Is this the only BBC coverage of YouGov over 6 years?
July 21st, 2008
Why does the Corporation operate as though the firm doesn’t exist?
Each month the BBC’s political research editor, David Cowling, “reviews the political opinion polls published in the UK”. It’s a moderately interesting piece but there’s one oddity - polls from the internet firm YouGov which put the traditional pollsters to shame in the London Mayoral race never seem to get a mention.
I’ve scanned through each of his pieces for every month this year and I cannot find any material from the Daily Telegraph’s and Sunday Times’s main pollster ever getting covered. Even the “Poll Watch Review” of the whole of 2007 did not feature the output of the firm at all.
This might have been an oversight but doing further searches on the BBC website it seems the corporation is happy to give big coverage to other pollsters even those, like the unregistered pollster that did the Glasgow East poll at the weekend.
The London mayoral race was extraordinary. There is a rule that BBC editors are not supposed to make any opinion poll the lead item of a story - yet that did not stop them giving big prominence to the one ICM poll of the mayoral campaign which had Boris and Ken neck and neck.
Maybe I am missing something and am not using the BBC’s news search engine properly but when I typed the word “YouGov” into the box it could come up with only five references to the firm over a period of six years. (see the search page reproduced above)
From my searching it does appear as though there is some sort of ban in place. Why? Doesn’t the apparent blanking of the out of the firm mean that they are not covering politics properly?
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
“Polls suggest ID card backlash”
Ah, sweet music to my ears!
Perhaps its because they are more favourable to the Tories at the moment?
No seriously, for a long time, serious pollsters looked down their noses at the little internet pollster and their methodology was called into question, I think. Not so since the Mayoral election, though, and I suspect the BBC are currently having a “review” on whether they should start including YouGov in their monthly round-up.
Reposed from the end of the last thread, my contribution to the excellent and fascinating AGW discussion;
If solar activity is responsible for 20th century warming (as a few “fringe” scientists claim) we will very quickly find out whether theres any truth to their theory. We are currently seeing the most prolonged solar minimum since 1913 - If the solar theory is correct we should see a marked cooling taking place (there HAS been a marked cooling so far this year, but that could be down to La Nina - Now La Nina has decayed, ENSO neutral conditions should see temperatures quickly returning to their post 1998 norm) over the next year. If, as some solar scientist’s suggest we then go on to have a very weak solar max during the next cycle 24, then we would expect ALL of the 20th century warming to have been wiped out by 2020 and the global clime should cool to where it was in Victorian times. So, within a few years we should know which is more important in keeping the Earth warm;
The Sun or C02.
Yougov keep publishing polls that show the people of Britain don’t like or agree with the GMW-Auntie consensus. Mystery solved.
The bunker mentality is alive and well in Beebland.
Repost:
300. Timmy?
As for your question, no, it’s the second largest. It is however the greenhouse gas with the biggest increase in the atmosphere in the last one hundred years.
5. Socrates for the merciful love of Obama, please no more climate change posts! At the end of the last thread i was losing the will to live!
Mike - I tried searching ‘polls yougov’ and got more responses (8 pages of them) so while BBC might well underplay YouGov in their reviews they aren’t quite as bad as you show.
6. I thought it was a good debate. I find the subject interesting and fascinating from a scientific POV.
@5:
Oh, it was a South Park quote.
MANBEARPIG!
How splendidly disingenuous you are. That’s what I admire about you AGW fanboys. Nothing will ever intrude on your pre-millenial school eschaton fantasies, no matter how mundane.
In general, BBC (Brown Broadcasting Corp.) news articles have been very few and far between over the last few months. This is not surprising though, given how biased the BBC are in favour of the Labour party.
And GIN too… pretty please with sugar on top!
the BBC has a bad attitude to polls; they cover them if they assist Labour, as in the recent Glasgow East one, and do not if they assist the Tories.
It was also noticeable that in their Glasgow East poll article, as I pointed out at the time, they gave space and quotes to all candidates except Davena Rankin. the LibDem candidate was given PR for his “local campaign” and she got nothing. In the poll, he scored 5% and she scored 7%. Their bias is palpable.
If you type the following into Google:
site:news.bbc.co.uk “yougov”
You get a couple of thousand hits. I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC news search engine is useless, it wouldn’t shock me greatly. A top tip is it is usually better to use Google with the “site:” format than use any organisation’s own search engine.
Try http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.bbc.co.uk++yougov
I get 20,000 hits.
Their election coverage is atrocious and so is their coverage of polling.
6. Fair enough. I try to make sure the “denial” (am I allowed to use this word?) arguments are challenged, but I’ll let it go.
9. Martin, as per above I’m going to stop posting on this topic now. But I really would recommend you stop making arguments so personal and stop being so rude to others. All it achieves is to make people consider you an ignorant, unpleasant man.
11. Top tip. I doff my cap at you sir.
11 James has a good point actually although most of the hits seem non-political not all of them are.
@12:
Oh come now. You’d know if I were being rude. I’m simply being robustly teasing.
I never knew people on this place were so fragile.
Google “site:news.bbc.co.uk bbc yougov”
That gave 652 returns, probably some duplication but not the same as one page.
