politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Data specialist Stephen Dunn gives his assessment of the To

Thanks for this

I've concluded Jim Messina will be a success, he uses a Mac, nuff said.

An interesting article, Mr. Dunn.

Ed Miliband is a b****** – and that's a good thing

Unlike his brother, Labour's leader has the same courage and steeliness as Margaret Thatcher, writes Tom Harris.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10239982/Ed-Miliband-is-a-b-and-thats-a-good-thing.html

And the PB Tories cheer on extending the policy.
Madness

"There was outrage in labour circles as a government policy reportedly 'succeeded in its aims'

George Osborne's plan aims to flagrantly boost the UKs moribund property market 'is clearly working' said labour spokesman Andy Bryant.

'We really cannot have government policy working so effectively like this. George Osborne is nakedly succeeding in what he set out to do".

Where are the unintended outcomes? where is the suppression of the truth???"

Labour sources shrieked as property values in marginal constituencies in the North West and Midlands got somewhere near the price level they were at in 2007.

''How dare the evil tories attempt to take vulnerable people in these areas out of negative equity'' raged labour spokesman Chris Burnham.

Nice article, Mr Dunn. Thanks!

tim said:

@taffys.

Plenty of smart Tories think the bubble policy is mad, PB Tories cheer it on.

I seem to remember Labourites cheering on the Brown bubble and then telling us that the subsequent bust had nothing to do with Labour .

tim said:

@taffys.

Plenty of smart Tories think the bubble policy is mad, PB Tories cheer it on.

A classic case of: "I wouldn't have started from here."

This is where you need to listen to Mark Carney & team. So far they are happy with the policy. We are coming off lows and volumes are nowhere near previous top-of-the-bubble levels.

Is it ideal? Of course not. However, no party is brave (suicidal) enough to take the necessary action to bring back house prices to more acceptable levels. So we are where we are.

It is a minor, so far controlled move by GO to "get the economy going". I can live with it for the moment.

TGOHF said:

Alanbrooke said:

tim said:

@taffys.

Plenty of smart Tories think the bubble policy is mad, PB Tories cheer it on.

I seem to remember Labourites cheering on the Brown bubble and then telling us that the subsequent bust had nothing to do with Labour .

Yes but Labour brought us a brilliant house price crash - making housing cheaper for all during 2008-2009.

A masterstroke policy that was popular around the country and won them many a vote in the GE.

Labour economics has more bubbles than Aero.

''I seem to remember Labourites cheering on the Brown bubble and then telling us that the subsequent bust had nothing to do with Labour .'''

The gag is that many voters in swing constituencies are still in that bust.

Labour are adamant that shouldn't change, in case it further enriches tory voters in the South East. We can't have THAT.

tim said:

@news24heng: Calls for government to drop Help to Buy: Critics of the £12bn fund fear it will further boost demand for hous... http://t.co/bMF4uayxLg

And the PB Tories cheer on extending the policy.
Madness

The FT article you link does not call for the Help to Buy scheme to be dropped.

It does contain a statement from Campbell Robb, the Chief Exectuive of the charity Shelter:
“Some will see house price inflation as good news, but with a priced-out generation and their parents worried about their prospects of climbing on to the property ladder, the result will be many people tempted to overstretch themselves before prices rise completely out of reach”

So a fairly anodyne warning about the risks and consequences of of overborrowing, but even from Shelter, no call for Help to Buy to be withdrawn. I did become slightly suspicious as to why Shelter, a charity which deals with the homeless should be expressing caution to a national newspaper about a scheme which targets government assistance to first time buyers of housing.

A quick visit to Shelter's website answers the question. Before joining Shelter in October 2010, Campbell Robb was - yes, you guessed it - "the first Director General of the Office of the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office, responsible for leading the Government’s work with the third sector". A job title that even Gilbert and Sullivan would have been proud to have coined.

The FT journalist begins a paragraph with the old chestnut of "Experts say that the government should consider abandoning ...". And yet neither the two 'experts' subsequently argue anything of the sort.

Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight says: "should the housing market gain substantial momentum ... the case for dropping the scheme will strengthen". Well you don't say Mr. Archer.

And the secoond expert, an Adam Challis, head of residential research at Jones Lang LaSalle, even seems to advising readers to hurry up to take advantage of the scheme. He then cautions borrowers to consider the impact of future interest rate rises on affordability. Well you don't say Mr. Challis.

tim, you really must up your game. If your posts continue to repeat this meme, you risk becoming the Chris Bryant of PB.

More on MacMillan's supposed "Events" quote (admittedly an oldie from 2002, but interesting!):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3577416/As-Macmillan-never-said-thats-enough-quotations.html

Reading through the Guardian over breakfast the other day, I came across a column headlined "Events, ol' buddy, events". It was all I could do not to hurl it across the kitchen.

This was not because the column was bad, or because the Guardian's leader pages were any more irritating than usual, but simply because I knew what was coming.

And, yes, of course, there it was, down towards the bottom of the page: "All politicians know - and often quote - the response from Harold Macmillan when asked what a prime minister most feared: 'Events, dear boy, events'."

What is it about this phrase that has rendered it so infuriatingly ubiquitous? It was dull when it appeared again in the Observer this Sunday ("Harold Macmillan, asked what he most feared, replied, 'Events, dear boy, events' "), just as it was when it appeared in the Observer in March ("Newspapers . . . are written and edited against the pressure of deadlines while trying to respond to what Harold Macmillan once wearily described as 'Events, dear boy, events' "), and was no more interesting when it showed up in the Observer in April ("as Harold Macmillan put it, 'Events, dear boy, events' ").

It's not as if it's even been reliably authenticated. Some say Macmillan made it to President Kennedy, others to a journalist after dinner. Denis Healey claims it referred to foreign policy.

Alistair Horne, Macmillan's official biographer (who tells me he can't put his finger on it, either) thinks it may have been a response to the Profumo affair.

It didn't appear in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations until 1999 (where it is carefully described as "attributed") which may explain why hardly anybody used it until three years ago. Now it's as unavoidable as "a week is a long time in politics" or "it's the economy, stupid".

tim said:

It's a shame when all the lower league PB Tory intellects all post on the same thread, no coherent argument can be discerned.

Can you please decide whether or not Osborne is trying to pump up a bubble using taxpayer subsidies before you decide whether you think it will work politically.

Thanks.

We all know you're a Tory agent provocateur, tim! I mean, would any self-respecting Labour man have a picture of Cameron as his avatar?

tim said:

It's a shame when all the lower league PB Tory intellects all post on the same thread, no coherent argument can be discerned.

Can you please decide whether or not Osborne is trying to pump up a bubble using taxpayer subsidies before you decide whether you think it will work politically.

Thanks.

Do I think that George Osborne believes that a recovering housing market will be politically popular? Yes.

Do I think that Help-to-Buy will raise the likelihood of the house market recovering? Yes.

Do I think the £12bn guarantee over 3 years, the underwriting cost of which will be borne by the lenders is prudent? Yes.

Do I think that the 'bubble' hysteria is a sign of a worried opposition? Yes.

Excellent article, thanks Stephen. A couple of comments:

1) I'm not sure your scaling of the size of the US campaign compared with what is needed in the UK is right. In both cases, when targeting resources, you're really only interested in the places which can swing the outcome, which in the US means around a dozen or so, twenty max, battleground states, and in the UK means around 80 marginal seats. For the UK, that means a maximimum of about 5.6 million voters (80 x avg constituency of 70,000). Contrast with the US, where just five key battleground states (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia) account for a population of over 60 million. Plus of course there's no TV advertising here, so the spending is much, much lower. Direct targeting of those key marginal voters in the UK shouldn't be prohibitively expensive.

