How changing poll methodology is adding to Gord’s problems
September 19th, 2008
Was “public sector weighting” behind MORI’s Tory 52%?
One of the biggest polling changes that we’ve seen in years was introduced by Ipsos-MORI in the summer following a review after the London Mayoral elections. For in trying to work out why its surveys seemed to be over-stating Labour the firm discovered that people working in the public sector were being over-sampled.
So a new calculation has been created and this has been one of the reasons why the firm is now showing the worst position for Labour of any of the firms.
Just look at the detailed table above to see the impact. Highlighted are the responses from those who worked in the public sector and from the raw sample almost a quarter (244 from 1017) were in this category. This is far higher than the actual proportion in the adult population and the pollster scales that back by more than half to 119.
But look further at the numbers and you can see what a big impact this had on the overall outcome. For the public sector workers split C32%-L32%-LD20%. Compare that with the non-public sector workers and you get a split of C49%-L29%-LD14%. (These shares, it should be noted, are before MORI has applied its certainty to vote filter which normally provides a further uplift in the Tory position).
So by reducing the importance of the public sector segment the poll gives higher figures for the Tories and a lower one for Labour. But the biggest sufferer is the Lib Dem party. What I find amazing is how differently public sector workers responded compared with the rest of the sample.
My respect for MORI increased enormously following their reaction to their London Mayoral election performance. They stopped publishing political polls while they tried to assess what went wrong. The firm remains the only one of the main pollsters not to weight by party ID or by what people say they did at the last election. It could be that public sector weighting is a better solution.
I have asked the firm what the outcome of this week’s poll would have been without this element. I’ll publish it when they’ve worked it out.
Mike Smithson
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3am:
Dow Future up 210
S&P Future up 32
This is on top of last night’s gains - ie implies Dow up 600 since London close.
If London reacts pro rata then estimate FTSE up 300 when opens.
All of this excitable talk about a complete Labour meltdown, with fewer than 100 seats or whatever, is all very interesting. But the reality is that when the next General Election comes along, there will be a much more balanced and intensive scrutiny of the vacuous and ridiculous Cameron and Clegg, and their standard identikit imperialist policies of social repression and degeneracy.
Whether Gordon Brown is still the leader or not, the Labour Party will get the votes of at least a solid core of 28%(ish) and will have at least 160 seats (probably more than 200). The Conservative Party will get fewer than 44% and not much more than 400(ish) seats. 20 months is a long time in politics, and even if GB is still PM it could still be a lot closer than that.
After all, the voters will realise that there is not going to be any easy solution to the current critical meltdown of the entire global capitalist system from any of the usual bourgeois social-democratic clone parties, and there is no reason to think that any one of the three main party leaders has got a magic wand.
Very relevant analysis Mike - I have long expected some such difference in voter behaviour.
It would, after all, be rational to expect voter intention to vary when the actual conditions of people’s lives are so different.
For example, if you work in the private sector, loss of job is a great fear in times of economic crisis; if you work in the public sector, unemployment is something that happens to other people.
Again, if you are retired, your reaction to inflation is very different depending on whether you have an index-linked pension (mostly retired public sector workers) or not.
The translation of this to electoral results in a FPTP system would not be a UNS though, because certain areas have a very much higher proportion of public sector workers than others, which would lead me to believe that the scale of Tory victory in the next election would be very much less than UNS would predict.
FTSE to open up 288 - IG.
Shorts will roast.
4 - To be honest I’m a little concerned about the self congratulation of the traders on this. There is still more bad news to come out, plenty more companies are holed below the waterline. A lot of the indicators are pointing at a major stock price slump at some point, this may or may not come to pass but trying to avoid it if it is coming is a really stupid idea.
5
I called a rally yesterday as I thought Goldman was not at risk, they are too good at risk management to have bet the farm. After a global nuclear war the only thing left will be cockroaches, Maddona and Goldman.
6 - Yeah you will get rallies from time to time, we just haven’t had the all out selling that this situation probably merits. And if the authorities think that stopping short selling will avoid a major plunge then they are living in la la land. It may not happen and I hope it doesn’t but looking at the indicators, they really arent good!
The Scottish National Party saw a good result in yesterday’s Baillieston by election (Glasgow City Council), caused by the resignation of former councillor John Mason, now the new MP for Glasgow East. The SNP’s David Turner is the new councillor for the ward.
The full results are not published online yet, but the result last time was:
Labour 4 770 45.96%
Nationalist 3 449 33.24%
Conservative 678 6.53%
Solidarity 466 4.49%
Liberal Democrat 392 3.78%
Socialist 224 2.16%
Unionist 216 2.08%
Green 181 1.74%
(courtesy of Vote 2007)
… so the SNP have overturned quite a significant Labour lead in the first preference votes in order to achieve the notional “hold”.