Doing the same gave ICM 430 and MORI 703. Sorry to spike your theory Mike but the BBC search engine is rubbish.
4 - That may be so but the proof would need to be elsewhere…..
12 thank you Socrates, v. much.
Politics home has an amusing one: Immigration watchdog employs illegal immigrant!
11 - Damn, beaten to it, but I did do it for other pollsters as well!
The actual figure and the predicted figure at the top of the first page is also often different, hence my lower number.
I feel kind of empty now.
…
I blame test.
…
Let’s get him.
fROM COFFE house this is interesting too - Obama not bothering to mention Brown amongst leaders he’s interested in in his foreign trip
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/848151/obama-and-brown.thtml
“Here’s what Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday:
“The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years.
It’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are”
Now, you can say that Obama just forgot the PM. But his omission from the list shows that Obama thinks there is no political upside in the US from name-dropping Brown.”
19 lol
10 - “the BBC has a bad attitude to polls; they cover them if they assist Labour, as in the recent Glasgow East one, and do not if they assist the Tories.”
Any many Tories have a bad attitude towards the BBC: just because they cant prove the BBC is out to get them doesnt mean it isnt.
15. Oh, it slides off my back, but it might not others. There’s a certain linguistic finesse needed to make it clear that you’re teasing rather than simply being rude. JackW and SeanT (usually) are two of the few people on this blog that manage it.
20. In the US it’s incredible how small Gordon Brown’s profile is, after Blair was so big. Sarkozy is the only really big name foreign leader at the moment.
22 the BBC admitted its own leftist bias.
Meanwhile (copyright Jack W) Iain Dale has some breathtakingly homophobic remarks from DUP MP Iris Robertson
“There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children. There must be sufficient confidence that the community has the best possible protection against such perverts, and it is important that there be a mature public debate on the issues, but the security of our citizens must be our overriding priority.
From Hansard
Imagine further, that when asked about those remarks the MP “clarified” them in these terms…
I cannot think of anything more sickening than a child being abused. It is comparable to the act of homosexuality. I think they are all comparable. I feel totally repulsed by both.”
To be fair to the BBC, I think within moment of Boris Johnson’s victory being declared, the news channel had Peter Kellner on to crow at length about his triumph over the telephone pollsters.
Presumably, if there is some sort of ban, it would be based on distrust of the internet panel system rather than a vendetta against YouGov itself, but such a view is looking extremely antiquated now.
@23:
If you believe that SeanT is only joking, you misjudge the man. I interpret his venom as *entirely* heart-felt.
I could start peppering my venom with smilies and ting, but I prefer the cold, hard light of 7-bit ASCII to throw my inner bastard into sharp relief.
@24:
Sounds to me like Iris has thought long, hard and repeatedly about various homosexual acts. Perhaps she correlates her level of disgust based on unintended moistness?
23 ” In the US it’s incredible how small Gordon Brown’s profile is, after Blair was so big. Sarkozy is the only really big name foreign leader at the moment.”
I believe Obama has arranged to be interviewed outside no.10 (wait for it) *without Brown* which is shockingly toadying of him (Brown) if true. Also, Brown went down dreadfully in Israel as well which stuck his visit on the back pages of the papers and said that Thatcher and Blair were statesmen but Brown shared only their title, not their impact.
24 - Is this a widespread view among DUP members and politicians? It’s good that our government doesn’t do any shady backroom deals with them to get their votes in any case….
29 no move to have her disciplined from the DUP, put it that way
David Cowling’s wife used to be my local Labour councillor.
New Rasmussen poll for Georgia :
McCain 53% .. Obama 42%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/georgia/election_2008_georgia_presidential_election
@30:
To be honest, there’s no much that doesn’t disgust the average DUP politician.
Gays, catholics, politeness, the Irish, reprobates…
24 - Iris has plenty of form on this issue - she was calling for “treatment” for gays not so long ago. Unfortunately I cannot see the good people of county Down chucking her out on her ear.
29 - Her erstwhile leader ran a campaign in the 1970s with the bracing title “Save Ulster from Sodomy”. I think her position is safe enough.
35. Do you think she calls him ‘erstwhile leader’ at home?
Brown on the totalpolitics advert has turned into a man with a watermelon smile
Con gain picanninies!
20/23/28 - In fairness, Blair’s name recognition in the US was boosted by his association with “Cool Britannia” early in his term of office and his lonely support of Bush during the Iraq build-up. Neither were particularly glorious incidents.
Brown isn’t that well known in the US but what coverage he has got isn’t bad. Showed up on American Idol for example about third world aid (rather bizarrely but generally commendably).
It is hard to know how things will pan out. It is a weird time for US politics - Bush’s administration is effectively neutered and there is nothing left to do but pack up the crates and call Pickfords. We won’t really know how international relationships and alliances will pan out until at least Spring/Summer 2009 and probably not until later.
37 yes, and I think he should hedge his bets with McCain. While it’s clearly likely that Obama will win I don’t think the deal is done yet. Today’s Ramussen as posted by Jack w earlier had a statistical dead heat.
Hey!!!
I look in on a cybercafe here in hot sunny Palermo (too hot, if I’m honest) and you’re talking about me! Bless. I was feeling a little lonesome too. Now I am cheered again. Grazie.
