Are you registered to vote? '
According to Dan Hodges Ed spent the evening writing his victory speech and was encouraged to do so even after the exit poll came out on the basis it was wrong (as indeed it was but not in a good way for Labour). According to some of those involved in the polling Ed at least would have known that he was 6% behind on the night and should have been aware that victory was simply not possible.
Both these versions simply cannot be right.
We also know that the Tory internal polling was much more accurate if not spot on. If Labour's was well out it would be interesting to know why it was thought that they got it wrong and the Tories got it right: do they buy in to the Messina analysis that the pollsters' modelling of the population was simply wrong and based on what the population looked like in 2010.
"Is it possible to try to recover support in the south, while confronting the SNP at the same time?"
1) Were there any differences between what research from Focus Groups (FGs) was saying, and what Labour's private polls (PPs) were saying?
2) Did Labour deliberately disregard data from FGs and PPs if it did not fit with Labour's own narrative of what the campaign should be about?
3) how soon did Labour pick up that there was a surge against them in Scotland?
4) Did Labour pick up that the SNP surge was going to have a negative impact on Labour performance in England & Wales due to the fear of Ed being elected PM "through the back door"?
5) How much Labour use private polling to decide on the allocation of activists in marginals?
6) If so, how effective was it given that they didn't seem to defend Ed Balls with any vigour?
7) What changes are in the pipeline for FGs and PPs to make them more effective (Philip Gould was meticulous in these matters - has he been forgotten)?
8) What are the three biggest lessons learned about the Labour private polling performance in the 2015 General Election?
9) Could you name at least one major success of Labour Private Polling for the 2015 General Election?
10) Were any aspects of Private Polling brand new for the 2015 General Election?
(no idea who OJ is supporting by the way) but if you are self-selecting enough to be a Lab member today, surely there's a fair number of serious lefties in there?
Private polling for a party should be more subtle than simply voting intention. There was no shortage of public polls on these.
Party polling should focus more on how messages are coming across on doorsteps and media. The Tories knew the SNP issue was going down very badly with English swing voters. Did Labour also identify this as a critical issue?
Thanks,
@Danny565 Thank you for replying to my question on the previous thread. A good answer and very interesting. My own reply is on previous thread.
What I have in mind is the consequence of the poll in the Indyref showing Yes ahead and the galvanising effect that had on no voters.
Edit: and the Julian calender...
There will undoubtedly be stresses and strains in the Parliamentary Party but once again the conclusion has to be that the Tory party is more united behind Cameron than it has been behind anyone since Thatcher was in her pomp.
http://labourlist.org/2015/06/if-labour-doesnt-take-itself-seriously-no-one-else-will/
How do Labour appeal to those more likely to vote - (Richer, older, more ABC, less DE the analysis suggests), whilst carrying on about topics such as tuition fees, the 'bedroom' tax and zero hours contracts which affect people in direct opposition to their place on the aforementioned likelihood to vote spectrum.
The question relates to England and Wales really, Scotland is a whole another kettle of fish.
No party is destined to rule forever, and there is an awful lot of hubris about for a Tory party with a wafer thin majority.
These questions should focus Labour's policy choices and priorities. They have to change the trends that gave Labour a shellacking this time.
On another note:
Isn't it funny that the polls currently being released are all in line with the result, while the ones before weren't? I mean, that ICM could be a 41-point score for the Tories if it's as wrong as the elections polls. Not funny from a Bayesian perspective of course, but I don't think that this perspective is relevant, and if it is it's a very bad thing about polling in the long-range after elections.
"Was there a split inside Labour during the election campaign, and was EdM making the decisions and ignoring certain of his advisors as the Brand and EdStone episodes towards the end of the campaign seemed both bizarre and desperate?"
Even as one of the few who was pessimistic enough to predict on and off a Tory majority since Xmas, I'm a bit mystified by how confident the Tories now are. They certainly exceeded expectations, but it was hardly some historically great victory, and I do think the fact that people were too embarrassed to tell the pollsters they were voting for the Tories til the last minute should be quite concerning for them -- it doesn't make their victory any less "deserved" because a vote is a vote at the end of the day, but still, if many Tory voters were that embarrassed and reluctant about it then it does rather suggest it won't necessarily take all that much for them to ditch the party in the coming years. The Tories are clearly not a party riding on a Blair-level or SNP-level of adoration.