2) I do think individualising, or at least targeting by area category, of leaflets is absolutely key. Most political leaflets are abysmally poor: they are badly laid out, look awful, are stuffed with far too many different messages, and just don't grab attention. You've got about three seconds before the leaflet goes in the bin, so you need a really, really simple message - in the UK, the LibDems have done best on this score with their 'only the LibDems can stop the Tories here'. But there's no reason why other parties can't run a more sophisticated leafleting campaign than this. For example, in a Con/Lab marginal, the message you want to get out in traditionally Conservative areas should be targeted at those swaying UKIP-wards (broadly, 'vote for us or get Balls'). In more mixed or Lab-leaning areas, it should emphasise the postitive achievements of the coalition, because you're trying to tone down or mute voters fears about you, notstoke up their fears about Labour (they probably don't have much fear of Labour).

There's no reason why this can't be done street-by-street, even if it can't be done house-by-house.

3) Finally, don't underestimate the sophistication of direct mail nowadays. It costs money, but you can get very targeted delivery.

Scott_P said:

tim said:

It's a shame when all the lower league intellects all post on the same thread

And yet here you are...

tim said:

Can you please decide whether or not Osborne is trying to pump up a bubble using taxpayer subsidies before you decide whether you think it will work politically.

As a Farmer, you have already decided that you think Osborne is trying to pump up a bubble and that you think it will not work politically, but given your Bryantesque record on Osborne predictions (we are losing count) we can be confident neither of these things is true.

Man will apologise for agreeing
Man on a boat
Man on a train
Double dip
Man gets out of a car
Man eats burger
Triple dip

How many have I missed?

Man cuts taxes for own family

With activists there's inevitably a trade-off between detail and quantity.

The "just party allegiance" thing is a recent development pushed onto activists to try and increase the number of houses they can get through. (There's also a problem of a low threshold of responder fatigue in doorstepping).

Likewise for leaflets, you can do individualised ones (usually using addressed envelopes) and I've been part of trying it. The trade off again is additional time in production and delivery.

The other thing with the USA is that the UK's data protection laws are much stricter, meaning things like buying email addresses is much more possible over there than over here.

The rule of thumb is that UK politics is 10-15 years behind the USA one, I think there is a movement towards more detailed and targeted campaigning, but the lack of money and data protection laws will make it difficult.

I wonder if a larger proportion of the UK or USA population is considered to live in battleground areas.

corporeal said:

With activists there's inevitably a trade-off between detail and quantity.

The "just party allegiance" thing is a recent development pushed onto activists to try and increase the number of houses they can get through. (There's also a problem of a low threshold of responder fatigue in doorstepping).

Likewise for leaflets, you can do individualised ones (usually using addressed envelopes) and I've been part of trying it. The trade off again is additional time in production and delivery.

The other thing with the USA is that the UK's data protection laws are much stricter, meaning things like buying email addresses is much more possible over there than over here.

The rule of thumb is that UK politics is 10-15 years behind the USA one, I think there is a movement towards more detailed and targeted campaigning, but the lack of money and data protection laws will make it difficult.

I wonder if a larger proportion of the UK or USA population is considered to live in battleground areas.

New voter registration is going to include date of birth, and national insurance number. Will the parties be able to access that data?

http://rhombuscomms.squarespace.com/blog/2013/8/11/from-the-high-court-a-guide-to-spotting-election-fraud.html

Plato said:

Who are they recruiting to duel with him and Mr Crosby?

How about this guy?

http://order-order.com/2013/08/13/now-bad-al-weighs-in-to-criticise-labours-messaging/

corporeal said:

Plato said:

Quite. Using info of where you live, what you buy, subscribe to, shop, are members of, age, family info, electoral poll et al - its all there.

There are always exceptions to the rule - so canvassing fills in the blanks or spots convert candidates.