Socrates, FWIW, I usually do *mean* what I say though sometimes I put some mustard on the linguistic sandwich just to have fun, or show off. When it comes to the europhiles I have to rein in my real feelings. Otherwise I’d be banned.
Anyway I’m off again in a minute to find some air conditioning, but before I go - Socrates you keep mentioning, vis a vis AGW, that “biological race” is an example of a concept that has been utterly debunked.
Taint true. You are behind the times. The latest science shows that race does have biological salience, in areas like medicine etc.
This is now so obvious even the lefties are admitting it. As here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4251389.ece
Sorry for the hideously long link. No tinyurl in Palermo.
Ciaociao!
36 - That reminds me of the old joke. Eileen Paisley is lying in bed, when her husband gets in beside her. “God, your feet are freezing” she says. He replies: “In bed, call me Ian”.
38 - I agree. The wise position at this stage is to be civil and accommodating with both but basically keep quiet and see how it goes. Cameron seems to be adopting the same strategy - he would like to be associated with Obama in many ways but McCain is an old friend of the party and it would be unwise to burn potentially useful bridges.
37 The US Embassy will be reporting that Gordon Brown is on his way out, with a possibility he will be gone before Obama or McCain really get to grips with the Presidency, if not then he will be out by the second year of the Presidency.
We have already reached the stage in Brown’s premiership where anything important will not be implemented before a GE - today’s Green Paper on Welfare Reform will most probably not make it onto the statute book, especially as there would be a sizeable Labour backbench revolt and Gordon would need to depend on Cameron & Grayling supporting it. Lords Reform is most probably gone as well and anything likely to cause controversy will be talked about but not enacted.
With next session starting very late this year the final 2009/2010 session will be very short on action and content, probably even more all talk and no trousers than most of Brown’s ill starred premiership.
The next Labour leadership contest is already stirring by 2009 Labour Conference the jostling will be unconstrained.
Why should any international leader take note of what Brown says, proposes or does? His Zimbabwe initiative at G8 didn’t survive the week.
Anyone who saw Top Gear last night can’t really accuse the Beeb of pro-Labour bias.
42 - “The US Embassy will be reporting that Gordon Brown is on his way out”.
The Obama and McCain campaigns are more than capable of reading opinion polls and the US Embassy will be reporting nothing of the sort.
They will both note that there is a strong chance of a change of Government in the UK before 2010, but it is not a certainty and it still gives 18 months - and the first 18 months are perhaps the most important of the Presidency.
What Brown (probably) and either McCain or Obama put in place in terms of strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan will be absolutely vital and would most likely survive any change of Government in the UK.
Equally, Clinton didn’t just stop dealing with Major just because he was aware things were looking grim for him in the mid-1990s. Much continued to be done over Ireland and other matters.
“Sarkozy is the only really big name foreign leader at the moment”
Gordon needs to get himself a trophy supermodel wife to get attention. Although - Gordon and Naomi Campbell could get through more mobile phones than Nokia could ever build….
24 - I highlighted Iris Robertson’s remarks in the Northern Ireland thread last week - these are worse.
For those unaware, the reason she won’t be disciplined is that her husband Peter is also an MP and the First Minister in the NI Legislative Assembly.
39. Was that the right link? It seemed to backup what I have argued (and what I think, pending semantic differences, you believe): That races as distinct subspecies of humankind don’t exist, but there are genetic “racial” (or “clinal”) differences between populations.
44. No, Clinton stopped dealing with Major because he hated the bloke! Major went digging for dirt on Clinton’s time at university after a request from Bush Snr. Billy boy never forgave the man.
43. I did enjoy that
OT Broad should open the bowling in the test match
Brownie land:
I suspect immigration took him ( Brown) by surprise, that he suddenly saw the opportunity to misrepresent this as his creating jobs – and decided to go for the Brownie instead of the mission. Remember, 2.6m of his ”3m new jobs” went to (or were created by) immigrants. Strip away pensioners returning to work and the public sector and you’d have no new jobs at all. Which, during ten years of economic expansion, takes quite some doing.
Obama not suceeding with evangelicals:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzJlMzM0ZDcxMzIzMTIzODgyNzY1ZDBhMTE2MmJkMmQ=
So it will be turnout among this group that decides how well he does in Dixie.
News from India:
Gordon Brown is studying a new scheme to encourage people to use environmentally friendly vehicles rather than those propelled by petrol or diesel - giving away electric cars for free or at a heavily subsidised price.
Maybe Peter Kelner did something to upset the BBC when he worked for them ? Or the BBC don’t want to be seen having a ‘conflict of interest’ [enriching a former employee] ?
Or maybe they are just savvy enough to realise that ‘internet-based’ polls are crap ?
54
I can see it now, the BBC doesnt report polls (well not when the Tories are in the lead anyway), a couple of elections or maybe three down the line when Labour have sorted themselves out and the Tories have done the dirty work to sort out the economy, and the first time Labour show a lead in an opinion poll. the BBC will be trumpeting it as news.
[54] - The evidence appears to be that if you bet according to phone pollsters, rather than internet pollsters, you at best make less money, and at worst lose money.
