The poll that “missed” two out of five Tories
December 29th, 2004
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Have the polls really got better?
Whenever we’ve criticised polling accuracy apologists for the industry have rushed to their defence saying that techniques have improved and things have got better since 2001 when the average overstatement of the Labour lead was 6.6%.
But in a recent example since then, at the Scottish Parliament Elections last year, the overstatement by the conventional pollsters of the LAB-CON margin was two percentage points bigger than the national polls at the 1992 General Election, which itself was one of the worst polling performances ever.
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One final week survey by a major national firm put the Tories on 10% against the 16.6% that was actually achieved. The works out at a “loss” of two out of five. The other two interviewer-based pollsters recorded 12% - thus “missing” more than 1 Tory in 4.
The pollster to come out of Scotland 2003 with its reputation most intact was the internet survey by YouGov which over-estimated Labour by 1.4% and underestimated the Tories by 0.6%.
YouGov, of course, do not use interviewers which we believe are at the heart of many of the polling problems. People respond to people and at election after election it has been shown that Tories find it hard to admit their allegiance.
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Maybe in Scotland last year it was even harder to tell another human being that you supported what was then IDS’s party - hence the huge proportion of missing Tories.
We are not naming the conventional polling firms here because we are making a general point about the use of interviewers. A problem with YouGov is that those that are polled are self-selected members of the firm’s “polling club” who get paid for taking part. For each survey the firm decides who shall take part and it does this on the basis of information supplied when people join. This, it is argued, makes their samples less random.
All this reinforces our scepticism about the current poll ratings. We are certainly not suggesting that current national polls are like the Scottish ones and losing one in four Tories but we think that Michael Howard’s party is doing much better than current figures suggest.
We think that the future of polling will be based on automation where you take away the personal dimension of the interviewer. This replicates more closely the conditions of a secret ballot and the UK experience of such an approach has been very positive.
Mike Smithson
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I think the comment that the Tories are doing much better is mistaken, with the possible reservation that the polls may underestimate their differential willingness to vote. While canvass returns are notoriously rubbish when looked at in isolation, I’ve always found that comparing what people say now with what they said at previous elections gives an extremely reliable picture of swing. In Broxtowe, at least, the picture on that basis almost exactly mirrors the polls, and has been tracking them for years, though we tend not to swing up and down quite as much as the national picture.
Because turnout, especially Labour turnout, is poor in safe seats, and there are more safe Labour than safe Tory seats, it’s important to remember that national results since 1997 consistently understate actual Labour support. It would be nice to see more polls done in marginals, with a leading question “Bearing in mind that you live in a marginal seat…” to reflect the focus that voters in those seats will get.
Nick Palmer
Nick - isn’t part of the problem that by polling in marginals you reduce the sample size which can skew the demographics?
Your comment about turnout in marginals is correct (weren’t there swings to Labour in some marginals in ‘01 - yourself included?). However, is this likely to repeat in ‘05 after 8 years of your government? My assessment in ‘01 was the public mood was “give Labour more time”. This year, they seem to be more disgruntled but not yet ready to back the Tories, and, to be honest, not yet ready to trust the LDs either (or more appreciative of the electoral difficulties presented by voting Lib Dem under FPTP). My suspicion is that Turnout will be further depressed in “safe” Labour seats, making them more marginal and throwing up a few surprises, but with marginals being hotly contested as before.
Having said that, turnout in marginals still fell around 10% between ‘97 and’01 so if it were to fall again,l but disproportinately on the Labour side, then thins are not so clear cut.
Surely the likely error for a fringe party - such as the Tories in Scotland - will be a greater proportion of their support.
Doesn’t the “How likely are you to vote question” deal with the reluctance of people in safe seats (of any party) to bother to vote? Shouldn’t the question be “How interested are you in politics?” Those interested (such as contibutors to this web site) will vote however unlikely the chances of their party getting in
I would suggest that the number of people actually interested has gone down - “Voting doesn’t make any difference - you get tories what ever you vote!” - low party memberships - etc.
Steve - polling in marginals doesn’t have to reduce sample size. It is theoretically just as easy to interview 1,000 people in marginal seats as it is to interview 1,000 people across the country as a whole.
I understand that the difficulty with marginal polls is more in the weighting - it is trickier to pin down the demographic make up of particular constituencies so they can be correctly weighted. If Robert Waller is around he will probably be able to shed more light on the question.
WRT point 1, I’ve always found that canvassing, if done honestly, is an excellent method of calculating one’s own level of support, although terrible as a way of trying to calculate opposition support.
