Non-registered pollster gives Labour a 17% by-election lead
July 18th, 2008
But how much can we trust a pollster that’s not in the BPC?
Ben Brogan is carrying a report that a new poll for the Scottish Daily Mail has Labour 17% ahead in Glasgow East. This comes as the campaign goes into its final weekend.
The pollster, Progressive Scottish Opinion, is not listed as a member of the British Polling Council and it is hard from its website to work out what its methodological approach is. We do not know whether the detailed data will be made available in the same manner as pollsters who are BPC members are required to do.
I think it is a disgrace that a paper such as the Scottish Daily Mail should be commissioning polls from a firm that can’t be bothered to join the body that almost all the firms carrying out voting intention surveys belong to. It certainly does not inspire confidence
The shares it is giving are Lab 52%: SNP 35%: CON 7%: LD 3%
Clearly this will impact on the betting.
Mike Smithson
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Only problem with this for Labour is if it is closer or a loss, then a case of :oop:
1. Sorry
As I intimated before my Manx sojourn, this is the first by-election which pits one governing party against another, and that was bound to blunt the SNP challenge…
It’s all over bar the counting, methinks.
Peter Kellner has an interesting piece on Labour-SNP swings historically, including the 23% swing in Hamilton South in 1999 and the 19% swing in Monklands in 1994, both in much better political times for Labour (though not with the SNP in power north of the border), as well as the famous Glasgow Govan SNP victories in 1988 and the 70s.
http://fabians.org.uk/debates/democracy/kellner-byelection
“bin a knife, save a life”
That has to be one of the lamest things I have ever heard.
100% of all knives cause a death do they?
People who participate in amnesties are the kind of people who are likely to have used the knives are they?
I am profoundly depressed at the low level of intelligence this government assumes the public to have, the more so since the chances are they are probably right in a frighteningly high number of cases.
peter- how do you feel today about Greg Norman?
7- sorry Mike to go off thread so quickly, but my money is still staying on the SNP in Glasgow. Do not ask me why.
6. When i was 14 someone threatened me with a knife! The only reason they did not follow through with it was people of the same age group stoping the tw*t in his tracks and b*llocked him for being so stupid! I was minding my own business but the bloke with the knife had a problem with other people.
Knife surrounder schemes are unlikley to eat into knife crime. The people who carry them are unlikley to surounder apart from big sentences in jail.
Yes but the mail is a unuionist paper.Its obvious that many of the posters here dont underst6nd what happens in scotland or wales. O)n the eve of the elections in 2007 all the unionist papers ran horror stories about the snp …and low the snp came to govern and actually things are quite good.
Now the same papers will talk up a labour win…..now i have always believed that it would be hard for the snp to win here but these polls are from papers with a unionist agenda as opposed to a Tory v Lab agenda…some of the tories on here who want an snp win dont understand that the unionists will vote to protect the union and some bits of the media will do all they can to protect Labour to preserve the union…
7 Tyson - He was just great and he has to have a real chance, although the bookies/Betfair only rate him at around 20-1. Although I said I wouldn’t, I ‘ve also had minor punts on Harrington, Weir and the Goose, but Im none too hopeful.
I’m afraid we’re at odds over the Glasgow East result - I’m pleased I’ve managed to unwind most of my position on the SNP.
I’m intending to place my season’s points footy bets this weekend - I’m waiting for spreadfair to post their spreads on the Championship.
10
I dont think a paper can massage a pol, but I dont trust polls of 500. They could be 10% out or worse.
12 even poll
Anyone else finding it incredibly slow posting on PB tonight?
11. Just out of interest, do you you ever go for investment based gambles? I confuse people on here sometimes you might be an FA?
Since we don’t know the methodology, this poll should be avoided. How can you base you betting strategy on a poll when you don’t know it’s make up. Do they have a past vote filter, do they apply a likelihood to vote filter, can you trust the sample size?
14. Actually all the time! I have a good broadband connection about 12MB but it is much slower!
Seems a plausible result to me.
What evidence is there that Progressive Scottish Opinion “can’t be bothered to join the body that almost all the firms carrying out voting intention surveys belong to?”
“Can’t be bothered” suggests they are too lazy. This may be a disgraceful slur on PSO. It may be that they have CHOSEN not to join the British Polling Council.
Wow, that’s some mighty Lib Dem tactical voting going on there.