YouGov is deservedly building itself a good reputation.
Phone polling faces problems of its own getting a good sample, just as YouGov does on the internet.
Hmm
June 08 Poll Watch http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7494986.stm
Not a mention of YouGov, although to be fair I don’t thing it reports any poll on general election vote intention. Not sure why this could be.
June 07 Poll Watch http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7379958.stm
No mention of YouGov, although conveniently it was posted about 12 hours before the mayoral election was declared.
Mike does say that he has scanned all Poll Watches posted this year plus the 2007 annual review, so it’s not just on number of hits.
Mike - can I assume you have emailed David Cowling to ask him why this is so?
The BBC wont mention YouGov for the same reason the dreadful John Curtice (who for some obscure reason some of you like even though in Scotland he gets things hopelessly wrong because he is sooooooo New Labour)can never bring himself to say anything positive about the Tory party, because they basically loathe us!
For example last night on BBC Scotland they showed footage of Magaret Curran, John Mason and Ian Roberston and enabled them all to speak but they showed a photo of Davena Rankin and attributed a press release from Scottish Tory HQ to her. Given that she is in Glasgow East all day every day they could easily have accorded to her the same rights as to the other 3 main candidates.
Incidentally BBC Scotland just pointed out not many voters around owing to Glasgow Fair.
57 Sorry, that second URL is the May 08 Poll watch.
ICM Guardian:
Con - 43
Lab - 28
LD - 19
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/21/polls.labour
BBC Scotland just said result on Thursday predicted the gap between winer and runner-up to be as little as 2000 votes but possibly as low as 500 and Labour admitting too close to call.
Latest Gallup Tracker :
McCain 41% .. Obama 47%
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108961/Gallup-Daily-Obama-leads-McCain-Six-Points.aspx
I suspect this thread is based on a completely inaccurate premise.
I worked with David Cowling for many years in various capacities, and I can offer assurances that if he were to downplay any polling organisation it would be MORI, not Yougov!
However, I also know that he is and always has been professional and honest enough not to do that either.
As a non-partisan observer, I’ve never detected any consistent pro-Labour bias in the BBC as a whole; and is not their current Political Editor known to be a former Conservative activist?
Anyone with a strong party allegiance should bear in mind what I see at almost every football match I go to. As that’s non-league, I can and do walk round the ground, and I don’t think there are many games I’ve seen in 37 years of doing this when both sets of fans didn’t think the referee was biased against their team!
Having diligently responded to numerous survey requests from YouGov I today received my first cheque for £50 from them. So if there are other Pb’ers who also keep filling in the surveys it is worth it. I would not like to calculate the hourly rate though - I am sure it would be way below the National Minimum Wage!
New PPP poll for Ohio :
McCain 40% .. Obama 48%
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_Ohio_721.pdf
55 The BBC will be trumpeting the news of a Labour lead? What is the BBC?
The BBC Editorial Guidelines for the reporting of opinion polls are here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/politics/reportingopinio.shtml
58. Easterross, How confident are you of a very low turnout in Glasgow East? I’ve just had a small punt on the 20/1 Ladbrokes have for 20-24.99% and am tempted to top up again.
New UNH poll for New Hampshire :
McCain 43% .. Obama 46%
http://www.unh.edu/survey-center/news/pdf/gsp2008_summer_nhpres72108.pdf
67 - Do you think that this story complied with those guidelines? I’m struggling to see why the SNP being hopeful would merit a story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7515527.stm
70 Quite
Anyone out there share my concern about Obama’s big lead? May seem a bit rich considering I am confident of a Labour win on Thursday, but I just have a bad feeling about Obama and wonder if the value’s with McCain.
The BBC conflict of interest would seem to be with John Humphrys. Didn’t Private Eye point this out once or twice? But I think James (at 11) is right.
BBC reporting past in 2001 election.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/talking_politics/1308551.stm
What does Brown think he is doing intervening in the Iran/Israli stand off? We have no capability to threaten Iran as the BBC reports. Given the impending slowdoen/recseeion or slump depending on your opinion, Brown is definetly showing he is on fuel consumers side by saying sanctions against Iranian oil and gas will be imposed. What a stupid b*stard - that is an idle threat if ever i have heard one. Iranians must be laughing their head off!
What planet is Brown on, given his shit for Broains it must be uranus?
72. Look at the electoral maths - McCain can’t win without Ohio and Michigan. He doesn’t look like he’s going to get either.
72 - Not according to this bloke:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3bf5c59a-5666-11dd-8686-000077b07658.html
76. Can you paste the article?
I’m afraid I’m on my blackberry now so can’t oblige. Could someone else do the honours?
76. Interesting, but based on the view that it doesn’t matter who the candidate is. I’m not convinced. It doesn’t really matter now to me - my only bet on this election was on Obama to be the nominee and another spread on him becoming President which I closed for a profit some time ago. I’m thinking of having a further bet on Obama but can’t see any value and I have this nagging doubt. I’d rather sit back and watch and enjoy what I hope will be his victory.