If you do it year after year (it helps if your council elects by thirds each year), then you really ought to be able to predict very accurately what sort of share of the vote you can expect.
In Hertsmere, in 2001, our canvass returns pointed to a fairly comfortable victory (we won by 5,000), yet national opinion polls were implying the result would be too close to call.
The point I was making in the article is that interviewer-based polls have a huge flaw - the interviewer - and that the Scottish Elections surveys really underline the point.
Margin of error here is a complete red herring because it always works in one direction.
The whole political landscape is determined by the polls which have a pretty poor record.
Re 3. Icarus as the Liberals polled even fewer votes than the Tories in Scotland I assume they are also a fringe party. Given that this is the case how do you explain the Liberal share of the vote in the polls being so much more accurate than the Tories?
I’m not sure how acurate canvassing is. We felt sure we would win Pentlands in 2003 based on our canvass returns. However I know a friend of mine who canvassed for Labour was sure they would win. The problem I find is that a lot of people are overly polite. One man I canvassed said he would vote for us my friend then asked him and said he would vote Labour. This is only anecdotal but it reflects the wider difficulty with face to face or even telephone canvassing.
Pentlands, though, was a very tight contest. National and Scottish opinion polls would have suggested that Labour would substantially increase their lead there, whereas the final margin was about 1,500 votes. Your canvass returns were actually less misleading than the opinion polls.
A party which polls 16% overall and comes third can’t be regarded as a fringe party, so the inherent difficulty in measuring support for fringe parties should not really be an issue here.
Just to back up what I said above WRT margin of error. At no time from the beginning of 2001 to May 2003 did the System 3 Polls (the only polls carried out on a monthly basis in Scotland) show the Conservatives with a vote share higher than 12% for Holyrood first vote intentions. If there was a problem with margin of error surely you would expect the error to fluctuate upwards as well as downwards.
BTW, Max, I assume you meant Pentlands in 2001, because we did win Pentlands in 2003.
Anthony (4) - yes, the main problem with individual constituency polling is matching the interviews to the correct profile of the seat, either in setting quotas or in a random surbey weighting to account for differential response.
Mike (6) is right that the margin of error resulting from sample size is only one of the sources of inaccuracy in polls. If you are not talking to the right people, or if they are not telling the whole truth, this can lead to further skew in a specific direction. I always had difficulty with clients when trying to explain that the margin of error published by many pollsters was actually a minimum figure.
It is right to question the polls if they are indeed being used as the dominant predictors of the next General Election result. However there are other guides. If the Conservatives were on course to approach wiping out Labour’s overall majority they would be doing much better in parliamentary by-elections, and local government elections and by-elections; and the latest econometric modelling electoral forecasts I have seen suggested a Labour majority around the 90 mark.
No Sean I meant 2003. People in the Labour party genuinelly believed that the incumbent would hold on with a similar or increased majority based on their canvass returns. In the end we won by 2000+ votes (around 6%).
Still its allways nice to be reminded of winning Pentlands back. It was a wonderful and defining moment in the parties comeback north of the border.
Robert
What has happened to the article that you have written for the Sunday Times(?) about the likely performance of partys in the University seats (have aI got this right?) ?
To ! - Nick - I do not understand your comment “…it’s important to remember that national results since 1997 consistently understate actual Labour support”. All the evidence is that the complete opposite is the case.
The only justification for your comment is that by “actual Labour support” you mean what people SAY rather than what they DO.
Whatever people say is irrelevant - what matters is if and how they vote.
To Robert 9. The Tories are doing pretty well in local elections - more than 10% ahead of Labour in June who were pushed to third place by the Lib Dems. This was even more surprising because most of the seats at stake were in the metropolitican boroughs which are usually Labour’s heartlands. As it was the party finished in third place behind the LDs.
In local by-elections Labour are showing a net loss of 22% of all seats defended during the year; the Lib Dems are up 13% and the Tories up 10.5%.
Labour’s performance in the Euro elections was the lowest ever by a governing party in a national election.
I presume that what he means is that if you were to average out party support by seat, Labour would get a slightly higher share of the vote than their overall national total.
Also opinion polls do indicate that non-voters do incline towards Labour, although my view is that asking non-voters for their opinions is pointless.
Max, thanks for clarifying. Your canvass returns were spot on then. In my experience, the vast majority of people who support you will say so. Obviously, opponents are just as likely to refuse to say, or say “I don’t know” than to identify themselves as outright opponents.
