Is YouGov still the form pollster?
April 11th, 2008
Making sense of the different predictions
Firstly a declaration of financial interest: As I reported on Wednesday I was underwhelmed by Boris in the Tuesday Newsnight debate and closed almost all my positions on him for the London mayoralty by 9am of that day, pocketed nearly £1000 from my spread bets, booked a holiday, and took out all the stake money I had on him with Betfair. The balance of my trading profits on the latter is split between Boris and Ken and I make £388 if it is the Tory and £514 if it is Livingstone.
I will be going in again as we get closer to May 1st and will probably be influenced by future YouGov surveys more than the other firms. It was the only firm to carry out regular surveys last time and its final shares which are directly comparable with the 2008 surveys were Ken 55% to Norris’s 45%. This understated the winning margin by less than one point and was an impressive performance.
All the others pollsters that have covered previous mayoral elections have overstated the Livingstone shares by considerable amounts. I won’t embarrass them by reiterating the figures but the record is not good.
The next polls from YouGov could be critical and my guess, given the way the campaign is progressing, is that it will be suggesting a much smaller Boris lead than the 13% that we had on Monday
The MORI figures on Wednesday were based on the 48% who told the pollster that they were “certains” which compares with the turnouts in 2000 and 2004 of 34-37%. Looking at the details there’s strong evidence that the lower the turnout the better it is for the Tories.
As an aside I am impressed by the non-judgemental way that ICM handles the turnout issue. Getting an accurate answer is crucial and there’s always a risk that people will respond in a way that shows they are good citizens and not what they intend to do. The first ICM question is “Elections for the Mayor of London will be held on 1st May. Many people we have spoken to have said they will NOT vote while others have said they WILL vote. Can you tell me how certain it is that you will vote?”
My understanding is that we might see at least one mayoral poll in the Sunday papers and this could include a survey from a firm that doesn’t do regular voting intention polls in the UK. Let’s hope that it is a member of the British Polling Council and follows its transparency requirements. If its not I won’t give it much credence.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Hooray!! first in!!!
and off to bed…
1. Slacker! I’m having lunch.
(Mike, apologies for going OT early on….)
North Sydney Correspondent - do you think the Nationals are as nailed on to win in NZ as Labor was in Aus - are they a shoo-in ahead of the autumn election?
My feeling is they probably are, but I’d be interested to hear your views - thanks.
Sean mate, for a writer you do seem to do a poor job of interpreting meaning from a sentence. If you weren’t so fair and honest in representing people’s views, one might even think it was done deliberately. Let’s play spot the difference.
(1) “[Differences in crime levels are] all related to income.”
(2) “Differences in crime levels are only related to income.”
Statement one says all differences in crime levels are related to income, but doesn’t exclude other factors. Statement two says differences in crime levels are only related to income. It’s really not too tricky.
Now let’s play another game. Which is the pseudoscience and which is the right-wing demagoguery?
(A) Race, under its original meaning of distinct subsets of a species, is not biologically valid within modern humans.
(B) Genetic differences between ethnic groups could plausibly be a factor in differential crime levels.
On the LBC Radio debate yesterday, Brian Paddick mentioned that since he bacame the prospective mayoral candidate (i.e. since last September) the Lib Dems have been in first place in local council by-elections in London, with 36% of the votes compared with 28% Conservative and 25% Labour.
I decided to check the figures, and found that in the 16 by-elections in wards in London since the beginning of September 2007, the total number of votes for each party has been as follows:
LD 14,267 (36.3%)
Con 11,092 (28.2%)
Lab 9,915 (25.2%)
Green 1,454 (3.7%)
BNP 1,018 (2.6%)
Others 1,576 (4.0%)
but the total votes in those same 16 wards in May 2006 was as follows (average for each party):
LD 15,394 (31.2%)
Con 15,155 (30.7%)
Lab 12,187 (24.7%)
Green 3,589 (7.3%)
BNP 996 (2.0%)
Others 2,067 (4.2%)
so the LD vote actually only went up by 5%. If we apply the same 5% improvement on what Simon Hughes got in 2004, the result would be… (only a bit of fun) Brian Paddick comes a distant third.
On 1st May I will probably do two unusual things:
(i) I am quite likely to spoil a ballot paper (something which I have never done before) (for this purpose I define the Mayoral ballot paper as two separate ballot papers - one with 10 candidate sand one with just Ken and Boris)
(ii) Vote for a political party which I have never voted for before - this will be the ninth party I will have voted for (since I first voted in 1987 aged 18), but the first new one since 1999.
5 - Well indeed, my best guess is that the Lib Dem’s first preference score will be roughly in line with last time. Last time they acheived just shy of 15% my suspicion is that they might just push over the 15% boundary if they are very lucky. If there is a top two candidate squeeze on the rest then the Lib Dem vote may be somewhat less than 15% but probably not less than 12% or so.
4. Why this obsession with race and poverty when talking about crime? The main factor that correlates to crime is gender. If only males were as well-behaved as females we wouldn’t really have a crime problem.
IMHO differences in crime rates because of gender are genetic, and those because of race are memetic.