I assume the full results will be up on the council’s website later today. These Single Transferable Vote results tables no doubt take a while to compile!
Does anyone know if it was decided at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, nth round?
http://www.vote-2007.co.uk/index.php?topic=2278.0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7621735.stm
1 - Mike L - FTSE to rally 300
4 - EDW - FTSE to open up 288
Dear Lord, I hope so. The rally would have to extend to 506 points to take us out of the bear market and by 1,650 points just to bring it back to where it was when Darling became chancellor.
Gordon’s been “in power” for 450 days today - and the FTSE has dropped more than 25%.
I predict the big opening IG is calling then the sell off. FTSE will close up about 210.
Prolly gonna look stupid come 4.30pm.
One problem with MORIs methodology could be that a lot more people say they work in the public sector than actually work there according to a precise definition. For example, there are very few cleaners and security staff actually employed in the public sector - they are almost all employed by private sector contractors. Yet if you stopped one of them in the street and asked them where they worked, they might easily say it is “in the public sector” because the public sector is the ultimate paymaster.
If these, and other “real” public sector respondents are only getting a half weighting in MORIs result, there could be a significant over-estimate of Tory support.
8. Again, from Vote-2007:
Candidate Party Number of First Pref Votes
TURNER, David Scottish National Party (SNP) 2318
MUIR, Andy Scottish Labour Party 2167
ANDERSON, John Scottish Conservative and Unionist 259
JACKSON, David Scottish Liberal Democrats 159
MCLEISH, Tricia Solidarity - Tommy Sheridan 74
BAILLIE, Charles British National Party 73
O’DONNELL, Daniel Scottish Socialist Party-Scrap Council Tax 58
CRAWFORD, Moira A Scottish Green Party 45
DICKIE, Ian SUP, Proudly Scottish, Proudly British 43
Turnout: 22.68%
Not much sign of the ‘Cameron effect’ here.
… and before Mark Senior gets here, the Lib Dems won a council by-election from the Tories in Suffolk last night, and just missed taking a Green seat in Leeds on a 19% swing.
A whole article, and not the least hint that this was filched straight off the web rather than the product of careful thought and investigation at the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4783663.ece
A complete disgrace, and the journalists concerned should be ashamed of themselves. Should we head for Wapping behind Morus with pitchforks?
8 - is Salmond going to make a lot of fuss over HBOS IN Glenrothes - Scotland’s 2nd biggest company etc? He doesn’t need to.
12% LD rating - ooh I say - as Dan Maskell used to say. There will be loads of polls to compare to over the coming week. Trouble they are impacted by extraordinary events, as GE could in a week as tumultous as this.
Flash Gordon would not be rewarded even saving the Earth from desruction. The only polls worth watching are those Labour party activists.
I’ll lurk until Monday, but they I’ll out with very sore head for a few days, caused by rather more than poor LD ratings.
FTSE up 264 on Tradefair (5146). Governments seem to be prepared to prop up financial institutions or change the rules to save them. Not sure why - the loss of Lehman Bros will make no difference to anyone except the employees.
The next phase of the crisis is the collapse of “real” businesses XL, Alitalia are only the first - watch out for retailers, car manufacturers, and all their support industries.
15 - meant to say “GE could not happen in a week a tumultous as this.”
long to using a pc not one of these fiddly keypads…
12-Actually good result for the Tories!
Let me explain:
If the Tories are flatlining in exceedingly safe traditionally Labour seats, then where is their rise coming from? Safe and marginal seats. Glasgow Tories would much rather their vote held steady in Glasgow but rise by more than average in East Renfrewshire, Stirling, etc.
Ditto they would prefer a smaller than average % increase in Liverpool as opposed to a higher than average rise in other Merseyside seats.
SBS - you sound remarkably cheerful - hang on in there! The Mori poll should be treated with caution until they sort their methodology out. Why should they be the only ones to “over sample” Public Sector workers.
More importantly best of luck for Monday - hope you are well enough to watch the love in that surely will be the Labour conference.
12. Thanks Alan!!
That’s what I get from surfing on a mobile - I rarely make it to page no 10!
So, in summary:
Result - Baillieston ward Sept 2008
1st preference votes
(+/-% result May 2007)
SNP 44.6% (+11.4%)
Lab 41.7% (-4.25%)
Con 5.0% (-1.6%)
LD 3.1% (-0.7%)
Lab to SNP swing = 7.8%
Alan, do we know how many rounds of voting it took? Cos the SNP and Labour were very close after the 1st prefs.
13 - was the LD gain former Tory PB.commer Ben Redsell’s seat?