Mike - I think what Nick means is that the actual general election results understate the level of Labour support there is in the country as a whole - in other words, lots of those people who don’t bother voting are Labour supporters who live in seats that are so rock solid safe that they don’t bother voting.
He’s probably right as well, whether it matters is a different matter. Do the opinions of people who don’t bother voting actually matter in a representative democracy? My instinct is to say that there is there are difference between people who are completely divorced from the political process and have no party preference, and people who have a political preference but don’t bother to vote because their seat is a rock solid safe one. Were Blaenea Gwent suddenly to become a marginal seat, I’m sure lots of Labour voters who can’t be bothered to vote at the moment would start doing so - in a way you could say there is latent Labour support in those stronghold seats that general elections do not register.
In response to (13), the Sunday Times have been sitting on the research I did. I had access to the MOSAIC clasifications which have recently been in the news as being used by both Labour and the Conservatives (who call it ‘Voter Vault’) and found three extended points worth making, but these have been bumped off by matters such as the Blunkett resignation - ‘human interest’, I imagine.
To Mike (15): when I analysed local by-election results each month, I used the swings from previous contests. I don’t think it’s very helpful just to add up the votes as the wards fought do not represent a national sample. Remember that the low turnouts and midterm status mean that Labour will under-perform compared with a contest for national government. As with parliamentary by-elections and the May local contests, the main opposition party should be way ahead to indicate likely victory in the subsequent General Election. As for the Euro-elections, I would expect pro-European parties like Labour (and the Liberal Democrats, for that matter)to do badly, given the consistent two to one plus national opinion in favour of Euro-scepticism.
If you would like to lay an even money bet with me that Labour will lose their overall majority in 2005, I’ll take it on!
It may be sad for pollsters, but i reckon that their overall usual accuracy is only the result of a lot of random forces cancelling each other out.
Just look at the variance of the results to see what ‘local factors’ can do. And these local factors may have nothing at all to do with the locality, more about what is happening locally. One of these factors is ‘organisation’, another is ‘effort’ and another is voter lethargy.
You can get huge variations in turnout even within a single local authority from ward to ward, some of it based upon demography and some upon whether there are one, two, three or four parties fighting the election seriously and whether the voters notice it.
Personally I reckon that a lot of the underestimating of the Scottish Tory vote was down to the fact that in Scotland it is an absolute core vote of ‘headbangers’. For a ‘genuine’ 10 per cent of electorate identified gives such a low number of quite ardent Tories who might well be quite likely to turn out 30-50 per cent higher than the average punters, especially where, since they are a relatively small number, they are probably well-known to the Party workers and hence easier to ‘knock out’ to vote than most punters.
Robert - I have never suggested that the Tories are going to win - that would be crazy - but I think that Labour will do less well than received opinion would have it.
Thank you for the betting offer on Labour not getting an overall majority - but evens on the party at 323 seat or less does not seem good value, especially as you can get 6/4 with Bet365 on them getting 335 or less, a price that looks a bit stingy given the state of the polls.
I have just posted in a different thread (copied below) - how many people don’t vote in elections because the marginal effect of one vote is so small, but the fact that there is actually no secrecy in everyone’s voting record dissuades them?
I suppose no-one would be victimised for voting Lab, Con or LD - but I might be mildly uneasy if I were a UKIP voter in our environment with an undoubtedly pro-Euro Establishment… (and downright petrified if I were a BNP voter!)
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[13] “marked registers from elections”
Presumably referring to the way your ballot paper number is pencilled into the margin of the electoral list when you vote - so that your vote is in no way secret.
What is done with this information? Why is there so little protest?
Comment by Ron — 29/12/2004 @ 1:17 pm
I was only having a joke, Mike, of course - I know you can spot a ‘better’ opportunity!
I myself have bought Labour at 338 and do not see value in their current spreads.
My remarks were meant to counter any over-compensation you might have implied.
So far the Scottish Tories have been described as ‘headbangers’ and a ‘fringe party’ by two people who support a party that polled even fewer votes than us at the last Scottish Elections!
Neither of these theories explain why the Scottish Tories share of the vote was understated by such an extent whereas the polling levels of two smaller parties (the Liberal Democrats and the Greens) was almost spot on. There was also plenty of evidence from council by-elections that the Conservatives were doing better than the polls suggested (in council by-elections since 1997 the Scottish Tories have gained 15 seats and lost none). It might not be what other parties want to here but the Conservatives are constantly understated by most pollsters (a point conceded by the newspaper that commisioned the Scottish polls).