Always worried about these weighting factors in polls. I’m in a minority, but I’d rather have a transparent simple result with a systematic error than a so-called weighted poll that gets to the “right” result. Couldn’t get away with this is hard science, just social science. Better to go back to basics.
Advance warning for those of you involved in betting in the next UK GE markets: word on the street is that the Scotland on Sunday will be publishing a new poll this week. The Scotsman (of which SoS is the sister title) uses ICM as their pollster, or at least they usually have done up till now. However, I believe that the last time The Scotsman/SoS published a voting intention poll was actually way back before last May’s Scottish Parliament GE. So, if it is ICM who still hold the polling contract, it will be interesting to compare their findings with the other post-May 07 pollsters: YouGov, Taylor Nelson Sofres/System 3, Ipsos MORI, and Scottish Opinion.
In my opinion, and I believe it to be borne out by the poll archives, ICM have the best track record, over a long period, as the most accurate measurers of Scottish voting intention vis à vis actual Scottish election results. (After building the buggers up like that, I bet they show a 15 point drop for my party
)
Remember, the last time the Conservatives won a UK GE, in 1992 under John Major, the Labour Party won a massive 49 seats north of the border. If the most recent Scottish voting intention polls are correct then Labour could easily win fewer than 35 seats in Scotland at the next UK GE. Will they make up those “lost” 15 seats in England & Wales? Will they heck!!
If you are interested in UK GE betting, you should pay attention to Scottish politics.
11 Indeed, someone should do a piece on the role of an englarged SNP in a hung UK parliament. Given their commitment to a referendum, I wonder what they would want. Surely the Tories are their natural allies at Westminster. My enemies enemy is my friend and all that. Although, that would - to an extent - be doing a deal with a devil north of the border.
enemies=enemy’s
yes Thanks Stuart, I always enjoy your posts.
re 10 .. but that approach Jonathan will alnmost always give you massive overstatements of Labour support. Maybe that is what you want. Just go and look at the 1992 polling to see where that view gets you. Again look at the table I put up here on Tuesday showing the 1997 polls.
You can get the numbers you want from Mori’s “all naming a party” figures. They are published and are an interesting resource. On the mayoral election they produce shares of Ken 45%: Boris 38%: Brian 11%.
I want something that’s going to get as close as possible to the outcome.
re 10 & 15. I can see why Labour supporters would like these numbers. But in terms of predicting elections they are tosh.
15 False results is not what I want. My point is that if the system of asking simple questions is flawed, rather than trying to fix it with gaffer tape you should have a different approach altogether. Maybe subtle indirect questions or voter panels.
By adding kludge factors what you are doing is taking advantage indirectly of the tacit knowledge of the pollster. At least they always publish the raw results.
Perhaps the kludge factors that were helpful 97-2005 are no longer relavent in today’s very different climate.
14. Do I detect the barest trace of irony, there (which would be novel)?
12. Jonathan - “the role of an englarged SNP in a hung UK parliament”
According to Angus Robertson MP, the SNP leader at Westminster:
“SNP MPs Could Hold Balance of Power at Westminster”
http://westminster.snp.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2944&Itemid=40
17 I don’t see what else pollsters can do in reality. The problem is that weighting by demographics (while leaving out likelihood of voting, or weighting by past vote) simpy comes up with far too many Labour supporters in the sample. Opinion polling would just have become totally discredited if pollsters had stuck to the old way of doing it.
11. Err, Stuart, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Scottish political scene but there are now 13 fewer MPs in Scotland than in 1992 so a reduction in Scottish Labour MPs is only to be expected.
5 If applied to 2006’s London figures as a whole that would give a result of Con 32.5%, Labour 28.5%, Lib Dem 26%.
“Scots ‘favour assertive First Minister as independence support rises’”
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Scots-39favour-assertive-First-Minister.3972271.jp
“Polls’ shift to independence ‘is reaction to bullying tactics’”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2189080.0.Polls_shift_to_independence_is_reaction_to_bullying_tactics.php
Gordon Brown shouldn’t have bottled it, again. If they had gone with an early Scottish independence referendum, controlled by Westminster, then they might just have won a ‘No’ vote. But the longer they wait…
“Gordon Brown’s Cabinet ministers ‘discussed referendum’ on Scottish independence”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3649638.ece
21. Alan J
Err… yeah, thanks for that. I am perfectly well aware of that fact. However, it is utterly irrelevant!
The bare fact of the matter is that Scotland will be sending far fewer MPs to London than even Neil Kinnock received. So, in turn, Gordon Brown will have to “make up” those lost seats by winning the equivalent extra seats in England or Wales; in addition to doing better than Kinnock in England and Wales anyway. It just ain’t going to happen my friend
17. 20. Actually Jonathan does have a point - the various adjustment factors the pollsters use to correct their horribly skewed samples might not work indefinitely. It’s also possible that the degree of skewness in the sampling might change over time. Eventually, pollsters may have to come up with another set of wheezes to make their polls look something like reality.
But one can’t help feeling his motives in raising this issue aren’t scientific, but rather related to a desperate wish to see favourable Labour polls, even if they are wildly inaccurate.
24.
