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The inquest into the polling disaster at the UK General Election continues. Matt Singh of NumberCruncherPolitics provided an excellent overview of the pollsters’ initial thoughts last week, ahead of the first meeting of the official BPC/MRS inquiry.
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Social media can be useful, but its limitations need to be carefully considered. As anecdata, I got virtually no pro-Conservative posts on my FB feed before the GE, but lots of very strident pro-Labour ones.
The comments below the pro-Labour ones were so strident about the evils of the Conservatives (sometimes ridiculously so), that there was no point even engaging them. particularly if it might mean putting a strain on friendships. I lost count of how many "The Conservatives will destroy the NHS" posts I got.
Oh, and first.
After the election, the only people continuing to post political posts in my FB are the Scottish nationalists.
It is not so much left wing views that get Tweeted or posted, but extreme views generally. The Cybernats and cyberkippers infest everywhere.
Unless that question is answered satisfactorily, then Shy Toryies does not cut it.
Poor sampling seems a more likely explanation, if we assume the left-leaning profile of Twitter users carries over to those filling in online polls. For phone polls, we've covered at nauseam in the past why final digit randomisation does not work and leads to undersampling Conservatives. (That objection should not apply to mobile phone polling though -- does anyone know if mobile users were closer to the final result?) Sampling is easier for exit polls, of course, since anyone coming out of a polling booth can be safely assumed actually to have voted, and greater numbers of respondents can be cheaply obtained.
The corollary of poor sampling is, of course, poor weighting, but weighting is in any case designed to compensate for poor sampling.
Politicians should not blame the electorate for their mistakes, neither should pollsters.
And anecdotally, my PB experience is that right wingers have no problem in giving as good as they get; and then some! On Twitter you decide who to follow, unfollow and block.
But more seriously by the next election the percentage of the electorate who are on line will be getting close to 100
Dig a bit deeper and you find...
A large section of people go online just to check email.
Many simply shop, browse for things like the weather or use a mobile app.
Roughly half use social media in any regular way...
... which means half do not.
Inventing what the other side thinks is what Labour tried to do at the GE. They lost.
Perhaps you should learn the lesson.
In addition, FB may prove to have trouble keeping its existing users. ISTR that Twitter is having the same problem and growth is slowing.
I broadly agree. People are influenced by others even when they're not around (a man might not buy a certain shade of shirt if his ex-girlfriend once told him it didn't match his eyes).
I wonder about the user numbers. Does Facebook's include the doubtlessly large number of neglected accounts?
An unscientific sample of 50,000 may well be more representative than a stratified and weighted sample of 1,000.
(And for the record, yet again, I don't think that of you).
This does not explain why the pollsters forgot to weight properly. I suspect that, if I owned a media outlet, I'd be happier buying a poll that showed a hung parliament - or a neck-and-neck finish in another context. such as the London Mayoralty - than one predicting an easy victory.
And with SO (6.49am) I also agree. Again, one thing to add: we Peebies all take ourselves far too seriously. (As I discovered, yet again, yesterday.
Felix (6.43am) - I don't talk party politics with my real-world friends. It doesn't pay.
The end result is that you are supposed to disagree with his tedious shtick and therefore by implication deny the inherent wickedness of the collective Left. Or something.
For me the correct approach is to look at those who got at least closer to getting it right and seeing what they did differently. Jim Messina's critique remains the most persuasive to me. What he said was that the Pollsters were modelling the electorate of 2010 or even earlier (possibly the last census?) rather than the electorate of 2015. He said they spent a lot of money and time updating their modelling and there was little incentive or inclination on the pollsters to do that. They get paid modest amounts for doing cheap and cheerful polls and act accordingly.
I have pointed out before that over the 5 years to 2015 there were some significant changes. There were 2m more people in work, 1 m fewer working in the public sector, probably more retired people who the Tories bribed shamelessly, fewer people receiving in work benefits as the limits were reduced from sixty odd thousand to fifty thousand, more immigrants eligible to vote etc etc.
By no means all of these changes favoured the Tories but it meant that the weighting of the pollsters would have become increasingly unrepresentative of the country. If certain segments were under or over weighted and favoured a particular political party they would in turn be under or over represented in the result.