There is other bias against the Tories too.
I phoned Croydon Conservatives (020 8660 0491) after the last Council elections (2002) to comment about them sending out Election literature so late that it arrived 2 days AFTER the election.
They sighed and said that they had sent them out 3 weeks ago, but their local Post Office’s Sorting Office have a deeply established record of leaving the Tory Party’s sacks untouched and delivering them AFTER the election with stupid excuses like “Oh, that’s what those sacks were for” and “Oh, the regular postman was on holiday that week”.
Even 6/4 is truly dreadful odds… if you would like to show me a rate you will be prepared to do it I will do much better!
Re comment 5 from Sean. Accurate canvassing is vital and can show up very different results to national polling. Hertsmere’s neighbours the St Albans Tories are in the process of some extensive canvassing based on “local” concerns etc (its stressed that they want the views even if they aren’t Tory voters)and the questions of how leaders are rated and a how did you vote and how will you vote if a GE tomorrow are I believe showing some interesting figures. Activists collect the surveys an hour later and the results are pretty impressive with some 4,000 responses out of 15,000 doors knocked to date. It shows, contrary to MP Nick’s view on other comments “that people will grit their teeth and vote Labour” that in fact Blair is hated by a significant number. Labour has been given two terms to get its act in order and lack of love over Blair/Iraq means many will stay at home rather than vote Labour. Some vote will go Lib but the unwind is there. SA is also due to be featured on radio 4 parliament hour on Jan 2nd as a seat to watch. I reckon Watford is a lot more complicated than some of the “chattering2 Lib/Dems give it credit for-Ali Miraj is a good local candidate who is putting up a good fight. Welwyn and Hatfield must also look a good bet for a Conservative gain.
Will we have Ukraine style demos if the Tories lose again? - I think not. But they will be beaten by the unfairness of the FPTP system which clearly distorts the way people vote (or dont vote) as well as giving some three or four way results decided by a handful of votes.
When the Conservatives start campaigning for STV then perhaps they will be able to justify their claim of the system stacked against them!
I agree with Pip (26) about Miraj putting up a good fight for the Tories in Watford. He may, ironically, stop Brinton from winning. The polls (not to mention the PO) are always bias against the Tories. Not on purpose, but because of the nature of polling itself.
The discussion re. canvassing is an important one. My local government ward is a classic example. The Tories here canvassed their little socks off in a very safe Labour seat where the Cons and LDs have similar votes. They worked consistently hard throughout the year. My friend - the Tory candidate - said he ended up with 1,000 Tory pledges. On polling day he got c,1,400 votes (and slashed the Labour majority to double digits and crushed the LDs). When I asked if that meant that all 1,000 pledges had voted, he replied no - just 650 of his supporters turned out. Meaning that 750 people voted Tory either without having been asked or without admitting it on the doorstep. People around here (a very big council estate in a City) don’t jump up and down about being Tories.
Re-27, I don’t think too many Tories will complain about the electoral system following an electoral defeat. Everyone knows that the Tories will only form a government (without the need for a coalition partner) under FPTP. The situation is allready a bit fairer following the cut in the number of Scottish seats. The next boundary review will also help, by reducing the number of underpopulated inner city seats. FPTP may favour Labour at the moment but it has benefited us in the past and may do so again.
Max at 29 - I really shouldn’t rise to the bait about this, but … why should our electoral system favour one party or the other?
Max
From what I hear about redistricting in my bit of the world it pretty much good news for Labour…
Kettering and Corby become more hospitable for us, ditto Leicestershire Northwest and Loughborough that said Leicester West is losing a third of Latimer Ward to Leicester East that will help Vaz as it takes aprox 2,000 solid labour Hindu voters away from Pat Hewitt and gives them to him, so its not all good news for Hewitt and Leicester West from out perspective… but on balance it good, the talk about London is interesting.
Re. 24, I didn’t think the post office delivered leaflets for local elections anyway (they certainly don’t where I live, in a Severn region marginal - which means the usual call for leafletters every four years in May). Maybe the Croydon Tories are so munificent that they can afford to pay the post office to deliver them? Even so, if the post office are conveniently ‘forgetting them’, the Croydon Tories would probably be better off getting their members to leaflet the old-fashioned way.
Re - 30 My comment wasn’t intended to act as ‘bait’. I’m just stating the obvious. All parties act out of self intrest. Does anyone really believe that the Liberals would favour PR if it was going to reduce their representation in parliament?