But 80% of the basic messaging will be generic - that leaves the 20% to be wooed more specifically - and say 20% of them who need personal attention to pull them in.

philiph said:

edmundintokyo said:

One thing Stephen Dunn doesn't mention is data protection law. In the absence of good information from the doorsteps you'd probably want to scrape together whatever you could get access to about potential voters on the public internet, but British laws potentially make this harder than it is in the US. Maybe the parties will just decide to break the law and deal with the consequences when they happen, as that would most likely be after the election.

You can buy just about any information you want, legally.

For an example of what you can do in the USA that you can't here.

In the USA if you identify some indicators for your supporters (say buying a Volvo), you can go out, buy a load of email addresses for people who've bought volvos and get to work.

In the UK, if you try that then you get in trouble from the data protection agency.

Only if they have opted out of allowing data to be used.

anotherDave said:

corporeal said:

With activists there's inevitably a trade-off between detail and quantity.

The "just party allegiance" thing is a recent development pushed onto activists to try and increase the number of houses they can get through. (There's also a problem of a low threshold of responder fatigue in doorstepping).

Likewise for leaflets, you can do individualised ones (usually using addressed envelopes) and I've been part of trying it. The trade off again is additional time in production and delivery.

The other thing with the USA is that the UK's data protection laws are much stricter, meaning things like buying email addresses is much more possible over there than over here.

The rule of thumb is that UK politics is 10-15 years behind the USA one, I think there is a movement towards more detailed and targeted campaigning, but the lack of money and data protection laws will make it difficult.

I wonder if a larger proportion of the UK or USA population is considered to live in battleground areas.

New voter registration is going to include date of birth, and national insurance number. Will the parties be able to access that data?

http://rhombuscomms.squarespace.com/blog/2013/8/11/from-the-high-court-a-guide-to-spotting-election-fraud.html

The one that people tend not to realise (or perhaps they do, I suspect PB is more savvy than most?) is the parties can buy the data on whether someone voted in an election or not.

RichardNabavi said:

"Nigel Farage to give Neil Hamilton ‘leading role’ in Ukip"

Is this true, and, if so, is it wise?

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2013/08/nigel-farage-to-give-neil-hamilton-leading-role-in-ukip/

Wise? No

True? No idea.

Neil Hamilton will attract about -3% to UKIP VI numbers if used widely, I would expect.

Plato said:

corporeal said:

Plato said:

Quite. Using info of where you live, what you buy, subscribe to, shop, are members of, age, family info, electoral poll et al - its all there.

There are always exceptions to the rule - so canvassing fills in the blanks or spots convert candidates.

But 80% of the basic messaging will be generic - that leaves the 20% to be wooed more specifically - and say 20% of them who need personal attention to pull them in.

philiph said:

edmundintokyo said:

One thing Stephen Dunn doesn't mention is data protection law. In the absence of good information from the doorsteps you'd probably want to scrape together whatever you could get access to about potential voters on the public internet, but British laws potentially make this harder than it is in the US. Maybe the parties will just decide to break the law and deal with the consequences when they happen, as that would most likely be after the election.

You can buy just about any information you want, legally.

For an example of what you can do in the USA that you can't here.

In the USA if you identify some indicators for your supporters (say buying a Volvo), you can go out, buy a load of email addresses for people who've bought volvos and get to work.

In the UK, if you try that then you get in trouble from the data protection agency.

Yes you can. Provided the Volvo buyer has filled in a form saying at some point he's happy to share his details. That's how most marketing works. You buy lists of people who fill in surveys or registration cards or whatever. So when I joined say the National Trust - I got a load of direct mail about joining 20 other charities - their marketing depts aren't psychic.

@GarethOfTheVale is one of our resident experts here IIRC.

Yes, but they also have to be for related use (Afaiaa, admittedly not an expert). The National trust to other charities being related etc. Cars to political parties, not so much.

RichardNabavi said:

"Nigel Farage to give Neil Hamilton ‘leading role’ in Ukip"

Is this true, and, if so, is it wise?