It will be interesting to see what the BPC says but I do not believe that shyness comes into it, at least directly. The social media world is unrepresentative and this might influence some of the mainstream media coverage but so what? Whilst that is true I don't think that is why the pollsters went wrong.
If I am right then we need to watch whether this is going to happen again for the next election. Hopefully, there will be even more people in work, fewer in the public sector, many fewer in receipt of in work benefits and possibly more elderly (although immigration continues to offset that to a significant extent). Will these changes again favour the Tories? Possibly, even probably but not necessarily. It is the party that will most accurately address the needs of the country as it is that will succeed. Ed addressed the country he wanted to have.
SObs doesn't even have the rudimentary skills yet to successfully pitch fork first born
;-)
* 24% of the electorate voted Tory
* 20% voted Labour
* 8% voted UKIP
* 5% voted LD
Hardly a huge difference really between the two "big" parties. There is a wafer between success and failure. Tories may feel like they are a minority because they are.
Meanwhile, the SNP do have a better claim to popularity.
* 35% of the Scottish electorate voted for them
The left's approach of saying "Oh, but they didn't really win" is bizarre. I wonder what was being said here in 2005 after Labour got a lower share of the vote and a majority five times bigger.
I just didn't think you had the self-awareness.
But they are not popular.
And yet...no-one would know that from the rest of my public demeanor. I am very reserved. No posters in the car or outside the house. No forwarding on of any of the mountain of mail from CCHQ. No responding to the mountain of "cull Tories, not badgers" posts that infested Facebook. No contact with pollsters. A very marked reluctance to acknowledge my politics in conversation, even to friends who I am pretty damned sure are very sympathetic.
Why? Because experience shows that admitting you are a Tory is just not worth the hassle. Put a sticker in your car - get it keyed. Put a poster in your window and all your neighbours know your politics, including those who have a problem with that - and might be inclined to remember it when out late after a night on the piss.
We don't admit we are Tories because of any doubt that politically it is a fair position to take - to confront the problems we face in our country, undertaken under the auspices of a party deeply committed to democracy. No. We don't shout that we are Tories because, with a sad shake of the head, we know that our opponents can't handle it. People we have never have met rush to judgment about just who we are. How base our motives are in life.
And because, frankly, we have got more self-esteem than to go out the house wearing a T-shirt that says "never kissed a socialist"....
Tennis: bloody hell. I was considering trying to find some tips, and was planning on using the ATP's head-to-head comparison (seems superior to Betfair's). But they've 'modernised' it. By which I mean they've buggered it up and made the default mobile-friendly (and deskop-loathsome).
I'll have to search the horrendous labyrinth and see if there's still anything useful, or if they've done an F1 and removed almost everything of interest.
Edited extra bit: huzzah, it's here:
http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players
Shows up win/loss automatically, with more detail available. Irritatingly, they've removed, for some damned reason, the surface from the event breakdown. That was useful information. Bah.
Even the most doddery old fool knows and one day even @SouthamObserver will find out that FB is a forum where abuse can be rife. I've never experienced it myself because I am not solipsistic enough to imagine that everyone wants to know what I had for breakfast or how I am feeling about Strictly, or Syria.
Plus when I do, rarely, go on FB I am reminded of what a brilliant life everyone is having and how much better their lives are than mine. So I tend to drop in, as has been noted, once a month or so. I'm sure I am not an untypical Brit.
In the same way we British generally have a healthy contempt for politicians and their machinations. Very few, if any, are net "popular" for long but Cameron was comfortably more popular than the alternatives.
I don't really see what absolute popularity brings to the party other than a need for more humility on the part of our elected leaders. In terms of measuring success or failure it is irrelevant.
Only after the election did I see a number of pro-Conservative messages of people saying how pleased they were with the result from people who'd not said anything until then.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33261474
Crackers. It's not the job of a court to make public policy.
It would be very interesting to see age and location profiles overlaid on the above bar charts.
Whilst most towns have reasonable internet reception, there are many country areas which are still awaiting the 20th century to arrive. So if the majority of the above data comes from metropolitan areas which tend to favour Labour, then the explanation is simple.