Doh! Of course that should read: “Scotland will be sending far fewer Labour MPs to London than even Neil Kinnock received.”
20 Perhaps we should just change the voting system to one where people are called up and asked for their vote!
What further set-piece events for Ken v Boris v Paddick are on the horizon?
It appears that tightly controlling Bozza’s appearances and letting the ES hang Ken out to dry was a better tactic than prepping Bozza like crazy and watching him flounder in the studio. But it’s clearly increasingly hard for Boris to keep a low-profile as the date nears.
If there are more high-profile debates to come then I too would like back-track on my earlier pro-Boris betting.
I suspect there are shy Labour voters out there now. Just as there were shy Tories in th 1990s and early noughties.
28 - There is a special QT soon.
Boris needs help to dress shock!!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/threelinewhip/april08/borisbrush.htm
25. No doubt someone will correct me but doesn’t the ’spiral of silence’ adjustment self-correct over time? And I think the pollsters steadily refine the various wheezes they use to overcome sampling error.
29. Definitely. Just as there are probably shy Labour posters out there. And bolder tories all around. “You only sing when you’re winning”.
28. Thanks.
33 In all honesty there have been times over the past year when if I’d been called up by a pollster, I would not have said Labour just to make a protest. Will still vote Labour in 09/10, unless something radically changes before then. I suspect there are quite a few of us out there. Huge risks for Labour when people drift in this way, but it’s still salvageable. I suspect there will be a keep the Tories out theme similar to 1992, which will motivate a lot of people quiet in 05.
Chris A(…) says “Eastern Eye Finland has open immigration - there’s absolutely nothing to stop you going to live there tomorrow if you wish.”
Well quite. I already did.
Do you think I will around for Labour’s Rivers of Blood?
Do many people “falsely remember” who they supported in 2005 GE - and think they voted Labour (when in reality they voted for another, or not at all)?
This may skew any weightings.
Chris A who gave you and Labour permission to give our country away to foreigners and foreign powers?
36 Would be fun to see a chart showing how the “result” of the 05 election has changed over time.
35 - not sure of your point. Finland does not have open immigration. I could move there if I wanted as I am an EU citizen.
I wouldn’t want to though having lived there from 1996-8.
36 - Don’t they publish that data in the full breakdown of polls?
The gap between Ken and Boris ,ay well have narrowed to some degree, but I don’t think it’ll have much or anything to do with Newsnight, which only has a small number of viewers and anyway, I didn’t see anything in Boris’s performance that would cause him damage. My suspicion is that Bloggers are making much more out of the Newsnight debate than the general public will.
39 - I remember trying to get a credit card in Finland. The nice lady at the bank told me “We can’t give you one as we have had a lot of trouble with foreigners.” Nice attitude!
40 - how can they publish data on how many people falsely remember? They don’t know how many people falsely remember!
5 I know you were only having fun with the by-election figures, and I wouldn’t argue that they are a great predictor of the mayoral election.
The surprsing element in the figures seems to be how well Labour have done, and how poorly the Tories have done in London by elections.
But your conclusion (”If we apply the same 5% improvement on what Simon Hughes got in 2004, the result would be… (only a bit of fun) Brian Paddick comes a distant third.”) isn’t quite right, is it?
If you apply the changes you calculate (Lib Dems up 5%, Tories down 2.5%, Labour up 0.5%) to the result last time then Paddick would get 19.92%, Tories 25.74%, and Labour 36.2%.
Third, yes. Distant third, not really.
42 Does this count as a long conversation in Finland?
Fish!
43 - I wasn’t suggesting that they published data on how many misremembered but simply that I thought they published the info on how people say they remember voting.
28 - “Bozza like crazy and watching him flounder in the studio”
As I said on a previous thread, I thought he was good in the LBC thing.
42 9 - I remember trying to get a credit card in Finland. The nice lady at the bank told me “We can’t give you one as we have had a lot of trouble with foreigners.” Nice attitude!
sounds like common sense.
Labour on the other hand would give them a house, cash and free health care.
After 7/7 immigrant terrorist attacks, what does Labour do? Clamp down on the British and make things easier for foreigners.
Vote for Labour. Vote for Open Immigration. You know it makes sense.
Is this Finland talk a red Herring?
49 - Oh For Cod’s sake.
34 “I suspect there will be a keep the Tories out theme similar to 1992, which will motivate a lot of people quiet in 05.”
As someone who voted to get the Tories out in 92 and 97, I think this viewpopint is quite wrong.
I shall be voting to get Labour out at the next election. The top prioirty is to rid the country of this incompetent, directionless and sleazy govt.
41. I agree with that. But in general it appears that Boris is less good at campaigning. More activity seems to equate to poorer performance.
Or maybe, it’s just because Ken, in spite of it all, is bloody good at it. The issues haven’t changed - we’re still just debating the shape of buses - but the momentum is slightly away from Boris at the moment. I don’t think Ken can campaign his way out of the hole he’s in - I’ll lose money if he does - but the gap does feel like it’s closing. To Betfair punters if no-one else.
49,50 - Surely this talk is out of Plaice here?