Peter Kellner of YouGov has posted about the MORI poll
“When an opinion poll comes along that is out of line with previous surveys, there’s a good chance that two things will happen. First, it will attract a huge amount of publicity. Secondly, it will turn out to be wrong …Could MORI’s figures be right? Yes. Are they likely to be right? No …”
Full post at
http://nextleft2.blogspot.com/2008/09/polls-apart.html
18 - I would not be surprised at a lot of safe Tory seats having near 80% turnout next time. That is stacking up votes unnecessary. Greedy really. Typical!
I am not convinced at this new weighting, especially since the result it produces is immediately so ‘changed’.
If their sample is so grotesquely over-representing public sector workers (and there’s a huge issue about the correct definition of this, by both employees and by firms these days) then surely it says something about their sampling techniques (such an over-sampling level must be way outside the normal variation) and their private-sector sub-set might also be equally-biased in another manner.
A MORI poll is still just a MORI poll. Would you really pay for one if it was offered to you?
20. Apparently it went to the final round.
Final stage
SNP 2511
Lab 2313
22 - One problem with that analysis is that the MORI poll hasn’t received all that much publicity. And the whole analysis smacks of Mr Smithson’s rule that a rogue poll is one that you don’t agree with.
The MORI poll is certainly unlikely to be right in every particular. There is, however, no particular reason to assume that the Tories aren’t somewhere around the 50% mark.
Tradefair showing a “spike” on the FTSE since 7am - High is shown as 7138 - unfortunately I missed it would have been a good point to sell from. Are IG, spreadfair, etc. still allowing selling (shorting) of financial stocks?
18. Peter2 - “Actually good result for the Tories!”
LOL. If you are happy with the Tories at 5% then that is fine by us!
Actually 5% in the east end of Glasgow is not too bad for the Tories. In the last few years the Tories have polled less than 1% in several Scottish council by elections. But to their great credit, at least the Tories put up a candidate in every Scottish by election, unlike the scaredy-custard Lib Dems.
I seems to remember that the record low Scottish Tory vote was about 0.7%, 2 or 3 years ago. I’m sure some statistician will inform us if there was a lower one…..
25.
Oooooooh….. THAT is what you call a nail-biter! Soooooo sweet
I would just love to have seen those Labour faces at the count!
Aberystwyth Town Council results:
Rheidol Ward; Lib Dem 243, Plaid 167. Lib Dem hold.
Penparcau Ward; Plaid 141, Labour 117, Lib Dem 46. Plaid gain from Independent.
Conservatives do not seem to have put up candidates.
Yesterday, the troubled US insurer AIG used $28 billion of its $85 billion loan facility from the Fed. How much of mess were they in?
Dianne Abott on This Week last night said that she understands that if Labour lose the Glenrothes by election, then the cabinet will move against Gordon Brown.
yes it was SBS. Great to see you here! We’re all thinking of you. Hang in there, come back soon, sore head notwithstanding.
SBS good to read your posts.
Mike another informative article, you are on a roll. I had wondered about the IPSOS Mori change. It looks like they have made a change based on pure Mkt Research principles of getting the sample right. Until there is an election to test this we will not know how accurate it now is but it makes sense and starts to restore some respect.
‘Scottish Keep Jobs As English Face The Sack’
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/62148/Scottish-keep-jobs-as-English-face-the-sack
‘Darling accused of trying to save Scottish banking jobs at the expense of English workers’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1057483/Darling-accused-trying-save-Scottish-banking-jobs-expense-English-workers.html
‘Salmond Leads Fight To Save Thousands Of Scots Bank Jobs’
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news-feed/2008/09/19/bos-sos-86908-20743253/
If Salmond, Brown and Darling are all fighting to save Scottish jobs, who exactly is fighting to save English jobs? This is what you get when 3 parts of the Union have their own governments, but the 4th part does not.
20. The Labour vote held up well Stuart. It wasn’t the big swing to the SNP that might have been expected. Perhaps Glenrothes isn’t a foregone conclusion after all.
FTSE up 315 (BBC say likely to rise) cannot they get live prices?
32 So, Glenrothes = Referendum on Gordon: back him or the Cabinet sack him.
Gordon out Q4 2008 looks a nailed-on cert.
Mori poll shows turnout at 51% - do we think that is likely?
I am not sure why public sector workers should be so over-sampled. One reason may be, as Adam Smith says there are a lot of “quasi public” people out there, who identify with the sector but actually work for contractors: however it would be interesting to find out if their attitudes vary according to their immediate employer or who ultimately controls the purse strings. Is it reliance on landlines? I would guess that there are more private than public employees with the sort of busy lives that depend on mobiles - and who as a result don’t bother with a landline? Are they phoning in the early evening - again I would guess that more public than private sector workers leave work at 5 and get home at a reasonable time. (And before anyone complains - yes there are plenty of hardworking people in the public sector, but having worked there myself I would guess that the above are still reasonable generalisations).