Max - probably not. However the point stands that we have a system that allows which ever faction is in charge within a party that commands the support of barely a third of the electorate to do carte blance. I’m not sure this qualifies as democracy.
“Max at 29 - but … why should our electoral system favour one party or the other?”
It is due to the uneven distribution of support for various Parties. if Lib Dems got 32, Labour 31 AND Tories 31, I think from memory the Lib Dems would end up with about 92 seats out of 600 plus, despite having ‘won’ and the Labour Party would still scrape an overall majority of seats in the house.
Comment by Tabman Steve — 29/12/2004 @ 4:48 pm
Zebidee - I’m well aware of the elctoral mechanics, I was asking a more philosophical question. THat would probably have been better put as “Our electoral system is biased in favour of certain parties because it favours those who have their support concentrated in geographic concentrations. That to my mind is not democracy.”
Steve T - again philosophically (and indulging in some 1990s retro): if there were a referendum on electoral reform, and FPTP won, would it still be an undemocratic system to your mind?
BV - to be political rather than philosophical, “that depends.”
Imagine two different referendum questions:
- Do you support retaining the FPTP system that permits stable government for the UK?
- Do you aupport a proportional electoral system that allows every vote cast to count evenly?
The point I’m making is that in theory I would support a referendum but a lot depends upon how the question is phrased.
Could anyone please try and cut and paste the Michael Brown article on here as you have to pay subscription to read it on the website
Sorry Wrong Thread.
Re 33 - PR will come to Westminster in the same way it is sweeping through the rest of the UK, starting with Scotland. Simply a matter of time. For the record: FPTP in Scotland means the Tories have 1 MP and the Lib Dems 19. Under the half PR system used for the Scottish Parliament the Tories have the right number of MSP’s as reflects their share of the vote i.e. 18 compared to LD’s 17. It is nonetheless a bizarre system which means the Lib Dems who in my view are likley to get about 25% in the GE will only get about 80 seats whilst the Tories with say 31%, as is quite likely, will get around 190 seats. Very odd!
Stephen - if that’s odd, then getting 400 seats with 39% of the vote is even odder!
Re 42 - I agree Steve. One thing mind that hasn’t been picked up that much by the press is the shift in the ethnic vote to the LD’s and the effect it will have not least as I doubt very much it shows in the opinion polls. Often they will not give such details to a researcher, either over the phone or face to face. Interesting also is the LD’s are now ahead with the student vote, even than Labour. Getting both out to vote, mind, thats hard work. I speak as one who knows!
Whereabouts are you Stephen? Getting students to do anything before about 2 in the afternoon is difficult
Steve - true re 38. Even if the question weren’t so loaded as the ones you postulated, I couldn’t see a campaign ending other than in sloganeering. The only way it will start being an issue of interest is if a grossly distorted (wrt Lab/Con vote shares) emerges - and by “grossly”, I mean much, much more than 1951 or 1974.
Re 43, there will certainly be a big shift in the Muslim vote to the Lib Dems (and in some areas Respect), but I can see no evidence that other ethnic groups are shifting to them.
BV - such a scenario is not wholly out of the question. Just run vote shares around 30% for each of the three main parties through Baxter. Very unlikely, but not impossible. And certainly not impossible for Blair to have a healthy majority on a vote shre less than the Tories.
Yes - I don’t think the vote shares will work out that way. I fully accept that the current map does provide circumstances which would give a result like that; and I suppose - as a fan of STV - here’s hoping!
Dewsbury will be an interesting seat to watch next time. The current MP Ann Taylor is retiring come the next election. Both Labour and the Tories have selected Asian candidates.
Dewsbury has a majority of 7,000+ and Taylor was sitting on 50% of the vote last time around I doubt it’ll be very interesting at all… what is more Shahid Malik is standing and is a very strong candidate, that he was not selected in Brent East was a shame.
Electoral reform is a bit like ID cards. It exercises people who take a deep interest in politics but I wouldn’t have thought it resonates much with the wider public. I don’t see there ever being a great widespread public demand for PR to be introduced.
Stephen - PR was only introduced into Scotland & Wales to help win the referendums. The same circumstances won’t be created for Westminster so I don’t think there is any inevitability about the introduction of PR. I would also have thought that the experience of Labour MP’s and MSP’s in Scotland WRT PR would only harden the resolve of the Labour Party not to have PR in the rest of the UK.
Max - I think you’re potentially being a bit patronising about the electorate there. I grant you if you ask people what’s top of their agenda Electoral Reform won’t be there, but at the same time the public are perfectly well aware of how FPTP “works” - you only have to look at the turnout difference between safe and marginal seats. The electorate aren’t stupid and they know that in a large number of seats their vote counts for nothing.