Some have a theory that Ukip are now a meaningful rival to Labour in the North of England, and indeed it's hard to make sense of the meme that Labour is existentially threatened without believing that Ukip would have to do even more damage to Labour than in 2015. Are you worried about Ukip in the North of England (and elsewhere)? Do their voters look like they'll stick with Ukip?
In 2005-10, when there was a majority government, the consensus was reasonably sure 2010 would produce another majority government. (Let's say 85 per cent confidence.)
In 2010-15, when there was a hung parliament, the consensus was reasonably sure 2015 would produce a hung parliament.
Now in 2015 there is a Conservative majority, the consensus here seems reasonably confident there'll be another one. But it looks historically like expectation formation is actually really short-range.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11676620/Sketch-The-SNPs-demands...-championed-by-a-Tory
On-topic:
Would Labour poll better if it focused policies on both England & Wales whilst treating Scotland in the same vein as The Province (i.e. not stand their but ally with like-minded locals)? Would it not be better to ignore and let the SNATs stew in their own fluids...?
I think the SNP are hoping they end up with Full Fiscal Barnett !!
@blairmcdougall: We know ending Barnett is bad, not just because experts say it means £10bn cuts, but because Nicola Sturgeon says so. http://t.co/xO0X2PhWHn
That said, increasing their vote share and sets is fairly historic after a first term isn't it?
Did Labour poll or focus group the non-doms nomnishambles? A policy approximately nobody cared about?
What % of LD voters did Labour expect to gain from their own analysis? Ditto losses to UKIP?
I might make it to 2020 on this one night.
2. How much weight did the Lab team place on a famous political blogger's betting position on Lab seats vs Tories on SPIN, the red liberal wedge & the many reasons given why the Tories couldn't win?
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/no-members-no-money-why-going-it-alone-more-difficult-route-scottish-labour-you
Given the lack of SLAB activists on the ground in Scotland, were resources redeployed to Scotland to assist Jim and his team? A Labour insider (Mr IOS) posted that there was a last ditched attempt to save 5-10 seats in Scotland, was this the case? If so, what seats?
Enough to ruin your holiday.
Who coined this Taliban thing? Properly offensive.
Which is not to say the witch thing is any better.
It's a string of stories about Northern Muslims going to fight for the Islamic State.
As Labour's face becomes increasingly similar to those people, what do you think the consequence will be?
And it will be Labour's self inflicted wound. They have spent too long playing the politics of identity.
Zero must be evaluated on a points basis, and if there is a homegrown number that can be trained to do the things that zero can do then we should use that, rather than just import foreign numbers willy-nilly.
It seems bizarre that we try and prevent people who don't want to live here.. from leaving...
I would be happy to carry out a dunking to be sure as I could be wrong
I don't think it says anything in particular about whether the remaining Labour WWC voters will go Ukip next time, or vice versa.
Incidentally, I think this kind of rhetoric is unnecessary and divisive. Most people with Muslim faces have nothing like jihad in their hearts.
"About the only thing we invented was gravity."
Well that brought us down to earth.
The canvassing results *must* have shown for Labour that they werent doing materially better than they were in 2010. That the wild leads shown by the ashcroft polls in the marginals were pure poppycock.
I'll repeat what i have said before. An experienced campaign manager/co ordinator can look at a set of canvassing results, compare them with previous results and give an extremely accurate assessment of what is going to happen. Trend is key. I can only guess that the constituency canvassing results would have been locked down to prevent anyone other than a handful of people at the top of the party being able to look at what was happening.
What throws me is Nick Palmer. He has done this so many times now, but he got his predictions staggeringly wrong. The only reason why i think was that as the candidate, it can be tempted to comfort respond to voters who arent really planning on voting for you.
But surely these marginal MPs on majorities of a few hundred, canvassing their constituencies like men possessed would see it was close and share this info with their colleagues.