One thing it does show is that the politicisation of the public sector has proceeded apace: the idea that civil servants were neutral and of all political persuasions is long dead. I used to work for a quango, and IMO we should have been able to get on quietly with the work of regulating education. However, everything we did had to be spun in line with the Government’s agenda. Anyone with right-leaning views was in a small minority.
35 “If Salmond, Brown and Darling are all fighting to save Scottish jobs, who exactly is fighting to save English jobs?”
Er…the unions funding Brown and Darling?
It’s a funny old world, Greavsie…..
36.
This time Labour had excellent canvass results to work on! Scottish Labour are no push-over you know. It is going to take years to kill the beast, not 18 months.
Of course Glenrothes is not a “foregone conclusion”. Elections never are. Never take the electorate for granted!
Stuart, presumably Labour is using the long delay to November for the Glenrothes by-election to do intensive work on their canvass returns?
39 - I thought that was the certain to vote category or the 10/10 likely. Turnout will be significantly higher than 51%.
‘Organiser’ dropped from Labour’s team
Mr Roy [MP for Motherwell & Wishaw], who is close to the former Blairite Cabinet minister John Reid, will be replaced by the Edinburgh South MP Nigel Griffiths, a long-time ally of Mr Brown.
Labour candidate Lindsay Roy, the head teacher of Gordon Brown’s former school, Kirkcaldy High, is understood to have objected to the idea of a West of Scotland MP masterminding an East coast by-election.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4783575.ece
Note: Motherwell & Wishaw is due a Holyrood by election soon, when Jack McConnell finally pushes off to Malawi.
44 - but they have only used the 10/10 likely to vote to give the shares.
43. Yes, of course! Although Labour’s organisation in Central Fife is miles ahead of Glasgow in that respect, so they already had a far better database.
O/T - Jeff Randall is on his best form in the Telegraph today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/09/19/ccjeff119.xml
Hey, SBS, glad to see you on:)
QT was quite good, mainly because of the presence of Hislop and Wolfman[er, probably got the name wrong. Chap from Next].
Interesting to see Alan Duncan react less well to Harman’s quote than Redwood on the Daily Politics. Despite that, she got hammered by the panel, and worst, by the audience.
Featherstone got laughed at for saying the Lib Dems has posed a problem for the two big parties as well.
However, despite putting in a pretty good performance, Duncan looked more than self-confident, and the Shadow Cabinet need sto be careful about getting cocky. A 52% rating doesn’t appear by magic, and if Labour, somehow, gets its act together the Tories need their own pros to rely on, not just Labour cons.
46 - Hmm, that seems odd, I’d certainly want to include a portion of those down to 7/10.
So Peter Kellner thinks the MORI poll is pants. 266 people of 1000 questioned said they would vote Tory and according to Mori this translates to 54% of the vote.
‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds…..’
Presumably the early large jumps in banking stocks was due to short sellers getting out of their positions? If they can cause such huge rises in the market isn’t it possible that they can have been a contributory factor in the falls?
Or are both parts of this paragraph just rubbish?
It will be interesting to see if the likes of Miliband and Harman find some reason not to canvas for Labour (=Gordon) in Glenrothes!
49 - Wolfson is class. I once went to a fringe where he utterly eviscerated the Constitution. It was an absolute masterclass in forensic dissection.
I think the political significance of Mori being more accurate is on Labour morale. Even if many of us suspected that they were always a wee bit out, we could always cite in meetings and pubs and say, ‘well we’re only X% behind according to Mori’. Of course this was spreading a degree of delusion, but it sure as hell helped keep sane! Now we’re facing 28 points of gloom, when old Mori would have had us say a mere 11 points behind.
49. Alan Duncan always looks like that, it’s a flaw in his makeup he makes jokes about. He did ok in serious mode, made some good points. Hislop was excellent as usual, battering Harman’s stupid spin lines. Harman came out with the same spin and bashed the tories, making her and the party she represents look out of touch (no change there then). Next bloke was….there. The lib dem women was awful, left long pauses, rambled, tried to make out the lib dems had made a problem for the other two parties (which got a laugh, they’ve done nothing of the sort). She thought that as Clegg had energised the lib dems so he had affected the country, when in reality he’s still unknown by most people.
What also was interesting was the toff line. When an audience member called Cameron a useless toff, only a few people clapped. The rest looked unimpressed.
43 & 47.
Mmmm…. on second thought, perhaps not! Just how stupid can one political party be??
In Glenrothes, the contest on which the Prime Minister is pinning his fightback already looks doomed.
Labour MPs report that the campaign does not appear to have even started yet. One insider said: “I would expect to have been called by now, to be asked to get involved. But it hasn’t happened. Organisation so far is dire.”
It was a lack of co-ordination that ensured Labour lost the Glasgow East by-election after David Marshall quit for health reasons.
An out-of-date database was hardly the weapon Labour needed when faced with a popular SNP challenge.