Re 31, I’m glad boundary changes are good for Labour in your part of the world, Ben, but they’re not in Staffordshire. The changes that take effect after the next GE will make holding Staffordshire Moorlands extremely difficult (the Labour majority would have been just over 100 on the shares of the vote from the last election).
Labour will face a difficult time in Staff. Moore. but not, I believe, an impossible task. Dewsbury will be an easy hold for them too. What news from the East of England? Labour need to hold Norwich North, Great Yarmouth, Harwich et al but what of the chances? Also anybody with an insight into the big LD-Con fight in North Norfolk?
[32] Richard, at General Elections every party gets a free mailshot delivered by the Post Office to enable small parties to have a chance against the big boys.
In Croydon at any rate, the Tories are being denied their electoral rights (in a way that ought to be illegal, and particularly in a borough where 20,000 more council election votes gets them 5 less seats) and having to expend much time and resources overcoming this apparently deliberate denial of service.
Some people might enjoy this because it is the Tories, but should consider what their reaction would be if it were their party being denied.
[55] The lady I spoke to on the phone seemed to think that this denial of service was long-established.
Regarding Council elections, it might be that it was thought good use of money to target a set of wards with a bulk-reduced-rate Mailsort mailing.
Re. 55, I was aware that parties get a free mailshot at General Elections (and, indeed, European elections - which count as national elections). I’m all too aware of this, in fact, when I’m a party activist who hates leafletting (vicious dogs, and often even nastier owners, who shout abuse from windows) and wish every party would get its leaflets delivered at local elections as well! (one case where I’m sympathetic re. state funding for political parties, though I’d be absolutely opposed to the taxpayer funding PEBs and poster sites)
My query arose when I think you said the problems arose for the Tories in Croydon in 02 (the last GE was in 01)
If this has happened, Ron, it’s completely wrong. If people don’t vote Conservative, it should be because they prefer the policies of other parties, not because of underhand tricks.
Re. 54, Staffs. Moorlands (at least next time) will, I agree, be far from impossible. Although Labour got absolutely creamed in Leek in the 03 locals (though this was partly due to the 30% turnout, Iraq, and poor ward targetting, the last of which from lessons have been learnt), it has since held its own in other parts of the constituency, not least Kidsgrove (two seats held, two gained, in June) and Biddulph (with good results against the general trend in local by-elections). The UKIP candidate (a well-known local councillor) I’ve mentioned before. The Tory candidate has only just moved to the constituency (five years after his original promise to do so). He’s also very thin-skinned, so much so that he threatened legal action against a Leek paper for printing a fairly standard (and innocuous) letter of a ‘Plague on all your houses kind’ (which had a go at the Labour MP and the LDs just as much as the Tory candidate).
Labour may also be protected from its supporters switching to the LDs through the LDs involvement in what is an unpopular ruling coalition with the Ratepayers and Independents on SMDC. One of the most prominent local LDs (their parliamentary candidate for the seat in 92) is the chairman of council meetings, in which she thoroughly alienates members of the public through being incredibly sanctimonious and heavy-handed.
Re 52 I don’t really agree that PR will increase turnout. Tornout in Scotland and Wales was appalingly low in 2003. The same seats that had low turnouts at Westminster had low turnouts at Holyrood / Cardiff despite the fact that evry vote on the 2nd ballot counts. I know its not a ‘pure’ PR system but I don’t think changing the electoral system is going to significantly increase voter participation.
Re 54/58 - Not thinking so much about the partisan effect of boundary changes to existing seats but whether any new seats are being created or whole seats disapearing. I know that Sheffield has a couple of very small seats and I wonder if this is replicated in other cities? Glasgow will now only have 7 seats (this compares to 14 pre-1983 and 10 at the last election). Also I thought Staff. Moorlands was fairly safe at the moment and I doubt the Tories will have much of a shot at it untill the election after next.
Ben,
As some one who clearly does know Dewsbury. It will be a seat to watch. As mentioned Labour and tories have both selected Asian candidates whilst Ann Taylor is retiring next time. The Liberal Democrats have a white candidate plus the key factor is who much of the Traditional working class Labour vote will switch straight to the BNP. In wards like Thornhill they have been getting over 20%. If this occurs in May the Tories are in with a real chance of taking the seat.