60 See Guardian headline is a Labour recovery - 28% is such a good result!
68 Caveman, Glasgow East and its 2 former constituent parts have always been prone to low turnouts. At the 2005 GE the turnout in Glasgow East, the first time this constitency existed was a mere 48%. At the Holyrood Scottish General Elections the turnout in Baillieston (Margaret Curran’s seat and formerly known as Glasgow Provan) was in 1999 48% and in both 2003 and 2007 39% and in Shettleston it was in 1999 was 40% in 2003 was 35% and in 2007 was 33%.
The main holiday fortnight in Glasgow known as the Glasgow Fair started on Saturday and for 3 days the comment has been about how few voters appear to be around. 2 weeks ago someone else on PB said that only 4,000 postal votes have been applied for. That amounts to 1/16th of the electorate or just over 6%.
Many commentators reckon the winning candidate will only achieve between 7,000 and 10,000 votes and as both the LibDem and Tory candidates achieved 3665 and 2135 respectively on a 48% in 2005, both will be lucky to achieve 2000 votes on Thursday.
Make of that what you will but I think we are heading for a turnout closer to Leeds when Hilary Benn won his seat (on a 19% turnout).
77
One simple way to predict a victor
By Clive Crook
Published: July 20 2008 18:17 | Last updated: July 20 2008 18:17
One cannot help but be struck by the current disconnection in US presidential politics between, on one hand, the excitement and enthusiasm that attend Barack Obama’s candidacy and, on the other, the tightness of the race according to recent polls. The first suggests a sweeping victory for the Democrat in November, the second a close election and the distinct possibility of a win for John McCain.
Most would agree that Senator Obama has so far waged a polished and efficient campaign. He stumbles occasionally. His endless iterations on troop withdrawals from Iraq, for instance, have given Senator McCain a valuable opening. But he recovers quickly from his missteps and despite them projects an air of competence and assurance that belies his lack of experience.
Mr McCain, in contrast, has all the experience one could wish but little, these days, of the composure and gravitas that it is supposed to confer. When he trips up, the error seems to stick and he looks ridiculous. Mr Obama looks presidential. Mr McCain, sad to say, does not.
Mr McCain has to contend with the US media’s increasingly shameless bias in favour of Mr Obama. And his position is inescapably awkward – not much liked within his own party, forced to concentrate on keeping the Republican vote intact. Also, Mr Obama has the edge in campaign tactics. Handled right, as it most probably will be, this week’s foreign tour could prove a masterstroke in that regard.
Yet look at the polls. A recent Gallup reading says that Mr Obama’s slender lead has narrowed; last week Rasmussen’s tracking poll called the race a tie. State-by-state polling, filtered through the electoral college arithmetic, gives Mr McCain a real shot at victory. All this despite the fact that the incumbent Republican president is deeply unpopular and the economy continues to tank.
How does one make sense of this? The simple answer may get me ejected from the guild of political commentators, who have a lot of space to fill between now and November – but I report it nonetheless. It is that these early head-to-head polls and the vast enterprise of political analysis, nit-picking and minute speculation they support, are, to a first order of approximation, worthless. In short, you resolve the paradox by ignoring them.
Note that if you do, science is on your side. Alan Abramowitz, a politics scholar at Emory University, has shown that summer head-to-head polls convey almost no information about the forthcoming election. (Subsequent head-to-head polls are not much better.) Instead, he has a simple “electoral barometer” that weighs together the approval rating of the incumbent president, the economy’s economic growth rate and whether the president’s party has controlled the White House for two terms (the “time for a change” factor). This laughably simple metric has correctly forecast the winner of the popular vote in 14 out of 15 postwar presidential elections.
The only exception is 1968, when the barometer (calibrated to range between +100 and –100) gave Hubert Humphrey a wafer-thin advantage of +2; he lost, with a popular vote deficit of less than 1 percentage point. The barometer not only picks winners but pretty accurately points to winning margins, too. In 1980, Jimmy Carter had the biggest postwar negative reading (–66); Ronald Reagan beat him by nearly 10 percentage points.
President George W. Bush’s net approval rating (favourable minus unfavourable) is currently –40; the economy grew at a 1 per cent annual rate in the first quarter; and Republicans have had two terms in the White House. Plugging the numbers into Mr Abramowitz’s formula gives the Republican candidate a score of –60, about as bad as it gets: second only to Mr Carter’s in the annals of doomed postwar candidacies. The barometer says Mr Obama is going to waltz to victory.
Why has this barometer been so much more accurate than the wisdom of Gallup? That is hard to say – but as a factual matter, its superiority is indisputable. Even if you do not buy it, it ought to inform your reading of the polls. A wide winning margin, which is what the barometer predicts for Mr Obama, renders moot all the detailed electoral map analysis of swing states, solid states, toss-up states, states leaning one way or the other. All this wonderful stuff might matter if the margin in the national popular vote is thin. If it is wide, the toss-up states move together and that is that.
The unsettling thing about this way of predicting the outcome, of course, is that it does not matter whether the Democratic candidate is Mr Obama or Hillary Clinton – or Joe Biden or Dennis Kucinich, for that matter. The Republicans’ choice of Mr McCain was equally beside the point. On the merits, one candidate may be much better than another – a separate and endlessly interesting question. When it comes to predicting the result, the barometer says that as long as the incumbent is not running, it makes no difference.