There are fears Glenrothes could go the same way.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Credibility-crunch-for-Brown.4508522.jp
Marcia, have you seen many Labour canvassers while you have been out knocking doors in Glenrothes? Any other Fife activists (any party) out there got any anecdotes they wish to share? Any Fife voters out there been canvassed? Pray tell.
Barclays up 104. No need to sell any more Big Issues
52 - No the rise won’t be shorters getting out of their positions as much as it will be misplaced sentiment that a floor has been put under share prices. The question is this, if you are a trader who can no longer make a profit through short selling what are you going to do? I would suggest that you will evaluate your portfolio for a few weeks then sell heavily to avoid losses.
51 - 367 actually, Roger
58 Rejoice at that news…
59 - I was referring specifically to banking shares, rather than shares across the board. Some of which rose 60% up on opening before falling back
Hmm BBC market data section reporting that B&B has gone up by 19,000%… shome mishtake!
‘Exclusive: Now the grassroots turn against Brown’
His critics believe Cabinet ministers will try to oust him if Labour loses the Glenrothes by-election in Fife, expected in late October or early November. “There is a growing consensus that Glenrothes should be the trigger point,” one ministerial aide said yesterday.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-now-the-grassroots-turn-against-brown-935400.html
63 Quick, short them….er…mmmmm
63 - also reporting IMI up 680%… I think they are getting a bad feed.
55 - The worst thing about Mori for Labour is that, as Mike put in an article a few weeks ago, their traditional “all naming a party” poll (the one that gave 60%+ in the nineties) is now showing hefty Conservative leads (46,29,14) in latest poll. Previously Labour supporters could look at this poll and tell themselves that the voters were there, if only they could be persuaded to vote.
BTW at what point do HBOS decide that they don’t want to be sold after all?
A&L seems to have gone from +30% to -4% in ten minutes!
64 So “Vote SNP to get rid of Brown”
What more incentive do people need? making such a shibboleth of Glenrothes may give Gordon another couple of months - but may also prove incredibly short-sighted.
BBC has now sorted their B&B issues, they put the decimal place in the wrong place.
“HBOS shares up 32%” (BBC)
Er… how come they’re still being traded? I thought the takeover had been agreed.
72 - only at board level, has to go to the shareholders.
The FSA published the names of 29 financial institutions on its Web site (http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/handbook/list_instrument200850.pdf) after imposing the ban on Thursday in a bid to stabilise volatile stocks in the firms hit hardest by the credit crisis.
56
Hislop for PM!!!
57 That beggars belief. It’s not like Labour didn’t know the former MP was ill. Although, thinking about it, if as a Labour activist you believe that Gordon is the root of Labour’s woes, perhaps they also think that if they sit on their hands and “lend” it to the SNP ’til the General, that might be the best result all round. Must be hard to motivate your workers in that situation - especially with a poll showing fifty-odd percent of Labour supporters want him gone - and it may well be even more at the coal-face.
I know some have rubbished this, but for me the catcalls, contemptous laughter and jeering of Harriet Harman by the audience on question time last night marked a watershed. I know we’ve had the Iraq war and vocal discontent about that on QT before but, that aside, this was the first time i have heard that kind of reaction to a cabinet minister since John Major’s government - her treatment was very similar - a real “its over” moment for me.
Mori weights the public sector down to 12 per cent. Shouldn’t it be around 20 per cent?
As someone who has invested heavily in banks I’ve just heard that the reason for the stock market lift-off is the imminent transfer of bad debt from shareholders in the banks to the tax payer…..
Capitalism…don’t you just love it!
78 — National Statistics site gives Q2 2008 public sector employment as 19.5 per cent.
Has Mori wrongly weighted their results? Labour take Huntingdon?
re 22. You have always got to remember that Peter Kellner is a very strong Labour supporter and is married to a member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet.
However the “Golden rule of polling” proven in election and election over two decades is that the one in which Labour is in the least favourable position is the most accurate.
And Peter will recall how everybody was calling his post-budget poll in March a rogue when it reported a Labour deficit of 16%. We all know what’s happened since.
80 No - you forgot the unemployed/students/retired/idle rich.
77. They did treat Harman with contempt really, especially when she tried to wriggle out of any blame on the government.
83 And when she was so pitifully evasive when asked to rule out throwing her hat in the ring for a leadership challenge.
83 - The wise words of William Hague “New Labour would bring first fascination, then admiration, then disillusionment and finally contempt.”
80 — good point.
Oops. 82 (Marquee Mark) goo dpoint re non-workers.
The polls are uniformly predicting 400+ Tory Seats.Spreadfair give them a mere 353.5, which is still a majority in excess of 100 seats.
Meanwhile the sharp minds of Betfair send yet another message.
Almost 22% of them think the Tories will not gain most seats in the next GE and more than 11% believe that Labour are set for an Overall Majority !
