Re: The UK General Election Thread

[Basil]

But it won't work that way: Labour cannot afford to fight two elections in one year. The Lib Dems won't want to be seen as forcing a second election as they know their vote would be squeezed.

Conclusion - Minority government ( of either party) for two years and then another election.

[JKLever]

Still undecided who to vote for. Labour have been slowly eroding civil liberties and the Tories are going to make cuts too early.

And that George Osborne is a shifty barsteward.

[PeterCS]

You need to listen to Merls more.

[JKLever]

Tory boy himself...?

[PeterCS]

Merls wasn't born Tory.

[Basil]

My gut instinct is to vote Lib Dem as they are offering radically different taxation policies - yet I know that a Lib Dem vote in Worcester is wasted - so, the choice is the sitting, popular Labour MP, or the Tory candidate who has been parachuted in even if he is the son of the last Tory MP for the seat (Robin Walker - son of Peter)

[horace]

No, of course not.

Half the people in Britain are called Miliband.


*very simply researched link*

hmnn thanx Pete....I once read quite a bit of his dad's work...seemed a fine person

[PeterCS]

The boys have gone down the slippery slope of technocratic Realpolitik

[horace]

The boys have gone down the slippery slope of technocratic Realpolitik

...so it would seem

[PeterCS]

Whereas Hilary Benn ( I have it on good authority ) is no socialist either, but is sharp-witted, thoroughly decent, unsneery, unslick, and certainly no post/neo-Thatcherite.

i.e. doomed to at best the second rank of New Labour, probably even after likely personnel changes and policy realignments after an Election trouncing.

*basics*

[Basil]

So, it's 6 May then. Two polls give the Tories a 10% lead and one in the Grauniad makes their lead 4% - the truth is probably somewhere between.

[JKLever]

Just get on with it already. Another month of build up Zzzzzzzzzzz....

[Merlin]

Aye, agree.
I'm bored rigid - 'cept for the New Labour poster faux pas showing a "cool" Cameroon atop an Audi Quattro - likening the Tory to Gene "The hero" Hunt. Cock-up by the Labour activists or what?!

Seems like Boy David's kudos shot up alarmingly in Newcastle (?) where the poster was launched !

What next I wonder?
Brownie clad in leather doing an Emma Peel "Avengers" job!

[JKLever]

Must say I watched a bit of Camerons speech by county hall this morning and seeing all those 'Tory Boys' behind him I did throw up in my mouth a little.

[Merlin]

He sounds a bit nasally for my liking TBH ... high pitched and excitable voice.

Was it just a small chuck Lever ... keeping it in your mouth and all ...?

[Allan D]

YouGov and Opiniuim polls are based on 'likely' voters whereas ICM poll in The Guardian is not. Bearing in mind that 35% of the electorate will probably not vote I think I trust the 'likely voters' polls more. Not a single poll has put Labour ahead for almost 2 years now but the way LibDem support swings will be crucial. If the Conservatives can pick up LibDem seats in the West Country and elsewhere it will help them gain a majority. If the LibDems pick up Labour seats in the inner cities where Conservative support has collapsed it will also help Cameron but if LibDem support remains strong across the board then life will be difficult for both major parties.

I am in North London where the LibDems already hold Hornsey & Wood Green, a former Con-Lab marginal and Islington (2 seats) and Hampstead & Kilburn are potential LibDem targets. The election may produce a LibDem enclave here rather as the 1997 election did in South-West London with Richmond Park, Twickenham, Kingston and Carshalton.

I notice that the BBC have already switched over to full-on "Save the Gordon" mode for the election. So much for balance and impartiality. Even when I watch the blubbery Adam Boulton on Murdoch Inc. I can't help remembering he is married to Anji Hunter, Blair's childhood sweetheart and office manager, and that he had Blair and Mandleson as wedding guests.

I can't bear to switch on the TV or radio for more than a few minutes. It's worse than listening to Dr Goebbels. O for Fox News! If Cameron does get in I hope he scraps the licence fee although that may be a bridge too far, I'm sorry to say.

[Basil]

YouGov and Opiniuim polls are based on 'likely' voters whereas ICM poll in The Guardian is not. Bearing in mind that 35% of the electorate will probably not vote I think I trust the 'likely voters' polls more. Not a single poll has put Labour ahead for almost 2 years now but the way LibDem support swings will be crucial. If the Conservatives can pick up LibDem seats in the West Country and elsewhere it will help them gain a majority. If the LibDems pick up Labour seats in the inner cities where Conservative support has collapsed it will also help Cameron but if LibDem support remains strong across the board then life will be difficult for both major parties.

I am in North London where the LibDems already hold Hornsey & Wood Green, a former Con-Lab marginal and Islington (2 seats) and Hampstead & Kilburn are potential LibDem targets. The election may produce a LibDem enclave here rather as the 1997 election did in South-West London with Richmond Park, Twickenham, Kingston and Carshalton.