The same is true of a number of Yorkshire/Lancashire seats. Hear in the Labour heartlands Blair is loathed and the Labour party is seen as no longer Labour ie looking after the white working class. These people would rather chop their right hand off than vote Conservative. Some will go to the Lib Dems, some will stay at home but a sizeable chunk will go to the BNP and this could tip the election to the Tories advantage.
Re. Sheffield, I hope the Boundary Commission don’t do what they did in Glasgow in terms of scrapping delightful names such as Brightside, Hallam, Heeley, Hillsborough (although the football ground of the same name is in Brightside), and giving the new seats anonymous names such as North, South etc. (at least Glasgow Central corresponds with the name of one of the train stations, as in Cardiff Central!) I’m sure it helps people realise what seat they’re in, and who their MP is, if the seat they live in has a name which contains a sense of tradition, community, and (best of all) place.
OK, so most Stokies realise who their MP is despite the city’s seats being North, Central, and South, but that’s largely because each of the three seats (North, South, and Central) each have two of the city’s six towns in them (Tunstall and Burslem - with all their Vale supporters - in North, Hanley and Stoke in Central, and Fenton and Longton in South).
On the other hand, the delightful names can often be misleading. For example, Birmingham Edgbaston is often described as leafy suburbia and results there analysed as such - well, Edgbaston ward is fairly leafy, as is much of Harborne, but the other two wards (Quinton and Bartley Green) are mostly a C1/2 demographic. Good luck naming the Birmingham seats after compass points though!
Max, lots of changes with seats being added in the South which I assume will be Tory (starting as favourites) apart from here in the West Country where a LD seat and an LD/Con marginal will be added. Have a look at http://www.ons.gov.uk/pbc if you want to leaf through the whole lot.
Max - as devolved elections AFAIK ar enot ont he same day as Westminster elections, it seems to me that the fact that turnout is as high as at GEs is a positive statement in PR’s favour. I have no doubt given public apathy towards local government that without it turnout would have been even lower.
With the talk about PR necessitating coalition governments, it’s struck me that FPTP does so as well.
We talk as if Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are these monolithic entities, whereas in reality, all three are truly coalitions. These appear (to an outsider like me) to be as follows:
Labour’s coalition ranges from the Trots, Trade Unionists, “true” socialists, radicals, pragmatic socialists, liberals and social democrats left behind when the SDP vacated the party.
The Conservative coalition comprises libertarians, traditionalists, authoritarians, liberals, unionists and free marketeers.
The Liberal Democrat coalition includes liberals (of course!), social democrats, radicals and free marketeers.
Note that liberals appear in all three coalitions - for Labour, they arrived from the original Lib-Lab pacts at the start of the 20th century and as Lbour grew, the left-leaning liberals would see the party as the place to go. For the Tories, the admixture came from the Liberal Unionists and later the National Liberals, as the “One Nation” branch of Conservatism took hold. For the Liberals - well, it’s obvious.
You could say that the decline of the Liberal Party happened due to the triumph of Liberalism - all three parties were “liberal”. The recovery of the Liberals/Alliance/Lib Dems does appear to have been caused by a “None of the above” theme from voters for the big two parties.
Basically, I wonder if a PR system (say AMV) would merely see these coalitions formalised and made more fluid - the Libertarians, Unionists and Free Marketeers could form what we would call a Tory government; the Radicals, Socialists and Liberals a Labour Government; the Social Democrats, Liberals and Free Marketeers could form a Liberal government. Greens and Nationalists could get Cabinet seats in such a scenario.
Of course, I’m just thinking out loud, and could be talking crap
Andy - I agree with you on the above, and there has been discussion about this on the site. To the above you could also add the international dimensions (Atlanticist, Europhilic/phobic/ Internationalist, Interventionist, Little Englander etc etc).
I had a good debate with I think Book Value about how the noughties of this century resemble the noughties of the last century.
Of course this situation comes about because in order to win power under FPTP you have to have as broad a coalition as possible concetrated in certain geographical areas in order to win power. Dissension is always punished.
I could see PR leading to schisms in the current party coalitions (Erouphile Tories being an obviously fissile grouping were this to happen). An argument sometimes put forward in favour of PR is that the electorate decides the form of coalition rather than the ruling party clique.
Europhile Tories are no longer a numerically significant group, either in the party, or amongst its supporters.
Yes - around nine or so MPs?
Probably around that number, but hardly any of them have been recently elected.
Probably around that number, but hardly any of them have been recently elected.
And I suspect some will be likely to go in 2009/10 (Alrke being the most obvious - isn’t he puching 70?) if the Conservatives fail to win. I can’t see them being replaced by Europhiles.