It is starting to look like the SNP just dont have it in recent years to produce massive by-election wins. They arent in the same league as the LDs, as Dunfirmaline showed. Labour must be relieved it was the SNP in second, as it looks like they are the only party that cant win from that spot now!
Yes, the SNP have built on the LD success in Henley?
Pawlenty says he isn’t being vetted:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/07/15/pawlenty_not_being_vetted.html
Combined with Obama’s surging leads in WI/MN, it’s probably worth laying him for VP.
Maybe Labour is well in the lead but not by that much. That is approximately what they polled in the Holyrood election when nationally Labour and the SNP were on 32% of the vote. Since then the SNP has opened up a 10 point lead over Labour. In terms of tactical voting recent polls have shown that Libs will defect evenly to Labour and the SNP but Tories will defect hugely towards the SNP.
With the % that have been attributed to Libs and Tories it looks like weighting may not be the same problem as in the last poll. We need to see the methodology.
Incidently, this polling company is well known for extremely eratic results. One of the directors is thought to be a friend of Charles McGhee of The Herald (who has just resigned) and Gordon Brown…
Googling them, they seem well-established (20 years) and have been used by the Mail a lot (usually showing whopping SNP leads) as well as by he Information Commissioner and the Scottish Executive. See
http://www.progressivepartnership.co.uk/our_services/so_omnibus/case_studies
Obviously I want to believe them, but more to the point is that whether the methodology is good or not, it’ll be widely-reported locally, and dampen any SNP momentum. If it’s remotely correct, it’ll make Salmond’s talk of a historic breakthrough look a bit silly, won’t it? Perhaps Glasgow voters feel he’s being a bit cocky - a possible lesson for Cameron, if so.
Thanks to tyson and Martin for their friendly notes in the last thread. In reply to MTF: if I thought that Britain was facing a hideous economic crisis and only Cameron and Osborne could solve it, naturally I would join the Tories. However, there is a snag: Commons membership is not open to the certifiably insane.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to strangle someone as much as Michael Crick when he read out the poll results VERY SLOWLY on Newsnight. “There’s an interesting poll in the Mail…it’s actually…” Actually? Actually? “…good news for…” For who? For who? “…Gordon Brown, because it shows Labour seven…” Seven? Not so bad, then. “…teen points ahead.” Aaargh!
I’m not kidding myself that this is looking like anything other than a Labour hold at this stage, but it is worth pointing out that Progressive Scottish Opinion were all over the place in the run up to last year’s Holyrood election - they literally had the SNP 12% ahead one week, Labour 3% ahead the next, and then the SNP 6% ahead the week after that. They’re like the Scottish version of Communicate Research.
Oh, one last point on the subject of Libs winning by-elections and the nats not.
The English have no idea how anti-SNP the entire Scottish media is. Libs don’t face that problem. We have to get our news from English newspapers because any news that may help the SNP is hidden. An example of this is the news about 50 more years of North Sea Oil. It was all over the English media but there was nothing in the Scottish media, a total black-out. In Scotland we can’t talk about poverty in Glasgow East; the London papers who do this are “patronising” you see. The BBC run spurious anti-SNP news stories when there isn’t a real one to be found. The political editor of BBC Scotland politics is married to a Labour politician……
Democracy?
This poll *feels* right, but small sample and non-BPC so we can’t read too much into it.
Even though Labour is extremely unpopular, they won’t simply lose every single election between now and (probably) 2010. I think the expectations towards this by-election may have been blown out of proportion a bit.
If Labour manage to win by a decent margin, I cannot imagine that will be seen as a turnaround. Similarly, should they miraculously lose, Brown will not resign either. He won’t go quietly, and “people on the internet think you will be in even worse shape in the end” will not go a long way in convincing Labour MPs to practically hand over their seats by means of an early election.
I have the feeling those will be two long and relatively predictable years in the UK.
24. “If it’s remotely correct, it’ll make Salmond’s talk of a historic breakthrough look a bit silly, won’t it? Perhaps Glasgow voters feel he’s being a bit cocky”
Is there even the slightest evidence for that? Regardless of the final outcome, I for one think he was absolutely right to talk up the SNP’s chances of victory - if you can’t generate a sense of excitement and optimism for your own campaign, no-one else will do it for you. Similarly, if he hadn’t laid down a marker last year by taking on the very difficult seat of Gordon where the SNP were in third place, he probably wouldn’t be First Minister now.
Michael Crick’s a clown. He knows as much about Glasgow East as flee in the air. The Beeb should save themselves a carbon footprint and let Brian “why has his blog disapeared” Taylor do it.