An age profile would probably show that many people over 65 either do not have the internet, do not understand it or cannot afford it. Also many of that generation are not into putting their personal lives in the public domain. So again they may be viewed as 'shy' and more often than not vote for the Cons.
Similarly many Greens are often younger people who are very tech savvy and that may dominate their lives.
Regarding the left-right debate below, often I find that people with more extreme views are less tolerant of people who do not support their viewpoint and are far less willing to argue or debate the veracity of their views.
Re Twitter - I follow maybe 15ish Labour supporters, 3 or 4 LDs and about 30 Tory/Kippers that I'm aware of. I may have a SNPer just for interest.
I don't tend to get into discussions with many of them, just share information/articles that we may all find interesting/provoking/funny. What I generally find [over the last two GEs] is that Labourites tend to be more belligerent and cast aspersions on my character as a first line of defense, rather than discuss the policy merits.
I'm no shrinking violet, but even I moderate my opinions heavily as it's just far too TIRESOME to engage with mouthy self-righteous lefties who pile on to discussions and get abusive. I'd say it's the behaviour of these users that stifles the righties out - we generally don't do it as a group. Apart from the Countryside Alliance march - when did righties go on a street protest?
So, do I think pollsters got their demographic sampling wrong - maybe. I think it's more the constant criticism of being Not Left Wing right across the social spectrum/media that embeds Shy Toryism. I must say, I didn't like Mr Kellner's tone re Tories - he too showed significant Lefty bias in his terminology. I know he's a Labour supporter - but I'd like to see his YouGov pieces completely neutral. It's not beyond the wit of man.
Labour hasn't been *popular* with anyone without him for many decades.
I for one believe that those of all political persuasions genuinely believe that the policies they promote will be the best for the majority. They may be wrong or misguided (obviously so when they disagree with me) but I believe them to be genuine in their views. It is tiresome that so many claim to believe otherwise.
The methodology of the exit poll was completely different to the online & phone polls.
"On 7 May, a team of around 400 researchers from Ipsos MORI and GfK NOP stood outside 141 polling stations in 133 constituencies across the UK. Over the course of the day, 22,000 voters were approached at random and asked to fill out dummy ballot papers, which they then deposited in an exit poll box.
The exit poll ballot is done in secret, just like the real thing, and no additional information about each voter is recorded. But the exit pollsters do know one crucial thing about the people whose data they are gathering: they have actually voted, not just told an interviewer that they intend to."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/election-results-just-how-did-the-exit-poll-manage-toget-it-so-right-10254368.html
It is clear some people have thin skins. But some use Twitter as satirical click bait - often with great results.
Some opinions on PB are expressed with force, but the level of abuse is mild compared with some of the love emanating from the broader Left on Twitter. There plenty of certifiable narcissists out there whose tweets might have been better left unsent. It is a good job that Twitter users can't do more than throw pixels across the ether, otherwise I'm sure that some contributors including me would have been buried under a pile of stones for daring to question the integrity of political parties or politicians.
Twitter was good on election night, for monitoring which seats were likely to change hands. But I always looked forward to Ed Balls Day on Twitter, which is now moved forward to May 8th.
People do shoot their mouths off on social media, in ways they would never do, socially. And twitter does have a kind of left-wing lynch mob that dominates it (eg the treatment of Professor Tim Hunt).
I don't know if that leads to a systemic polling bias.
What I found interesting was that his posts didn't receive a huge amount of interest which made me wonder whether a lot of his friends actually disagreed with him but were too shy to say.
After the election he started moaning about the result, complaining that FPTP was unfair. At this point he did get a lot of attention. And when he complained that the BBC weren't reporting the protests on Whitehall he received a lot of criticism. I couldn't resist pointing out that the BBC weren't covering it because it was undermining the Left and the Labour Party.
So that's just anecdotal - but it does seem to fit with the general theory. That said, I'm surprised that people aren't quite so willing to admit to be a Tory in an opinion poll. Maybe there's a bunch of Tories out there that think it's funny to lie to the pollsters!
I support your views and experience and pretty well ignore both Facebook, Twitter and their ilk - have far more interesting and better things to do.