Are there special factors that could throw the calculation off? No doubt, and this year one above all cries out. Mr Obama would be the first black president, a possibility the barometer has not yet had to contemplate. Who knows what difference his colour will make, whether it will help him on balance or hurt him. History suggests neither; that the choice of candidates, their strengths and weaknesses and the way they fight their campaigns, matters less to the outcome than one might suppose and infinitely less than the political commentariat is honour-bound to maintain. History suggests Mr McCain is toast.
Send your comments to clive.crook@gmail.com
Read and post comments at Clive Crook’s Washington Blog
60 thanks Timothy.
Labour recovery to 28%! Chortle.
75 Socrates. Quite so. Further Obama’s lead in the Gallup tracker is primarily derived from Sunday’s figures and the likely positive coverage of his overseas trip. Noting all the usual caveats it may be a potential tipping point of this phase of the pre Labor Day campaign.
The reasons are twofold:
1) BBC journalism is dire (Spelman more important than the MEPs? No such chasing up of the Speaker for his wife’s £4,000 tax fares).
2) The BBC is biased against the Conservatives and for Labour. It’s not their only bias, they’re positively puritanical in their belief in man’s influence on global warming, amongst other things.
Given the narrowing of the ICM poll, if this was a uniform swing surely it means a Labour hold in Glagow east.
Interesting.
I’d add an observation - a significant section of the public, bloody-minded as it is, doesn’t like being told what to think by the MSM. If the news outlets were more evenly split, that wouldn’t matter, but with practically all the US biggies in the Obama camp and not caring who knows it, it may actually be counter-productive.
86 Isnt this poll within standard sampling error percentages. Never read anything into a single poll???
81. Easterross
Skimming through the comments on the Herald, there was a statement that the postal votes had been counted and the SNP were very slightly ahead on them. Obviously not official, probably unethical and possibly disinformation.
67.70 That poll in the Scottish Daily Mail was ludicrous. On Sunday the serious Scottish media were reporting that Labour leaflets now point out that Margaret Curran is not Frances Curran. A party on course for a 4 figure majority do not take panic measures about the prospect of a couple of hundred people voting for the wrong candidate. They are even more worried at the prospect of votes being spoiled by voters not being clear as to which they support.
I will be interested to hear how the assorted party canvassers are now finding the response to be and especially the number of households where there is not reply at the door.
The SNP are now trying to downplay the suggestion they are odds on certain to win in case some of their new voters just assume they will win and dont vote.
If the weather is good on Thursday then we will get a clear idea of turnout on Reporting Scotland at 13.25 and 18.30
90 Easterross - do you think the SNP will take it? Probability?
also, 89, Brian J - do you have a link to that Herald article?
89 Brian I would expect that to be the case. John Mason and his 2 colleagues who got elected last year in Glasgow East achieved over 5,000 first preference votes. I am certain that the SNP consituency party would have retained fairly detailed canvas returns and contacted them all as soon as they knew a by-election was imminent.
Conversely Labour rather unwisely admitted that before the by-election the Glasgow East CLP amounted only to some 30 activists and they had no detailed canvas returns from 2005 or presumably 2007 (including Margaret Curran’s last campaign). I would be interested to know how much Margaret Curran and Frank McAveety spent on their election campaigns last year and in comparison how much their SNP opponents spent.
I would expect that the LibDems and Tories would have had fairly detailed canvas returns from 2005/2007. As long ago as 1987 I canvassed more than 75% of Shettleston and we used a calling out system on election day and the Tory Association which then had over 100 members retained those records and I assume updated and passed them on over the years.
BREAKING WIND NEWS **** BREAKING WIND NEWS **** BREAKING WIND NEWS
The breaking news is that WIND is reporting to JNN the contents of a new ARSE poll of polls that comprises ICM, Populus, YouGov, CR and MORI that gives :
Con 44.2% .. Lab 26.6% .. LibDem 17.6% .. Others 11.6%
The PISSED Wells/Baxter Index with added SOAMES weighting shows :
Con 383 seats .. Lab 183 .. LibDem 48 .. Others 36.
Con majority of 116.
……………………..
Sources :
WIND ….. Whimsical Independent News Division.
JNN ………..Jacobite News Network.
ARSE ….. Anonymous Random Selection of Electors.
PISSED … Political Intelligence Seat Selector Election Determinator
SOAMES …System Of Amending Measured Election Scores
FTSE UP 0.52%
[88] - Yes, the last poll [ComRes] had the gap constant, and YouGov had the gap widening 8 days ago, so at the moment it would appear that it’s just statistical fluctuations [probably over a downward trend too given the picture of the last few months].
91 Test, since the by-election was announced almost 4 weeks ago I have said I expect the SNP to win by under 1000 votes with between 7000 and 10000 votes on a 25% turnout possibly after 1 or 2 recounts.
Between 2005 and 2007 the SNP halved Labour’s majority in this seat, the combined Labour majority in 2007 between Baillieston and Shettleston (and it is the least Labour supporting part of Shettleston which is in Glasgow East)to be around 5,000.