Put another way, one in three are saying that the Tories will not have an Overall Majority.This last is very shaky and may not endure long.
Spread Betting is very volatile.You can win or lose a lot more than you might think.Odds Betting is very,very stable.You pays your money and you knows exactly how much you can win or lose.
88 - 350 seats would be a majority of 56. A majority of 100+ would require 375+ seats.
81. Mike. Are you suggesting that PK’s professional integrity is being compromised by his support for and relationship with Labour? I must say he doesn’t strike me like that
Jon Cruddas in The Times says the Blairites just aren’t a patch on Blair. He also appears unlikely to launch a challenge to Brown:
‘Mr Cruddas signalled that he was willing to shore up Mr Brown’s battered administration. “It’s all hands to the pump now,” he said.’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4783692.ece
90. You only have to read this site to see how blind party allegiance can lead otherwise intelligent people to make remarkably stupid comments.
90. That’s probably because you like him want to believe the rubbish he is saying!
43 57 - the decision by Labour not to to call this election sooner rather later is working to our advantage. We are building up a good canvass database.
Some good news for the Libdems.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2093546/newsnights-focus-group-offers-encouragement-to-clegg-and-a-warning-to-the-tories-on-tax.thtml
And TB too, could ‘Ol blue eyes’ make a come back!
My bad,James Burdett ! One hundred lines for URW.I live with this topic every day and still get the sums wrong.
re 90. Of course not - he is beyond reproach and the polling journalist I most respect. But when we are talking to our own parties, as I was earlier in the week, we do try to present things in the best possible light. I have a PB voice and a Lib Dem Dem one.
re 8 but Stuart with only 1 candidate it would be AV? Did the SNP win the most first preference votes?
An interesting question. Who works for the public sector?. I have 4 very small part time jobs, one of which is working for a Council. Am I a public sector worker?
96 - It’s an easy mistake to make!
The Spectator is looking at the form book of potential Labour runners and riders. First up David Miliband:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2092121/the-labour-form-book-david-miliband.thtml
Followed by Jon Cruddas
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2093536/the-labour-form-book-jon-cruddas.thtml
Looking forward to the others. Also Newsnight tonight is giving the Luntz treatment to potential successors to Brown. It will be interesting to see how David Miliband does. When this was done last time (featured by Mike yesterday) he started badly, but people grew to like him. Now that he’s in a high profile position how will he do? Will Alan Johnson (who according to Labourhome members think is the most successful minister we have) do better? And what about Harriet Harman? She wasn’t reviewed last time, but as Deputy Leader her profile is also much higher. Will the blokes run a mile from her?
It all makes for fascinating TV and I’m sure it will be watched by a lot of key Labour people. It might be worth following the betting markets on next leader throughout today to see any dramatic movements. It will have been pre-recorded and you may get one or two BBC people backing the ‘winner’ of the focus group. The timing of this - just before conference - is signficant and whoever does well will certainly have a spring in their step at Manchester.
95. Right up until they have to vote, then it’ll be for one of the other parties.
re 25 so nobody reached the quota then.
O/T - Proof that there was not that much shorting of HBOS.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/09/19/16123/hbos-where-are-the-shorts/
85. “New Labour would bring first fascination, then admiration, then disillusionment and finally contempt.”
Interestingly Hague managed to avoid the first three
104. As I noted yesterday - this ban is just gesture politics. The proposal to create a son-of-RTC on the other hand could be a real step forward. Something like this should have been set up months ago - I know the Fed were interested as far back as January.
The only thing that surprises me about the voting behaviour of public sector workers is that anyone is surprised by it.
My experience of the police is that they are,on the whole, quite Tory. If you took them out of this calculation, I suspect the postion would be even extreme.
Many Tories have suspected all along that the public sector and the benefit dependent have been expanded to keep Labour in power.
When times are hard and restricting public spending is on the cards, the differencial may increase. Public sector workers who fear for their jobs may cleave to Labour and private sector workers losing theirs may resent the disparity even more.
SBS. Good to see you posting.
66
Imi up 600%
Quite possible.
(if wrong).
If a SETS share goes into auction and someone is desperate for stock and eneters a Bid six times the Ask to ensure their order gets filled.
Of course ths share NEVER trades at that price..
As the BBC have no understanding of how markets work…
Put your Libdem hat on for a moment Mike, I reckon the Libdems are probably going to win a couple of seats on Wolverhampton council.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7619093.stm
106 a UK version of RTC will be right up Gordons street. It involves the taxpayer taking massive risk, for an unknown time frame, blows a further gigantic hole in the public accounts and all for short term political gain.
My only surprise is that Gordon hadnt thought of it before. He can park it next to his massive PFI and unfunded public sector pension liabilities.
We will still be paying for Gordon Browns incompetence in 30 years time.