51 Good for you Gwynfa.
50 Brill-iant!
Labour going bust (like the country)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/10/nlabour110.xml
53 - Only for people with no Sole!
These people do carp!
Repetition does not make a point valid.
1. Boris has been to as many hustings events as Ken. Fact. Therefore, he is not ‘hiding away’.
2. Newsnight was at worst a victory on penalties for Ken. Opinion.
3. Newsnight is watched by very few uncommitted London voters. Fact.
My bets on Boris stand. I have taken out a bit and rebought on the spreads.
I never post her, but I thought I would once, just for the halibut!
Where have you all bream? I made this joke last night!
60. Sorry to knock you jokers off your perch but I’m going to skate over these comments.
59 - I think we have had enough of this fish Pollock’s! As I think we now Perch on the verge of silliness!
61. That’s right ghost, to be honest, I think they all need to get trout more.
*groan*
64 - Yes I think we should all say Saury!
42 - “Does this count as a long conversation in Finland?” - ! yes! Obviously it was summer because no more than three words are uttered each day when Finns are on “winter behaviour”, and then only to cheer ice - hoki.
Oh goody, puns
58 Is 1 fact? Has Livingstone also missed some hustings?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/02/boris.london08
55 – The article in the Telegraph you link to could well have been lifted directly from Guido Fawkes.
He has done all the digging over the last couple of days and uncovered some suprising facts. He may have some rather batty followers but Guido certainly knows his onions on matters of finance.
The level of debate here has reached a new bass and I think there are a lot of red herrings being cited.
O/T - Surely this is a massively disproportionate use of snooping, big brother is watching you!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7341179.stm
Polls and weighting — one problem is the phone pollsters use a randomisation technique that does not work: it is sytematically biased towards Labour, so they need to weight their results to within an inch of their lives.
66 I guess Finns request a credit card by sms.
I think Boris should avoid all debates for the next 3 weeks. Apart from Question Time.
Yes, it’s dishonorable, yes, its shifty, but the stakes are too high.
The Tories *HAVE* to win this one. No risks should be taken. Less damage will be done in Boris avoiding debates, than attending them and screwing them up.
A big part of my betting position on Boris is due to the (some might say illogical) reason that if the Tories lose this, they’ll look like absolute idiots and potentially, lose a big part of their opinion poll lead and allll the momentum that goes with it.
I can’t see Cameron/Crosby/Osbourne/Coulson/Ashcroft being willing to let that happen, so they will do absolutely everything in their power to ensure a victory - inside the law.
..and all these fish puns are just the tip of the tentacle, believe me.
Mike, do you have a copy of the 2004 final mayoral yougov poll. I’m interested in their weighting, especially as this time they are weighting heavily towards the over 55s.
Did they have this weighting in 2004?
If not then you cannot compare them for accuracy as with different weightings they will be getting different results
With the spiral of silence adjustment - does anyone know what ICM would have predicted in 2005 had they not used the adjustment?
I bet some posters hake all these fish comments
Re 77: Never mind, looking at their tables it appears not to have made a difference in 2005
78. Some of them have haddock coronary.
78. Some people are just crabs, Peter, hardly rays of sunshine. Just skate round them
80 - Except Alex Salmon who’s always around and atrout in Scotland.
It’s a shame the methodology and weighting has to be so complex and obscure, just to fine tuna sample
Meanwhile …. is there something fishy going on in the goldfish bowl of Philadelphia politics? :
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-streetmoney11apr11,0,6553901.story
All these fish puns make you look like Pike-ys. So Rudd-y stop it. I won’t B-roach the subject again. I’ll just attack you with a Barbel.
Not only London Lite has turned on Boris Johnson (kind of surprising, given they are the sister of the Ken-loathing Evening Standard), but yesterday’s The London Paper bigged up Ken’s poll quite a bit. Talking to the Old Reliable- the London cabbies- I am kind of suprised to see that they are not as pro-BoJo as I would have thought- and several were pretty scathing: “Bloke’s a bit of a Wally if you ask me… blah blah… had that Bob Kiley in the back of my cab once…”
I am being to think that Ken will snatch it- again- dammit.
“I suspect there will be a keep the Tories out theme similar to 1992, which will motivate a lot of people quiet in 05.”
That’s been the theme of every single New Labour campaign. Its efficacy is obviously going to reduce with time.
I think that many people voted Labour in 2005 only because they were promised that they would get Brown - this was the subtext of the Blair/Brown party political broadcast. Now that they’ve got Brown he’s bent over backwards to show that he is exactly the same as Blair, despite hints by his supporters in the past to the contrary, but without the panache.
In many respects Brown has already won a general election, in 2005, and he isn’t going to win another one.
74″A big part of my betting position on Boris is due to the (some might say illogical) reason that if the Tories lose this, they’ll look like absolute idiots and potentially, lose a big part of their opinion poll lead and all the momentum that goes with it.”
Last year the Conservatives enjoyed a huge victory in the Locals throughout the country-and what happened to their poll ratings?
They went down.
If there are more three aprty appearances then I expect Paddick to
inprive his position.After all in caricature it’s a competition between a clown ,a newt and a policeman-which would the public really prefer?