Since then we have had a year of Alex Salmond “walking on water” and Labour utterly humiliating itself both in Westminster and even more so at Holyrood and frankly to most Scots nowadays Holyrood is what counts. The poll over a week ago already showed the SNP had achieved a 15% swing since the 2005 election and if as I suspect a large number of Labour voters are now away on holiday without postal votes and most of the rest still at home dont bother voting as per normal then the SNP need a tiny swing as they are better at getting their people out.
John Mason was the most popular councillor in the whole of Glasgow last year and I think his core vote will be so high that he will build on it. In addition both the LibDem and Tory candidates have been very able and conducted “full-on” campaigns which will not damage the SNP but will damage Labour in the middle class parts of the seat, mainly in Shettleston.
Mike are YouGov paying you a commission?
Tories on the slide.
Don’t underestimate Brown. He is a formidable and determined politician.
Hello all.
Just back from a weekend of ringing up LD activists!!!
ONLY JOKING!!!!!
PS Gabble = LOL
88. Oh - yes that is true.
I cannot possibly see how Labour have recently narrowed the gap given the *R* word coming back into fashion.
Even those crime statitics released last week (Which i think are utter nonsense. The break in to my vehicle (smashed window), theft of SatNav and of a neighbours vehicle will be recorded as intellegience as the person or persons who perptrated it left no tangible evidence- they were pro’s!). The second lady police officer who got even more marks out of ten than the first (Very fit lady indeed!) told me crime seems to have gone through the roof - particularly house break-ins, vehicle break-ins and other thefts up drmatically. She should know she works for the police! Although maybe it is just this geographical region? Anyway the bloke at the local shop said someone tried to break into his shop in the cellar. Maybe a should start up a vigilante group like the Hell’s angles in the 1980’s in new york!
Hmm. In the Herald comments was this link
http://www.epolitix.
com/latestnews/artic
le-detail/newsarticl
e/labour-will-lose-g
lasgow-east-says-sur
vey/
which gives SNP 51%+.
Not a constituency poll, but what is the epolitix track record like?
91, test
http://tinyurl.com/5ky5cv
about 1/3rd way down the comments has:
Posted by: Samoyed, Costa del Menie on 1:26pm today
I just got the tip from a normally well behaved source, but it’s difficult to make the relevance of it as it is not reffered.
The count of postal votes gives 57 more to the Nats than Labour, we still do not know any totals so not much can be said about it except that the Labour old hands whom used this method to vote seems they haven’t .
SNP voters going on holiday would not have missed the chance before leaving, thus it can be the reason why they are mayority.
Will see on Friday. I got £100 @ 7/4 for Mason to win, so bye, got to go back to the hard and though fight.
98. Not really. When you look at previous ICM polls; that is pretty average for ICM really;
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/voting-intention/icm
99.
!!! Maybe you are the political equivalent of the Jackal!
91- test- have you got any of your hard earned readies on Glasgow East?
96 thank you Easterross. I find your knowledge very useful.
Gabble.. we have slid to 43% and our mere second largest ever lead. Woe! Cameron out!
I found the Herald article and these are from the comments. Could easily be ramping or lying but here are the quotes
“Samoyed wrote:
I just got the tip from a normally well behaved source, but it’s difficult to make the relevance of it as it is not reffered. The count of postal votes gives 57 more to the Nats than Labour, we still do not know any totals so not much can be said about it except that the Labour old hands whom used this method to vote seems they haven’t . SNP voters going on holiday would not have missed the chance before leaving, thus it can be the reason why they are mayority. Will see on Friday. I got £100 @ 7/4 for Mason to win, so bye, got to go back to the hard and though fight.
Ignoramous.
Postal votes counted AFTER polls close on Thursday. It’s the law.Quote | Report this postPosted by: tartan army 2222, Edinburgh on 1:33pm today
Hamish Postal votes are already counted.
Hamish
Postal votes are already counted.”
and
“Posted by: The Judge, Paisley on 2:18pm today
I have no way of knowing whether the postal vote outcome was as outlined above but I have also heard that the voting was extremely close. This can only be bad news for Labour if true as postal votes usually have a higher proportion of older voters where traditionally Labour support is strongest. Anything other than a big lead in the postal votes, particularly given that Labour had longer than the other parties to organise these would suggest the SNP may well win on Thursday.
I have no way of knowing whether the postal vote outcome was as outlined above but I have also heard that the voting was extremely close.
This can only be bad news for Labour if true as postal votes usually have a higher proportion of older voters where traditionally Labour support is strongest.
Anything other than a big lead in the postal votes, particularly given that Labour had longer than the other parties to organise these would suggest the SNP may well win on Thursday.”
88. correct, the “movements” since the last poll are quite likely to be due to chance alone.
Consumer confidence down 15%, Gabble you loon.
105 I never bet tyson. In the end it makes you poorer unless you are either a bookie, or PtP/Mike S
“Don’t underestimate Brown. He is a formidable and determined politician.”
Determined to give Britain the economy of the 70s and the society of East Germany under the Stasi.
100 - surely you mean the guardian angels?!! tho’ the hells angels might be useful friends to have too
102 thank you Brian SJ
110 and has made a great start in his first year to achieving these goals
Labour - shafting here
98.
yeah right! Brown is a paper tiger in the formidable steaks - whenever he tries to cash some capital in his tender is rejected. Brown is finished and so are you! (Falling Crime - my arse!).