Mike’s instincts on this are correct. Progresive Scottish Opinion are a disgrace to poling. The emerged out of the Daily Record marketing department and you might, just might, get them to poll to test your soappowder.
Even so they are showing the SNP at 37p per cent when 45 per cent would give them victory.
MARK MY WORDS - THIS IS ALL TO PLAY FOR AND WILL GO TO THE WIRE.
30. While we’re on the subject of how irritating Michael Crick is, surely he must be the only person in the entire English-speaking world who gives the year as “twenty-oh-eight” instead of “two-thousand-and-eight”? You’d think there’d be a BBC style guide somewhere, although as Jeremy Paxman might say, he’s probably “too grand” for all that. (Not that Paxman has got the remotest sense of his own importance, of course.)
Crick is very funny. Especially when interviewing Archer.
“Oh hello Mr Crick. What do you think of Jeffrey Archer?” Clip, clip, clip. Oh come on. Who are you kidding. You wait till I’m Mayor. …
MaggieThatcherFan said “I dont think a paper can massage a pol, but I dont trust polls of 500. They could be 10% out or worse.”
Would people on here please stop saying this type of thing about polls. The CI (confidence interval)of the Labour vote on this poll is approximately 4.4% at the 95% level. In other words 95 times out of one hundred, the Labour vote will be in that range. And the SNP vote has a CI of 4.2% @ 95%.
However, it is also the case that 67% of the time the result will be within 1 standard deviation of the mean i.e. two thirds of those 95 out of 100 cases that are within the above margins are likely to be closer to that figure than further away.
In other words on that sample of 500, it is much more likely that the statistics obtained from that survey would be replicated than would not.
Mike Smithson is absolutely right to question the methodology rather than the sample size. Sampling is easier to get right than approach to questionnaire design. And adjusting for turnout requires a degree of alchemy with regards to formula.
Sorry to be pedantic - rant over.
26 so right. What the libs got away with in Dunfermline is incredible…campainging against the bridge tolls they ahd introduced etc…
however five minutes later no one remembered the by election and an snp government was elected…
As for the sample size, the last one was said to be around 500 but in fact was only 303 of people who said they were definately voting for x. The rest were don’t knows/won’t says who were attributed according to previous election percentages. This formula is extremely flawed. I presume this poll has not made the same mistake as the last one…?
26: are you the same person who usually posts as alex, an independent-minded chap leaning Conservative? You sound a little different - if so, maybe you could add an initial to avoid confusion?
You obviously see the Scottish papers more than I do, but they certainly don’t strike me as generally pro-Labour, just the usual cynical view of politicians of all stripes. And ‘50 years of North Sea oil’ isn’t news in England either, since it isn’t true in any meaningful sense - sure, we’ll still be digging out a drop or two in 50 years, but production is in steady decline.
35. “I presume this poll has not made the same mistake as the last one…?”
I think Mike’s concern is that we may well never be told the answer to that question (or to many others).
On the sample size, a great many polls that nominally have a sample of 1000 are whittled down to something in the region of 500-600 mainly on the basis of ‘not certain to vote’. So we see the results of fairly low samples all the time. But as I said before, whatever method Progressive Scottish Opinion is using, they lack a certain degree of credibility because of the extreme volatility of their previously published results.
Alex 35. You are right of course (to a degree) - that is a flaw with a great deal of modern opinion polling - which is why I talked about adjustments for low turn outs.
However, two polls down. Two different companies. Both put Labour either side of 50% and both put the SNP in the mid 30%s. So even if we take the Smithson rule and choose the lowest available Labour figure (47%) and pick the highest available SNP (35%) we still have a Labour lead of 12% at present.
What is more. Even if you do not accept the Labour vote is over 50%, which I think is reasonable to say, it also does not appear that the SNP are getting any traction.
In this particular instance I am lucky - I am neither Labour, SNP nor Scottish, so can look at the information I am presented dispassionately. And the reality is that this poll looks remarkably similar to the last one.
36. “You obviously see the Scottish papers more than I do, but they certainly don’t strike me as generally pro-Labour”
Nick, with all due respect, what planet are you living on? The two most-read papers by far in Scotland are the Record and the Scottish edition of the Sun - it would be very difficult, to say the least, to credibly claim they were not being just a tad ‘pro-Labour’ in the Scottish parliament election campaign. I mean, call me paranoid, but there was that Sun front-page on election day with the picture of a hangman’s noose accompanied by a headline something like “if you vote SNP today, you put Scotland in the noose”. I suppose you might try and spin that as displaying a sentiment of “general cynicism with politicians”, but that would be a bit of a stretch. In fact it’s nothing short of miraculous that the SNP won the election when you consider the media environment they were fighting in. Labour winning at UK level in 1992 would have been an equivalent feat.