Rogerh
If you are a BoJo supporter i would be expecting the equivalent of the Ardennes offensive over the next 10 days from the Ken camp.
It is whether BoJo can hold onto the ground gained that holds the key to the Mayoralty election.
The pro-Ken faction was always going to have some success at some point in the campaign.
By around the 20th April i would think we will know pretty much if Bojo can win or not.
74
Sung to the tune of ‘My Bonnie’ sort of
Last night as I lay on my pillow
last night as I lay on my bed
Last night as I lay on my pillow
I dreamt that London stayed red
It stayed reeeeed
So Bring back Oh bring back
Oh bring back my Boris to me to me
Oh Bring Back oh bring back my Boris to me
Now Boris has an Agent called Lynton
An Aussie from way down there
Waaaaay down there
Yes Boris has this agent called Lynton
Who wont let him out in the air
Innnnnn the aaaair
So Bring back Oh bring back
Oh bring back my Boris to me to me
oh Bring Back oh bring back my Boris to me
Well Boris likes to boast he’s Turkish
But his skin is so pink and so fair
Its so fair
Yes Boris likes to boast he’s Turkish
Well if he’s Turkish, it must be down there
Its down theeeeeeere
(Hence Boris’s favourite chat up line, ‘Do you have any Turkish in you,? you don’t, would you like some?’
So Bring back Oh bring back
Oh bring back my Boris to me to me
oh Bring Back oh bring back my Boris to me
Oh some say they’ve seen him in Chelsea
Oh some say he’s in Camden Town
Camdeeeen Tooooown
Cos’ there’s a bike tied upto some railings
Its been there so long its gorn brown
Its goooooorn Brooooown
So Bring back Oh bring back
Oh bring back my Boris to me to me
oh Bring Back oh bring back my Boris to me
Last night as I lay on my pillow
last night as I lay on my bed
Last night as I lay on my pillow
I dreamt that London stayed red
It stayed reeeeed
Boris Johnson the Tories secret weapon, such a secret they can’t remember where they put him.
89 - I’d stick to your day job of checking the gas meters.
88. I agree, Ken will be going on an all out offensive over the next few weeks. As long as Boris can do well at the hustings and in interviews I think he can hold Ken back, mainly because despite some swipes at him he hasn’t had any really bad press. The really bad bojo nowshow tag never stuck, mainly because it was rubbish. That plus Gilligan has more dirt on Ken to dish up.
From the previous thread:
412, Which compares with -0.61 for the Con/Lab shares in national opinion polls since 2005. (correlation between Con and Lab vote shares).
Although the stat crunching might have seemed a bit arcane and abtruse to some, this finding by Rod deserves to be highlighted.
Before 2005, a long-running theme of the opinion polls was highlighted by Mike: The Lab+Lib-Dem vote share tended to remain constant. That is, the changes in Con and Lab vote shares were almost totally decoupled, a correlation factor of pretty close to zero. Implications:
1 - A consistent effective tacit anti-Tory Alliance by Lab and Lib Dem (not by the Parliamentary Party but effectively by the voters). The effect being to tilt the electoral landscape against the Tories (way beyond the oft-cited differential turnouts and different seat sizes).
2 - A precision on vote lead of about 4% MoE (compared with the 3% MoE on each party share).
Now that rule has broken and there is a pretty strong negative correlation (ie if one goes down the other goes up) between them (-0.61). This implies:
1 - That anti-Tory “Alliance” has been shattered; possible implications for a “levelling” of the electoral playing field (although still with a noticeable residual tilt towards Labour due to the aforementioned differential turnouts and seat sizes, but much less than before)
2 - The polling precision on the lead will be worse by about 25% (MoE above 5% on lead).
Surely Ken has been pretty offensive for the last 25 years ?
89. …..what was that song about exactly?
94
Probably a little toooo subtle for u cuddles.
95. At a wild guess you hinting that Boris has gone invisible, trying to make sure that the gains he’s made won’t be undone by a gaff in the hustings or the press. Only problem is, none of thats happened has it. That plus your song is just a bunch of randomn words that have something vaguely to do with politics and london thrown onto an existing tune.
95 - Reminiscent of Peter Lilley at the Tory conference…
I think that the Bojo supporters are getting a touch nervous.
They just have to hold their nerve and continue campaigning on the streets like they have been.
I am sure there will be a bad Boris revelation before polling day.
It just depends how bad it is….
O/T Poole Borough Council has used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to spy on a family to check whether they live in a schoold catchcment area.
And still people try to assure us that ID cards etc are perfectly safe and the data will all be held separately and it’d never be abused.
Try living in the real world. If you give people the ability to do something, they will abuse it.
Older voters more likely to vote and tending to vote Conservative:
does anyone know/have a credible theory on
* is there a subset of these voters who particularly favour the Conservatives, particularly an age sub-bracket?
* is it a particular age bracket that vote more, or is it that as everyone ages they are more likely to vote?
How are these effects likely to change over time?
* are the oldest voters Conservative-leaning and dying off, and are middle aged Labour voters more likely to vote as they get older?
* is there any trend towards younger generations becoming more or less engaged in politics?