****
Sorry to rove Off-Topic, and be ‘behind the times’..
What did others make of the Frank Luntz film on Newsnight ?
I thought it rambled a bit, and wasn’t as good as his films before..
They slated Cameron for being too much like Blair, then voted by a large margin to have Tony Blair instead of Gordon Brown given the chance..
They appeared not to have a clue who Clegg was, and then seemed to say that he could be the greatest thing since sliced bread !! What does this mean for future political campaigns ? Maybe Cameron will decide on a period of purdah where he retreats to a monastery in the hills until a few weeks before the election..
Like I say, I couldn’t make sense of it - possibly because the guy flitted over the 3 parties, so didn’t really settle on in-depth analysis of any one party.
***
A foretaste of public service cuts to come?
(or how to fund LD tax reductions?)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7624464.stm
Oldham Council plans 850 job cuts
Workers are expected to find out about the cuts when they arrive at work
Up to 850 staff at Oldham Council face losing their jobs as the authority tries to tackle a budget deficit of more than £17m.
Council leader Howard Sykes said it was “critical” that the authority found a way to save money, but added that the plans were still at an early stage.
The Liberal Democrat-controlled council said it would try to minimise the need for any compulsory redundancies.
Re Scottish jobs over English jobs. It made both local news stations last night in Yorkshire as they interviewed people in Halifax [a town heavily dependent on the bank] and chartered its history.
No direct reference was made to Gordon Brown’s involvement but I suspect some will have picked up other pieces on the news and some will put it down to a Scottish bias.
Either way it won’t help him.
Inevitably as the Scottish byelection draws nearer, more attention will be given and more people will join up the dots.
111. It’s certainly not a painless solution, by any means. But I think it’s the only way to restore market confidence now. The banking sector needs a capital infusion and the wider market needs to believe that banks will remain well capitalised.
The mishandling of this crisis by the authorities, including the idiotic behaviour vis-a-vis NR will have raised the ultimate cost of course - not just in terms of the taxpayer burden but also in terms of the reputation of the UK financial sector and its ability to earn in the future.
112. Yes it didn’t seem as slick, but still interesting. I wish that the BBC would put a longer version of it on their Newsnight website. I could easily watch an hour of that stuff.
112. I believe Luntz will next week be persuading a similar group to vote for Nick Griffin.
112. They were being asked to react to what they saw. They thought Cameron and Brown were rubbish and Clegg wasn’t. They thought Cameron was trying to ape Blair. Not surprisingly they didn’t admire someone who was but a pale imitation of someone else.
What was there not to understand?
112 Sounds like it followed the course I predictted last night: the only politicians they will publically say they like are the ones that they and others don’t know.
118 - And yet they seemed to admire the third rate knock off of the pale imitation! Just goes to show that Human behaviour is not susceptible to explanation.
114 When a Scottish band (RBS) took over an English one (NatWest), English jobs are lost.
And when an English bank (Lloyds/TSB) takes over a Scottish one (BoS), English jobs are lost.
118 The one thing that people who seeCameron in person don’t say is that hge is rubbish. At our Cameron Direct,the opposition [who are welcomed in by the democratic Tory party!] were green.
Cameron appears insincere. It’s clear every time you remove the fog of his surroundings and the group picked up on it. A major problem for the Tories when attention will be focused on him and not on Brown.
123 - Which is why every time Cameron is in the news the Conservative poll rating goes up.
Basically, the next election will be about “swiftboating” Cameron. Labour has nothing else to offer other than applied nihilism.
It has started already.
balls. i remember Tony Blair being described as “phony Tony” , “fake”, “insincere”, “another maggie”, “all style and no substance” etc etc . Its just the same sour grapes from a declining party in power. What Cameron offers is hope for the future. “Gordon Brown offers new hope for the future” doesnt quite have the same ring to it , does it?
123. Roger why is it that you and Brown are the only people to think this? As Milliband is alleged to have said it’s bizarre. Starting to resemble a Japanise soldier who didn’t believe the war was over.
127.
“The wish is father to the thought”, so take this with appropriate caution, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a useful improvement in Labour’s poll rating next week. The general impression from the media, with exceptions, is that Brown is handling the crisis fairly well (I know some of the traders here don’t agree); there is both a fuel price war and a food price war breaking out today; and expectations for the Labour conference are so low that a normal rally-round effect may improve on them.
I could easily be wrong, but as this is among other things a betting site you may want to consider it.
123 - Andrex Puppy?
‘The general impression from the media, with exceptions, is that Brown is handling the crisis fairly well’
How laughable - comical Ali lives.
Let’s not forget that this 52% for the Tories, compared to the 62% I believe Bliar once scored, was a/ against a background of polling that tends to overstate Labour support and b/ achieved with the BBC and much of the establishment spinning madly for Labour, both in 1995 and now.