I’ll be charitable, and assume that you’re getting your impression of the Scottish press from the quality end of the market, but even there only the Sunday Herald really gives the SNP a fair hearing. In particular, the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday are subtly hostile towards them.
38. “In this particular instance I am lucky - I am neither Labour, SNP nor Scottish, so can look at the information I am presented dispassionately.”
I’d agree with you about political neutrality being an advantage in this situation, but you could argue it was ICM’s lack of Scottish knowledge that led to the biggest flaw in their poll, ie. not asking how people voted in 2007, as well as (or instead of) 2005.
Nick,
I didn’t say the papers in Scotland were all pro-Labour, I said they were ‘unionist’. The London media knows nothing about Scottish politics - they often try to tell us that they understand us better than we understand ourselves but that’s London for you. Same thing happens here in Madrid..
As for oil, it was merely an example. There are examples of the suppression of news, bias prioritisation of stories, misrepresentation and so on beyond anything you would understand in the English media (broadcast and print). As for oil the story was that there is around the same amount of oil coming out as has already been extracted. If you want to really look at this subject check this out http://youtube.com/watch?v=sIOBG1AVUd8 - watch and follow all 7 parts. Watch how it bankrolled Thatcher…
Paul,
Yes, I agree that this is more ‘evidence’ but the last one was easily taken apart - it was down to weighting and that was fundamentally flawed for new reasons. If the other is doing the same thing then both are making the same mistake and are likely to have approximately the same results.. The problem with the latter is that they won’t publish the stats…
Benedict Brogan noted that he was getting reports from Scotland that Labour folk are uneasy, would have been useful if he had elaborated a bit more on their concerns.
39: We get the Scotsman and the Herald in Westminster, so I was mainly going by them. Saw the Sun and Express and Mail when I was up there - all as per usual, and certainly not pro-Labour (or pro-SNP either). But you know the scene, will take your word for the anti-SNP bias.
43.Sorry Nick, but as night turns to day, the Scottish media have been very anti Tory and SNP for years. That Sun front page on the day of the elections last year was a disgrace, and quite rightly had the opposite of the intended effect if any. Quite frankly the attempts at unbiased political coverage up here can be a joke some times. During a campaign review last year on the beeb, I saw a couple of journalists talking about the Libdems invisibility as if it was some clever strategy.
The politicians and political media are far too close up here.
Nick,
You’re missing the point. Papers and the media here may be pro-Lib or pro-Lab or pro-Tory but they close ranks agains the SNP just as the parties do. The SNP are in government now and the unionist parties can’t stand it. The propaganda was bad before but it’s in-your-face now. The circulation of broadsheets and tabloids here is plummeting as they alienate a large section of their readership. This was paid for by advertisers but now the nationalists have stopped Scottish government spending on recruirment advertising for government and local government posts. Today, the chief editor (and close ally of Gordon Brown) of The Herald resigned…
Taxpayer can bear no more, admits Alistair Darling
“Taxpayers are at the limit of what they are willing to pay to fund public services, the Chancellor has said in an interview with The Times.
In his gloomiest assessment yet of the state of the British economy, Alistair Darling gave warning that the downturn was far more profound than he had thought and could last for years rather than months.”
How can we be in this position after the supposed good times of the last 10 years under a Labour government?
“His disclosure came as latest figures showed that public borrowing rose by £9.2 billion last month, well above City forecasts of £7 billion and the highest for June since 1993, when monthly records began. Borrowing of £24.4 billion between April and June was a postwar quarterly record.”
The fact that it’s an unregistered polling organisation, and
the fact that it’s a smll sample, and
the fact that we don’t know the methodology
are all much less important than the fact that
it is a whole week before the actual election (and is therefore hopelessly out-of-date).
You might find this from Iain Dale interesting -
Gordon’s Imperfect Economic Storm Approaches
Iain Dale 8:23 PM
An economic shudder has just run down my spine. I just read THIS on the BBC website. In June public borrowing reached a massive £9.16 billion. That’s £9.16 billion of Her Majesty’s Pounds. It’s also 24% more than Treasury forecasts. In the first quarter of this financial year, the government borrowed more than £24 billion. Annualise it, and the government will be borrowing close on £100 billion this year - a seventh of all government spending. No wonder Alistair Darling is seeking to rewrite his own rules. In case you think I am being over dramatic, government borrowing is at its highest since April 1946.