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2013/08/nigel-farage-to-give-neil-hamilton-leading-role-in-ukip/

He's already on the NEC.

http://www.ukip.org/the-party/nec

Plato said:

I'm sorry but I feel you are grasping at straws here. Many of us do have hands on expertise and its remarkable what you can buy in terms of data perfectly legally.

Insurance companies and police forces sell details of accidents to claims firms for Heaven's sake.

Your example again is in terms of related services.

I'm happy to be corrected if wrong, to the best of my knowledge data can be passed on to related services (with appropriate small print in the original thing they filled out), but not unrelated ones.

Are you saying this is categorically incorrect?

Instead of High Speed 2 - Why don't we go for this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2390672/Elon-Musks-Hyperloop-shoot-passengers-LA-San-Francisco-30-mins.html

Miles quicker than HS2 - Looks like an amazing concept. LA - SF is 900 miles, so the theory is workable for the UK.

Next said:

corporeal said:

Plato said:

I'm sorry but I feel you are grasping at straws here. Many of us do have hands on expertise and its remarkable what you can buy in terms of data perfectly legally.

Insurance companies and police forces sell details of accidents to claims firms for Heaven's sake.

Your example again is in terms of related services.

I'm happy to be corrected if wrong, to the best of my knowledge data can be passed on to related services (with appropriate small print in the original thing they filled out), but not unrelated ones.

Are you saying this is categorically incorrect?

I believe, as long as you have the original person's permission, you can resell the data.

If you have a look at forms, you will often see tick boxes like:-

[ ] Don't receive marketing from members of our group.

[ ] Don't receive marketing from carefully selected third parties.

If you don't tick the second box, then your info can be sold.

I agree, but think "carefully selected" is another way of saying 'related'.

Theuniondivvie said:

RichardNabavi said:

"Nigel Farage to give Neil Hamilton ‘leading role’ in Ukip"

Is this true, and, if so, is it wise?

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2013/08/nigel-farage-to-give-neil-hamilton-leading-role-in-ukip/

Front of the horse in the UKIP Xmas panto?

Haha

Charles said:

Not a fund, but a contingent liability.

And of course a liability contingent on prices falling. It can't both be true that this would be a cost to taxpayers, and stabilise/boost prices (let alone lead to a bubble).

tim said:

@Charles

"deflation needs to happen slowly"

As in "Today analysts raised their forecasts of house price inflation from 3% next year to 7%"

Deluded.

Which part of what I said was deluded?

Osborne's schemes are about avoiding a near term crisis. This may result in an increase in near term house prices (although - as always - you fail to segregate London and ex-London)

Long-term reductions in the relative cost of housing (I would prefer house prices rising by less than nominal incomes rather than a fall in house prices) would be beneficial for the economy.

Labour left such a terribly unbalanced economy that near term fixes are necessary to stop the whole kaboodle exploding

It can't both be true that this would be a cost to taxpayers, and stabilise/boost prices (let alone lead to a bubble).

Quite. This house prices thing is the deadest horse tim has ever flogged.

tim said:

So long as the bubble keeps being inflated the taxpayer won't lose, but the economy will be f*cked, mobility of labour eroded and housing benefit payments cranked skywards.
Great deal eh, the taxpayer will lose if the mad spiral is broken, Osborne puts us on a hook when removing subsidies will cost the taxpayer if it impacts on prices

Don't be silly, tim. Put a cool compress on your forehead, and read Jeremy Warner or Mark Carney's take. Prices are still low, having fallen by at least 20% in real terms and in many places more than that, transaction volumes remain very low, the market had seized up outside London.

Housing price deflation is disastrous - why do you never mention this? It stops people moving house, thus distorting the labour market, it stop housebuilders building, it wrecks household and bank finances, and it kills growth in a large sector of the economy (conveyancing agents, estate agents, solicitors, builders and decorators, carpet shops, furniture shops, DIY shops, etc etc). All Osborne is doing is stabilising things a bit. It's working very well - the catastrophic decline in prices outside London and the SE seems at last to be stopping, in some cases at nominal prices not seen for over a decade. Some bubble!