98 I thought the Newsnight debate was THE bad BoJo revellation. He came across as an amateur.
WRT spiral of silence, this has favoured Labour for about 4 years now.
WRT London local by-elections, Labour won a wretched 28% in 2006, and have seen their share rise by 0.5% on average, in by elections. The Conservative performance has been distinctly mediocre though.
97
I’m flattered.
So we are all confident that Ken is going to win now? Ken is loved by most Londoners. They do not want him out.
101. if thats THE revelation I think he’ll be fine then.
re 37 it’s what being a member of the EU is all about.
Shock LibDem gain from Labour in North East Derbyshire Holmewood/Heath ward Labour unopposed last May LibDem 382 Lab 356 Con 165 .
More like John Redwood at the Welsh Conservative Conference….
94 - Coldstone is merely aping the Labour party line that Boris is either a ‘no show’ at hustings or being held on a tight leash by minders.
He made five references to it yesterday, three the day before and despite evidence to the contrary to this nonsense, be prepared for more of the same today.
He has been programmed…..the only chance of stopping him is to remove his battery.
107 Mark. They’re all nooky mad in that part of Derbyshire …. Twas Cleggover wot wunit !!
104 - No, I still fully expect Boris to win. Ken didn’t win by much last time and enough people are tired of him and/or Labour for him to lose.
Remember the Tories got most seats on the assembly even last time when things were much less rosy for them.
I actually don’t even think it will be particularly close.
107-Good news.
Another nail in the Brown coffin.
By the way Mark who are you advising Lib Dem wise to vote 2nd pref in the Mayoral elections?
I know the Lib Dem admin in Sutton where i am from is more vehementley Anti-Ken than the Tories.
Can the Lib Dems bring themselves to back Bojo 2nd pref?
109. I don’t understand the no-show tag, he didn’t turn up to one hustings and suddenly its ‘OMG, Boris no shows everything’ it shows how desperate his opponants have been for him to mess up. The best they can do is say he’s a no-show for missing a hustings.
107 - That is a shock LibDem gain. Well done them!
109
Battery! I’m plugged into the mains.
115 – You’re certainly a live wire; do us a favour a flick the switch.
89 Coldstone the first sign of the T being removed to leave wit. Mediocre scanning but great idea. Keep the T away.
Hmmm Mr Carp has risen from the bottom of his deep murky pool! For the, ‘Blue Harpie’ squadron its been: scramble, contact, chocks away, must have worked.
107 Mark: An excellent result. The other result last night was a narrow Tory hold in Herefordshire (majority of 21). (Probably someone posted it last night).
102 Sean Fear: On your second point, I agree of course. Given that the Greens mayoral candidate was one of the by-election candidates, their results (share of the vote halved) are the worst of all.
Timmo Do you think that it is only Livingstone who has anything in the locker? You can be sure an old hand like Crosby will have planned the last ten days fairly tightly with riffs available to match events.
What will Livingstone do, put out another video saying Boris is a racist? Vote Ken for renewal? Clean up city hall with Ken? Ken for Chavez, Chavez buys London? Bendy busses are best?
120-Witan,i agree but it is the publics perception that is critical here.
If for example a Max Moseley style video were to come out of BoJo then he would be IMHO history.
This campaign has already gone into the dirt and i for one expect it to get dirtier.
119 - I’m not sure what effect you expected one candidate in one by-election to have had on the overall performance of Greens in London by-elections since 2006 but as it happens I think Sian did very well to get second place up against the much stronger by-election machines of the main parties.
No-one would deny that Green by-election results are down on 2006. But I would expect that. Does anyone have any figures on how they did between 2002 and 2004 compared to 2002 locals?
119 Apart from a few areas where they are very strong, the Greens generally do very poorly in by-elections (presumably down to bad organisation). But it shouldn’t affect their ability to win list seats.
[100] - I don’t think the detailed data exists to answer your questions in anything more than the most general terms - ie, older people generally vote more to the right-wing and more often.
However, there has recently emerged an anomaly to this pattern, which I think of as the “Thatcher Hump”. These are people who were young at the time that Thatcher was PM, and their youthful anti-Toryism was hardened by opposition to Thatcher and the drawn-out ineptness of John Major.
This age group is normally in the poll data as about 35-44, and is where Labour normally polls most strongly. Most younger voters won’t have memories of the Tory administration - their views have been shaped by Blair’s dissembling, Brown’s bumbling and the Iraq war.
It’s a historic missed opportunity that they have turned to the Tories, rather than the Lib Dems.
For the Lib Dems they gain one and lose one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/7341431.stm
If they’re interested I’ve replied to the comments from SeanT, Sparky et. al on the previous thread. Just picked them up.
125 - Thanks Peter, so thats Con +1, LibDem n/c and Lab -1 for the week.
re 107 there was an interesting piece on the Today programme this morning about how the closure of local post offices might affect Labour’s chances in the forthcoming locals. Well people will know how their local MP voted in the recent debate. Most of them were spineless and just went “Baa” to the whips’ blandishments despite hypocritically opposing the closure programme locally. It’s a shame that their local Labour colleagues are going to lose out, but that’s life.