And I suspect some will be likely to go in 2009/10 (Clarke being the most obvious - isn’t he pushing 70?) if the Conservatives fail to win. I can’t see them being replaced by Europhiles.
Changing the subject, I see Rallings and Thrasher have posted the results of the local elections in June 2004. In Metropolitan Boroughs, the minor parties won no less than 16% of the vote overall -a vote share which is 8-10% higher than just a few years ago.
Changing the subject, I see Rallings and Thrasher have posted the results of the local elections in June 2004. In Metropolitan Boroughs, the minor parties won no less than 16% of the vote overall -a vote share which is 8-10% higher than just a few years ago.
Two intersting articles relating to this thread: one in yesterday’s Guardian bemoaning the direct targeting of floating voters in key marginals http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1380170,00.html
THe other in today’s Indy http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=596792 show the effect in Yorkshire of the proposed boundary changes on Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. As a fully paid up member of the “real world”, I’m curious to know how EB has supported himself since “concentrating on politics full time”?
Andy’s ‘coalitions’ (66) omit two large and important groups.
(a)Clueless unprincipled managerialists and (b) Narcissists
There is some overlap of these two groups and they permeate all three main parties (and some of he minor ones too) - in Labour’s case right to the top.
Zebidee at 77:
I’d like to see those mini-parties standing separately
Way back at post 15 Mike Smithson queried what I meant in post 1, and mainly I wanted to say that Anthony said precisely what I meant in post 17, except that he put it more clearly.
In other words, if you see that party X with a big majority gets say 35% of the vote, and the polls had it on 40%, it doesn’t mean the polls were incorrect and ought to be banned/reformed, merely that supporters of X in its many safe seats were disproportionately inclined not to vote (’we’re going to win here anyway’). But in marginals X’s vote is much closer to its potential. Therefore, if the polls show no swing from X nationally, there may in fact be no swing in the marginals. This is, I think, what happened last time, when a comfortable Labour lead in the polls was reflected in the marginals but not the overall national vote.
In response to pip at 26: you meet a few people who hate Labour, but if you check previous canvassing they usually turn out not to be the lifelong Labour voters that they sometimes claim. Visceral hatred of any major party is blessedly rare in Britain. Some of my best friends are Tories :-).
Apologies for slow responses, by the way - life is always hectic and I respond when I can.
Nick Palmer MP
Basically I think the point is that the vote share can be lower than the polls suggest but the seat total as predicted by the polls according to UNS will be closer to being right. This was certainly true of 2001 when the Labour vote held up better in marginal seats.
Nick - are those the Tories in your own party or the Conservative party? (Sorry - coldn’t resist :))
Visceral hatred is probably rare because , thankfully, most governements don’t enact legislation that has such a profound effect on people’s lives that pursuing it is viewed by those affected as vindictive. The only two recent examples that fall into this category are Thatcher’s pursuit of the NUM and Foxhunting. And the Daily Mail of course.
Ron is displaying a lack of electoral knowledge rather than proof of a conspiracy against the Conservatives. 2002 was indeed a local election year and no freepost is available for that.
The big unknown is whether the desire to keep the Tories out is such that Labour will continue to enjoy this advantage in its marginals. A lot of this, of course, in 2001 was the product of tactical voting by LDs. Will this continue to the same extent? My view is that it will be less though it will still be an element.
A key issue could be the overall shares of the parties. Labour being returned with a majority on barely a third of the vote would undermine the Government’s authority, particularly if the Tories manage to win on the popular vote, which I think is a possiblity if not a probablility.
Mike - whilst agreeing with the outcome, I’m not sure that such people are necessarrily LDs voting Labour tactically. They could well be centre/left floaters with no strong party allegiance. I think as we’ve already discussed here many times tribal party allegiance is significantly eroded.
In the mind of such voters there then has to be a rational choice between which party they prefer and the likely outcome of their voting preference in the constituency they inhabit, if they’re indeed aware of such information.
One good indication of whether the centre/left anti-tory tactical pact is working is the impact of sites like http://www.tacticalvoter.net during the GE.
Exactly TS, I think there can be a danger of essentialism in talking about tactical unwind, assuming people are LDs who vote Labour tactically, or vice versa; rather than people flexibly choosing the best means to a centre-left end. This isn’t to deny that at this election there will be people who move from this category to firmer LD support based on the government’s record in this Parliament. I think it’s a mistake though to look back and identify them as having been LDs all along.
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