I notice that the BBC have already switched over to full-on "Save the Gordon" mode for the election. So much for balance and impartiality. Even when I watch the blubbery Adam Boulton on Murdoch Inc. I can't help remembering he is married to Anji Hunter, Blair's childhood sweetheart and office manager, and that he had Blair and Mandleson as wedding guests.

I can't bear to switch on the TV or radio for more than a few minutes. It's worse than listening to Dr Goebbels. O for Fox News! If Cameron does get in I hope he scraps the licence fee although that may be a bridge too far, I'm sorry to say.

Glenn Beck - that bastion of impartial journalism

[Shoeshine]

YouGov and Opiniuim polls are based on 'likely' voters whereas ICM poll in The Guardian is not. Bearing in mind that 35% of the electorate will probably not vote I think I trust the 'likely voters' polls more. Not a single poll has put Labour ahead for almost 2 years now but the way LibDem support swings will be crucial. If the Conservatives can pick up LibDem seats in the West Country and elsewhere it will help them gain a majority. If the LibDems pick up Labour seats in the inner cities where Conservative support has collapsed it will also help Cameron but if LibDem support remains strong across the board then life will be difficult for both major parties.

Equally, bear in mind that the raw data is invariably much more favourable to the Tories than the final result. A ten point lead in raw terms is probably reflective of a 15 point lead in the raw, unweighted data. All pollsters weight their scores by a variety of different means, it depends on how right they are, or aren't.

[Allan D]

YouGov and Opiniuim polls are based on 'likely' voters whereas ICM poll in The Guardian is not. Bearing in mind that 35% of the electorate will probably not vote I think I trust the 'likely voters' polls more. Not a single poll has put Labour ahead for almost 2 years now but the way LibDem support swings will be crucial. If the Conservatives can pick up LibDem seats in the West Country and elsewhere it will help them gain a majority. If the LibDems pick up Labour seats in the inner cities where Conservative support has collapsed it will also help Cameron but if LibDem support remains strong across the board then life will be difficult for both major parties.

Equally, bear in mind that the raw data is invariably much more favourable to the Tories than the final result. A ten point lead in raw terms is probably reflective of a 15 point lead in the raw, unweighted data. All pollsters weight their scores by a variety of different means, it depends on how right they are, or aren't.

The biggest sample weighting, and the reasons polls have a pro-Labour bias, is to reflect the way voters voted at the previous election so every sample should contain about 4% more Labour than TOry supporters (given the 37-33% split at the last election). This has been the subject of some controversy in the polling world since the same voters don't vote at every election, new voters come on to the register or abstainers last time may vote whilst older votes fall off the register and former voters may abstain thus weighting by political preference might actually distort the sample rather than make it more representative. The arguments abourt whether this is so or not and how it might be corrected are far too arcane for me to understand or even follow.

The other distorting factor is that the election is decided by the number of seats won rather than by the popular vote (there have been two elections in recent history - 1951 and February 1974 where the party forming the government - in one case the Conservatives and in the other Labour but in both cases the opposition to the incumbent government - had more seats but fewer votes than its major opponent) and swings are not uniform and can vary between different parts of the country and whether or not the seat is likely to change hands.

In 1992 John Major had a 7% advantage in the popular vote (42-35%) which should have resulted in a comfortable working majority in terms of seats bbut he only had a slender lead of 21 (which was later to cause him great difficulty) as Labour's performance was much better (although ultimately not good enough) in the marginal seats. Current polls show the Conservatives performing much better in Labour marginals than their overall position would suggest.

It is interesting that in the 2008 London Mayoral election most of the polls showed Ken and Boris either neck-and-neck or with Ken slightly ahead. the exception to this was YouGov which showed Boris winning comfortably. Livingstone said this was due to deliberate "Tory bias" and threatened to sue YouGov for trying to corrupt the election (how?). In the event, after second preferences had been distributed Boris beat Ken by 53-47% and YouGov was the only poll which got it right. Livingstone's action was, unsurprisingly, quietly dropped.

The other interesting aspect of the 2008 Mayoral election was the expectation that Brian Paddick, the ex-police commander and LibDem candidate, would do well and take away a lot of Boris' votes (although that would not affect the outcome as there was a preferential ballot unless LibDem voters refused to cast a second preference). In the event Paddick flopped and it was clear that the LibDem vote had been over-estimated and that many who told the pollsters they were supporting Paddick actually voted for Boris first off the bat. Whether that happens this time around only time will tell.