121 - I would suggest the same is true for every major politician in the western world.
121 Timmo said, “This campaign has already gone into the dirt and i for one expect it to get dirtier.”
I agree. But do you think that it will get dirty enough to enable one side or the other to make a significant breakthrough? Will they be able to cause the other side to collapse? I don’t. This is a war of attrition: it looks more like the Somme than Hiroshima.
121. Not even Max Mosely could buy the sort of pain coming Gordons way come the 2nd of May
131, what’re you on about?
The UK is doing supremely well. SO well in fact that the Supreme Leader can afford to give away £100m on an American fundraising TV show.
re several ast night about salaries. The latest from the ONS is
The results of the 2007 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UK grew by 2.9 per cent in the year to April 2007 to reach £457. Median earnings of full-time male employees was £498 per week in April 2007; for women the median was £394.
The top 10 per cent of the earnings distribution earned more than £906 per week, while the bottom 10 per cent earned less than £252. Between April 2006 and 2007 the distribution of gross weekly pay narrowed, with a 3.5 per cent increase at the bottom decile, and a 2.8 per cent increase at the top decile.
Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were highest for 40 to 49-year-olds at £516 for this age group. Male employees reached their highest earnings in this age group at £575, whereas women reached their highest earnings for 30 to 39-year-olds at £460. Earnings increased until employees reached these age groups and steadily decreased thereafter.
Median full-time weekly earnings in London were £581, significantly higher than in other regions, where they ranged from £402 in Northern Ireland to £481 in the South East.
The occupations with the highest earnings in 2007 were ‘Health professionals’, (median pay of full-time employees of £1,019 a week), followed by ‘Corporate managers’ (£702) and ‘Science and technology professionals’ (£670). The lowest paid of all full-time employees were ‘Sales occupations’, at £264 a week.
The monetary difference between the median level of full-time earnings in the public sector (£498 per week in April 2007) and the private sector (£439 per week) has widened over the year to April 2007, following annual increases of 3.0 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively.
timmo Or even, ” Vote Ken get Jasper”?
125 and 127 I’m not sure any of us can keep track of all councillors changing party, but at least four Tory councillors defected in Tyndale in the last week. I think this means the Tories lose control of the council.
87. The poll lead subsided as a result of the Brown bounce. I don’t think success in the (national) local elections had anything to do with it. In fact, initially, I think the poll lead held up pretty good. Nor does it follow that being unsuccessful would lead to a poll revival – what sort of logic is that?!
The Conservatives have been consistently underestimated in local elections for the past ooh… 5 years at least. 2003, 2006 and 2007 in particular. Even in 2004 polls underestimated Norris. In 2003, IDS did better (despite *being* IDS), the Tories cleaned up in London in ‘06. In 2007 we have OVER 900 GAINS, compared to the 500-600 that even the most optimistic Conservative pundits were predicting..
All of this was achieved with the whopping poll-leads currently being recorded.
All this leads me to believe that if we can’t win London now, with this huge leads, we never will. And, people are overreacting to Boris’ fumblingness and forget he is now the anti-establishment candidate.
I would be absolutely shocked if Boris doesn’t clinch it and I would start selling Tory seats on SPIN too.
I’m not in London so I can’t tell from personal experience whether Boris IS hiding or whether this is just spin.
I decided to check the Telegraph: “the Tories keep Boris on a short leash […] it has been so damned hard [for the press] to get any time with him during the mayoral contest.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/nrboris105.xml&page=2
If he’s not trusted to do the party credit during the election campaign what were they thinking?
137 - to be fair the Mayoral election campaign generally has been low key. Aside from Standard articles and posters, I haven’t seen much publicity of it at all. The only time I hear the election discussed is when I bring it up, which normally results in me being told the other person is voting for Boris Johnson!
O/T for a bit of fun http://www.akickintheballs.co.uk
138. Have you been talking to cabbies or lithuanian lap-dancers?
135. Have just checked the Tyedale website which shows a Conservative majority. I did notice that three councillors elected in 2007 as Liberal Democrats, Cllrs Corbett, Grigg and McDonald now sit as Independents.
141 yes but it shows Michael Walton (Leader of the Council) as a Conservative. He is one of those who has defected.
4. Socrates, I’m not going to go into your poverty-race-income thing, because you were embarrassingly defeated in that row, and I don’t want to reopen your wounds. See, that’s how nice I am.
As for the other debate, well, what can I say? I detect different mindsets here. Your mind is closed. Mine ain’t.
When it comes to global warming you have decided. It’s started, it’s big, it’s time to get out the sandbags, and you know just why it’s happening. You say you are open to counterargument: but you act like a rather average Jesuit novice eagerly discussing the Trinity.
As for the whole venomous race/crime argument. Again your position is closed: even more closed than in the climate debate. You simply don’t believe in racial differences because you don’t want to. Even if they were proved you would bust a gut to call them something else - clinal variation or whatever - and as for these differences having any affect on behaviour, culture - the data is too challenging for you to compute.
Mentally speaking, you are a Spectrum ZX, and the software needs a PC.