Inflation is set to rocket. Unemployment is increasing. The Balance of Trade is at its worst level ever. The PSBR is out of control. And this is all before the recession has really started to bite. Have I missed anything?
If this sort of financial management goes on, I dread to think what kind of financial situation the Conservatives may inherit in May 2010.
—– To think Scotland is in surplus too, mmm.
48.”—– To think Scotland is in surplus too, mmm.”
Alex, Aberdeen is suffering terrible cutbacks as the Council try to make nearly 50 million pounds in savings.
Ex-chancellor ignored warnings
Chris,
Glasgow East could well be their swan song. Brown is going to get slaughtered on the economy. There really is nowhere back between now and the Wastminster election. When he’s gone and it’s Holyrood SNP vrs London Tory Scotland is going towards a referendum. Cameron or Salmond - no guesses who’ll win that one.
London doesn’t realise yet how serious all this is. They think we’re just trying to get a bit of extra cash:O) We are talking about the end of the UK. You know - the one with a permanent veto on the UN security council.. The unionists are in denial here and that’s why the SNP are dicating the agenda.
A more recent analysis of the last poll in Glasgow East:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/category/by-election
“Commons membership is not open to the certifiably insane.”
They must have snuck that ruling in very recently.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith faces the possibility of becoming the most high profile General Election loser after Tories gained two council seats in her Redditch, Worcestershire, powerbase.
Their candidate Juliet Brunner won in the county’s Arrow Valley East division which has more than a quarter of the constituency’s electorate.
The swing was 14.2% since the last shire contest which took place on the same day as the 2005 General Election.
A shift of just 3.4% since then would be enough to unseat Ms Smith.
A small boundary change is expected to make her even more vulnerable.
26. 45. When have the Scottish media ever been pro-Lib Dem? I must have missed that.
Has anyone read Bagehot’s take on Glasgae East in this week’s The Economist? No wonder the Scots have a poor opinion of we English…!
Make what you want of this:
“Progressive was established in 1985 and is now one of the largest independent market and social research agencies in Scotland.
We offer a full range of research services for clients based and active in Scotland, the rest of the UK and around the world.
We have 36 staff at offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. We believe that one of the main reasons for Progressive’s on-going success is our policy of recruiting a diverse range of talented people from a wide variety of backgrounds. This has allowed us to build up a bank of experience that helps us provide extremely valuable insights for our clients.
The wider Progressive team has 15 regional supervisors and nearly 800 interviewers. Progressive is part of the Progressive Partnership Ltd Group that encompasses Scottish Opinion (providers of a weekly telephone omnibus service) and The View on Scotland (viewing facility).
Our Philosophy
Through the research services that we provide, Progressive aims to give valuable, actionable insights for our clients.
do labour voters in Glasgow East read newspapers?
#54 Douglas Fraser of the Herald is a Lib Dem supporter. Much to his eternal shame his mother was a leading member of the SNP, as was Magnus Linklater’s. His wife is one of the main presenters of Good Morning Scotland, on Radio Scotland. Also lest we forget Kirsten Campbell BBC Scotland is the Ginger Vikings girlfriend.
Alan,
The Scottish media has never been for one party per se. It is however united against the SNP. Perhaps with the exception of the P&J. I think a few years ago Scotland on Sunday was pretty pro-Lib.
Dave, does it say whey the pollsters ‘Progressive’ haven’t joined the professional polling body?
Just back in from Glasgow East and no evidence of a big Labour lead.
SNP campaign highly visible across the whole constituency with their numbers completely swamping the other parties.
Picked up complaints from people about Labour phoning round the clock, interestingly several people said that they had told Labour they would be supporting them just to end the calls but had absolutely no intention of doing so.
Still think the SNP are going to get a shock result!
Good job Iain,
Maybe this article will get them going: http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2403707.0.0.php
I’ve also heard that the postal votes have been opened and those attending the opening say it is too close to call.. (I don’t know hoe reliable this info is)
Labour were invisible today, the last Saturday of the campaign and the SNP were everywhere. That the SNP will win is not a certainty but I know where my money is going and fast before the odds shorten further.
http://scottishpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/07/glasgow-east-game-on.html