Major suffered from Back to Basics!
Brown will suffer from back to BUST!
Labour are doomed - doomed! No comeback! I will be surprised if the dole changes announced today get theough parliament. Labour MP’s have a vested interest in that many will be out of work soon. I cannot see former Labour MP’s shovelling shit and scrubbing walls six months after the next election!
If Nick Palmer is defeated he has a better chance than many Labour MP’s in that he has worked in the private sector previously. Actually i take my hate off to him - I reackon people probably said he was made to take the seat in Broxtowe once elected because of the possibly downside of being turfed out 2001 or 2002.
I can’t accept Robert Wallers rather casual dismissal of allegations of BBC bias as if it were a referee thing.
That is exactly how the BBC defend these claims “oh well we just bring the truth and people don’t like it…”
The only time Labour have ever had cause to complain (and did so very loudly) about BBC coverage was over the Andrew Gilligan affair and as someone who opposed the war even I can see that the BBC have made their mind up the war was illegal (even though it clearly wasn’t) and stuck to that line ever since. That is bias.
The fact is the BBC have an institutional left wing (NOT Labour) bias and always have had. Whether the Tories are the Government or in opposition we have complained about bias - in the agenda set by the BBC; in what it chooses to report and how it reports those events.
The BBC have an institutional left wing perspective obvious on issues like big corporations/global business (bad) profit (very bad) America (bad unless Obama wins) diversity (good) multi culturalism (good, up to 9/11 thereafter iffy; and then after 7/7 bad).
When the Tories are leading polls- they don’t report polls. When Labour or the Lib Dems are set to win a by election- saturation coverage; when it looks good for the Tories, it’s omitted.
That is why I like the term institutionally left wing. They are so completely biased that they can’t even understand that they are.
107. Equally, given the margin of error, the true lead may be down to around 10%.
111. Yes, you are right!
Hell’s angles are the bikers! I mixed them up!
88, 107,
Indeed. The fact that the latest polls by the various companies are all moving independently as well underlines that we can’t even guess to a hint of movement. Overwhelming probability is “As you were”.
116
Seriously, do you do it just to get a reaction or are you one of these bots that auto-post phooey?
New thread on ICM poll
106. Postal votes are certainly not formally counted in advance of the close of poll.Scrutineers attending the removal of ballot papers from the PV envelopes could do no more than form an impression of what they observe. In no way would ballot papers be assigned at that stage to piles for the various candidates -before being ,finally. countedto generate a total!
115. WHenever the BBC do announce the tories doing well - they announce it like someone has died. Usually that bloke who called someone John Pen*s by accident. Cannot remmeber the blokes name he was at school with Steven Norris and at one stage presented channel 4 news before jumping to the BBC.
28- Test, it stands to reason that Obama wouldn’t want to appear with Brown in an interview since it would be the end of Obama’s presidential hopes if Brown somehow managed to announce he was bottling the U.S. presidential election!
52- Socrates, results in southern state elections are, more than anywhere else in the country, a matter of turnout among various identifiable voting blocs. For example, in Louisiana, election night coverage is routinely a matter of projecting black turnout and extrapolating election outcomes from those figures. Evangelical turnout is likely to be also the number to look at in southern states rather than what share of that vote Obama could peel away.
116. Or 21% - but the probability is naturally enough around the 15% stated, which is in line with plenty of other polls (yes, I know we shouldn’t really compare against different methodologies). We could say the same about all polls as they’re produced, but then how is it possible to identify the true position? Validation of subsequent polls? But that would work equally well by validation of previous polls, and in any case, both fail to account for intervening events.
Polls can only ever be validated when produced in close proximity to the election they are ‘predicting’, and even then, not absolutely always. All we can do is consider the data, judge other relevant factors and get a feel for whether a poll ’sounds’ right.
115. I don’t know where to start against such a rant.
All I can say on this is one is, you are so, so wrong — there are far more Tories at White City than you could ever imagine. But like all BBC people they are professional and put aside their own views when it comes to their day to day work.
re Polls, it’s acknowledged Yougov is often accurate, but the producers guidelines are clear for editorial staff about how polls are reported.
Can’t go into too much detail for obvious reasons.
In BBC Scotland the pro Labour bias was even more blatant. I well remember the late Councillor Rob Logan (Tory Kelvinside Glasgow) saying that he was the token Tory Producer at BBC Scotland.
Whenever the Herald or Scotsman publishes its “100 most influential couples” type surveys in Scotland, there is hardly a senior figure in BBC Scotland who isn’t married to or living with a senior figure in the SCottish Labour party. They are all a shower of middle and upper middle class “luvvies”. My twin sees many of them on a Friday evening travelling over to the Island of Mull (popular with the New Labour elite as its close to Iona burial place of “Saint” John Smith, the second greatest PM Labour never had) for their weekends of barbeques and house parties at their country cottages.
The other lot within BBC SCotland who are very influential within Scottish Labour are the “gay mafia” who are to be found discussing the politics of the day in such places as Revolver Bar in Glasgow’s Italian Centre.