Me, I have an open mind. I’m not convinced either way as to whether racial differences - to the extent they exist - play a part in behaviour differentials. But I do accept there is some evidence. Take this study into testosterone levels by America’s National Cancer Institute (equivalent of our ICRF):
“Blacks in the United States have the highest prostate cancer rate in the world and nearly twice that of whites in the United States. The 2:1 black-to-white ratio in prostate cancer rates is already apparent at age 45 years, the age at which the earliest prostate cancer cases occur. This finding suggests that the factor(s) responsible for the difference in rates occurs, or first occurs, early in life.
“Testosterone has been hypothesized to play a role in the etiology of prostate cancer…. This report gives the results of assays of circulating steroid hormone levels in white and black college students in Los Angeles, CA. Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant.”
Now, increased testosterone has been linked to all kinds of physical differences - being able to sprint faster, for instance. Bigger muscles etc. It is also linked to certain behaviourisms - increased libido, impulsiveness, and aggression.
To me there is at least a prima facie case to say that different hormone levels MAY be playing a part in different crime levels between ethnicities. I’m not saying it’s true, I think we need a lot more proof before we can go that far, and into such dangerous territory. But I am open to the idea, just as I am open to the opposite opinion.
This is because I haven’t got a closed mind of minimal size.
Now I hope we can get off this depressing topic, and move on to Boris’s hair or something. I don’t like pointing out this stuff - because it is so easily hijacked by Nazis and the like. But you asked for this.
And now I have to go play with my daughter, and thereby decrease my testosterone levels through paternal nurturing.
seanT, here here.
92. Andy, I’m not sure that stacks up. Here’s a list of coefficients (Lab/Con) from the opinion polls.
2005-present -0.61
2001-2005 -0.57
1997-2001 -0.89
1992-1997 -0.75
1987-1992 -0.72
So, only a marginal improvement in correlation, and still significantly below pre-2001 figures. Anyhow, I’m not sure any conclusions can be drawn from correlation of inter-election opinion polls with respect to electoral outcomes. It’s too blunt an instrument, imho..
144 - you mean “hear hear” (with apologies for pedantry, this one’s a pet peeve…….)
O/T - Badly equipping troops could violate human rights.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7342324.stm
146 - Unless of course he is desirous of a personal visitation.
107. Further evidence that Labour’s vote is now in trouble in their heatlands and perhaps signs of major trouble for Labour on May 1st?
Are we getting into an; Anybody But Labour scenario?
148 - Now who’s being pedantic……
143. But why do they have higher testosterone levels? I recognise that we are dealing with college students, but couldn’t background play a part? If you are from a poor area blighted by crime and fear, lacking family structure and so forth, different nurturing culture/nutrition - mightn’t they not develop higher testosterone levels? I don’t think there is much evidence that testosterone levels are fixed from birth.
Incidentally, a comparison of the 2nd and 4th finger lengths is a good indicator of testosterone; supposedly the bigger the difference, the higher the level of testesterone you were exposed to in infancy.
The Tynedale situation revolves around the selection of candidates for the new Northumberland Unitary council. Interestingly two Labour councillors are are standing as Independents against official Labour candidates as well as four Conservatives who are also standing against their party nominees. Very sad. Still not sure why the three Lib Dems jumped ship.
144/146/148. The opposite of course would be “Sean T. There, there”; preferably said in a soothing, mollifying and mildly patronising tone. Should help bring the testosterone levels down.
I should add the Tynedale story as originally posted here is classic spin as it ignored the three Liberal Democrat and two Labour defections.
@134:
What about “Vote Ken, get Ken”? Now there’s a terrifying thought that should scare the willies out of Ken voters. YOU’LL GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU VOTE FOR. *shudder*.
The story is here http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=824205
The LibDems jumping ship story was immediately post last May’s elections , I believe caused by a dispute as to who should lead the LibDem group on the council
I suppose we should then summarise this week as Con -3 Lab -3 LibDem n/c Ind + 6
149 - NE Derbyshire is a fascinating part of the country for those of us who like to watch politics over the long term. Once upon a time this was donkeys-with-red-rosettes territory: the seat was driven by coal and carried the unswerving loyalty to the Labour Party that that implied (although the seat has also contained a significant chunk of pleasant stone-built Pennine towns and villages which housed middle class commuters to Sheffield and Chesterfield). Now, however, the coal is gone and the demographics of the seat - especially in wards like Holmewood and Heath - are changing; the generation that worked in the mines is dying off, and new private estates are being built taking advantage of the area’s links to the M1 and relative cheapness, bringing outsiders in. This is a new generation whose loyalties are up for grabs in a seat that probably only 15 years ago would have been chalked up in the red column before the night began.
151 - Look at it this way - we have two groups of DNA profiles, with a clear genetic distinction between them. Suppose we know nothing about these groups except that they are both from the same arbitrary species. We are hypothesising that one group has a higher testosterone level than the other. Surely that’s no more absurd a hypothesis than one that says that one group has a different skin colour to the other?
Is this serious?
Paddy Power are offering a market on whether US Interest Rates will drop ‘to Zero or below in 2008′.
Yes is available at 6/1, No at 1/14.
http://www.paddypower.com/bet