If anyone is interested in following the polls during the election, along with some literate and impartial explanation of their methods and weaknesses, with the opportunity to place your own comments I suggest you try this site:

UK Polling Report

However remember following an election campaign through polls is like watching a horse race through still photographs. By the time you see the picture the race has moved on. The only snapshot that counts is the photograph at the finish on polling day. I'm waiting for the "Sheffield Rally" moment when one of the party leaders goes completely barmy:

[Guest]

I'm no tory but that is farking funny .

[JKLever]

Everybody loves to see someone who declares themself a winner before time fall flat on their face.

Something Cameron will have to avoid.

[Allan D]

Glenn Beck - that bastion of impartial journalism

1) He's not a journalist

2) He doesn't pretend to be impartial.

He suggests some excellent books to read, however. One I particularly liked after buying it on Amazon was Robert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and the Age of Social Catastrophe, an excellent examination of the commonalty of totalitarianism to both the extremes of left and right. Another was Jim Powell's FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression,.

Published in 2003 about events 7 decades previously it could almost be a manual for how "stimulus" packages, increased government spending and pro-union policies deepen and prolong a recession, hurt the most vulnerable and provide a recipe for political corruption.

Anyway, Beck makes Andrew Marr look like Plug from The Bash Street Kids. Not that he needs much help:


Marr


Plug

Are they related? I think we should be told.

[Eric Air Emu]

It's probably why he took out the super-injunction.

[Allan D]

Everybody loves to see someone who declares themself a winner before time fall flat on their face

If Kinnock was good at anything it was falling down but on a more substantial part of his anatomy than his face. Here's the Welsh Windbag in a classic 'Frank Spencer' moment shortly after being elected Labour Leader in 1983:

[Shoeshine]

The biggest sample weighting, and the reasons polls have a pro-Labour bias, is to reflect the way voters voted at the previous election so every sample should contain about 4% more Labour than TOry supporters (given the 37-33% split at the last election). This has been the subject of some controversy in the polling world since the same voters don't vote at every election, new voters come on to the register or abstainers last time may vote whilst older votes fall off the register and former voters may abstain thus weighting by political preference might actually distort the sample rather than make it more representative. The arguments abourt whether this is so or not and how it might be corrected are far too arcane for me to understand or even follow.

The other distorting factor is that the election is decided by the number of seats won rather than by the popular vote (there have been two elections in recent history - 1951 and February 1974 where the party forming the government - in one case the Conservatives and in the other Labour but in both cases the opposition to the incumbent government - had more seats but fewer votes than its major opponent) and swings are not uniform and can vary between different parts of the country and whether or not the seat is likely to change hands.

In 1992 John Major had a 7% advantage in the popular vote (42-35%) which should have resulted in a comfortable working majority in terms of seats bbut he only had a slender lead of 21 (which was later to cause him great difficulty) as Labour's performance was much better (although ultimately not good enough) in the marginal seats. Current polls show the Conservatives performing much better in Labour marginals than their overall position would suggest.

It is interesting that in the 2008 London Mayoral election most of the polls showed Ken and Boris either neck-and-neck or with Ken slightly ahead. the exception to this was YouGov which showed Boris winning comfortably. Livingstone said this was due to deliberate "Tory bias" and threatened to sue YouGov for trying to corrupt the election (how?). In the event, after second preferences had been distributed Boris beat Ken by 53-47% and YouGov was the only poll which got it right. Livingstone's action was, unsurprisingly, quietly dropped.

The other interesting aspect of the 2008 Mayoral election was the expectation that Brian Paddick, the ex-police commander and LibDem candidate, would do well and take away a lot of Boris' votes (although that would not affect the outcome as there was a preferential ballot unless LibDem voters refused to cast a second preference). In the event Paddick flopped and it was clear that the LibDem vote had been over-estimated and that many who told the pollsters they were supporting Paddick actually voted for Boris first off the bat. Whether that happens this time around only time will tell.

The debate about weighting is inevitable because giving raw data would skew the information. How you do it is a proprietary question as much as anything, as all polling organisations differ in the way they do it - part of the reason why you get different results. In the British constituency based system it's notoriously difficult to get an accurate picture, because unlike in the US electoral college system, you have a vast number of constituencies, around a third of which are likely to be fairly critical. It's known that the Tories are performing better in the marginals than they are in the overall picture for example, and then we have the constituency boundary changes this time around which further complicates the picture.

In this country more than most, opinion polls need to be taken with a considerable pinch of salt.

As far as the Lib Dems are concerned, they generally have their figures over-estimated, because of the number who indicate a preference for them because of the "1st alternate" status they hold. Their vote is in any case evenly spread by the anti-Labour (in Labour areas) and anti-Tory (in Tory areas) bias. So they come 2nd a lot. It is an irony in their wish to have a proportional system (the Alternative Vote system mooted by this government is anything but proportional) would likely result in the short term in lower polling numbers, because a fair few voters could choose something else for their vote to have some value.

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