However, during the election campaign, I found it most effective to challenge the views of the left wing - (here Green, PC and Labour) on the words in the pamphlets and on their banners and to do it in the street in front of the public. Without exception and including their candidates, all their arguments were easy to demolish as they were just parroting what others said - not an original thought among them and many seemed not able to think widely.
That way I could educate and influence quite a crowd who gathered round to listen who then often continued the debate.
If you have never done it, it is quite amusing to debate with the speakers at Hyde Park corner and discover how shallow many of their viewpoints are in reality.
The last time Labour won an election without Blair leading the party, was 41 years ago.
Doesn't say much for Labour's popularity without him, does it.
Is it because the Labour party are keener to encourage state dependency/the establishment of a clientelist base?
They go on and on about how they represent The People - but The People don't seem that keen on them when it comes to the ballot box - unless they're pretending to be Tory-Lite.
A lot less self-righteous posturing and finger-wagging smuggery wouldn't go amiss.
And using the Check Your Privilege scorecard - I can say this as someone who has voted Labour
That Venn diagram is a good example. The blue circle looks twice as big as the red circle.
* In truth, they are almost exactly the same size.
* Together they make up just over half of those who vote and under half of those eligible to vote.
* The black circle should include FB users and would be bigger than both.
And given that we're constantly told we're evil, baby-eating greedy bastards - it's not like we're living in Love-In Land anywhere.
When armies of comedians, actors and popstars come out as card carrying Tories - you may have a point. Being a Tory isn't Fashionable.
* Together they make up more than two thirds of voters, not just over half. 67.3% isn't a half.
* If the black circle included Facebook users who post political stuff then it would still be small.
I post politics on PB. I rarely if ever post it anywhere else. This is in part because I feel that those people coming to PB are coming for robust debate and so are not going to easily take offence and also because I expect them to be far more knowledgeable about politics so it is worth discussing with them even if I don't always agree with them.
I never post politics on FB. I am a huge user of FB but I do not see it as the place to push my own political views and tend to shy away from those who do. I have family, friends, work colleagues and old school mates on FB and know most of them are pretty apolitical on a day to day basis and have no interest in reading others spouting off from a partisan point of view.
I do note that those of my FB friends from the left are far more likely to post not only their political views but all the myriad memes and postings from left about how horrible big corporations, gun owners, oil companies, Rupert Murdoch and anyone from south of the Mason-Dixon line are. Once or twice I let it slide but if it persists I simply unfriend. It is far simpler than trying to argue with such morons.
"oh you are one of the posh Tories".
My response = "Actually I am more of a classical liberal"
Her response = Ah a Lib Dem.
Mine = No just like Thatcher.
Then a puzzled look.
Turnout at GE2015 was 66% not 100%. As far as I am aware non voters can still use social media. Do correct me if I am wrong.
Tories got 24% of the electorate and Labour got 20%. That's not a massive difference in popularity, even if it leads to a massive difference in outcome under FPTP.
The point of the conversation is that when a political conversation happens in social media, party supporters are surprised at the negative response. I merely suggest that they should not be.
Either you think that no individual can ever accumulate too much power or else you think that Murdoch and his like haven't done so yet. This is a genuine invitation for you to consider which of those opinions you actually hold. Of course, you don't have to tell us
As I posted previously, you can dress stats up any way you like but the reality is that the voters took one look at Labour and said NO THANKS That's why there is such a huge disparity in seats.
People on here are politicos, interested in politics to the point of obsession in some cases. Luckily the electorate isn't like that.
Also - polling firms should be signing up people leaving GE voting booths to their databases and ditching some of their existing database - who are obviously not the people to be asking.
We have unique nationalism in NI and Scotland but the death of the Lib Dems has seen a two-party system restored in England.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
Greenwich and Woolwich CLP nominates Cooper and Creasy
Blaydon CLP nominates Burnham
Have you included all the unborn babies that will arrive over the next 5 years - they didn't vote for Cameron but must live under his austerity jackboot - it's so vewy vewy unfair !
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationquestions/11695835/QUIZ-Could-you-beat-a-Shanghai-10-year-old-in-maths.html