So this poll seems likely to me to understate the Tories’ support if anything.
121 Quite. Mike’s recent bet on Ried for next leader not looking too good.
O/T - The Large Hadron Collider broke and no-one was informed for a week. Doesn’t inspire confidence does it?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/19/scilhc119.xml
The focus froup was Labour voters and floaters was it not??? I dont think there was a Tory among them, the fact that 4 said they would vote for Cameron is in itself fairly striking…
129
The only food war was people bashing each other to get in to the new Lidl (new labour equivalent of Fortnums) to buy baked beans at 10p a pop.
UK: Shoppers Fight For A Bargain At Lidl
Further evidence of the growing popularity of discounters in the UK was highlighted yesterday after hundreds of shoppers clashed as they rushed to secure a bargain at the opening of a new Lidl store in Southall, London. Several customers suffered minor injuries in the scuffles as crowds swarmed to the store.
Security guards closed the store’s main doors after stands were knocked down in the stampede. Huge queues then developed outside the store, in the High Street, which opened at 8am with special offers including discounted TVs and CD players. A Lidl spokesman said, “It has been a very, very, busy store opening”. A police officer has been posted to the area after the stampede. A Met spokesman said, ‘We are aware there have been crowds of excited people there.”
129. I too would expect a rally too on last one since - we thought it was a rogue!
You may be right apart from that, but we are ready for the spin if thats all you’ve got.
129 - Brown has brilliantly spent the last year relentlessly lowering expectations in order to emerge in triumph next week…
You may be right to some extent that the bar is pretty low. Cameron benefited from it a bit last year as everyone thought the Tories would be in turmoil but actually they were chipper. But it only takes a few loose words, a new resignation or another twist to the financial crisis for the whole thing to tumble down.
Oh, on the poll - I don’t doubt that public sector workers are more anti-Tory than average, so adjusting for any oversampling of them has a case. But it’s only one of numerous such subsample biases that one could check for (e.g. if as Sally C says the police are more Tory than average, should MORI check if they’ve oversampled police officers?). Statistically speaking, if you have 20 possible biases and only correct for an anti-Tory one, you are likely to get a slightly more pro-Tory outcome. Adjusting by past vote, like most firms, seems a more generic and safer correction.
re 129 yes, Nick, I just don’t get the timing of the anti-Brown MPs. Who would want a contest now? Even IF one accepts the case hat Brown should not lead Labour into the GE, the earliest time to strike is surely next spring?
123 - Roger, can I have some of what you’re smoking please? It must be good stuff - it’s completely distorted your vision of reality.
Remind us of the current polling for Labour, versus the Conservatives. It doesn’t seem to connect with your view of the electorate’s hatred of Cameron.
Lay off the Pichon Lalande in The Groucho today, it’s clearly addling your brain.
I’ve made a boring comment on statistical methodology and it’s been detained for moderation - any idea why, Mike, to help avoid the trap?
It’s nice to know there’s still some good news around.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1057613/Bryan-Ferrys-son-remanded-custody-accused-nobbling-witnesses-theft-trial.html
Must concentrate on what I am supposed to be doing - even more spelling errors the usual.
Going to the supermarket now a person in the know has informed me a vicious price war has broken out. Must say I didn’t notice it yesterday.
141 - NickP Did you use the dreaded mortg..ge word?
141 He is picking on you.
Roger has ‘form’ when it comes to denial.
141
perhaps you had the words “Brown” and “popular” in the same sentence. Even a computer knows thats ridiculous.
140: beats me, Martin!
In response to the Glenrothes report above - all Labour MPs were contacted more than a week ago about helping in the by-election. So I don’t know what the anonymous MP quoted is talking about, unless he feels he’s a very important chap and miffed that nobody has asked him personally.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a useful improvement in Labour’s poll rating next week.”
Immediately eclipsed by the Conservatives’ own conference boost, of course.
Major security alert at Oxford Circus. Rozzers told me suspected car bomb.
25.
I wonder if I am alone in being surprised that the SNP didn’t win Glasgow East by a bigger margin (given the huge swings they achieved in less favourable circumstances in Govan in the past). The robustness of the Labour vote in the council by-election is noticeable. Contrary to some, I think the forecasts that Labour will be massacred in Scotland at the next general election are hugely overstated. The massacre will take place in the marginals in southern England and the midlands. The SNP will get nowhere near the 20 gains forecast by Salmond.
Having said that they will certainly take Glenrothes -it’s on the east side of Scotland where the Nats are certainly doing very well - and they won the equivalent Scottish Parliamentary seat last year (Central Fife). It would be a major surprise if Labour held on. If Brown’s fate is determined by Glenrothes then he is a goner.
77. I have to say the discussion about Palin was shocking. The Granuiad and the BBC have done a good job of doing this woman up like a kipper, and not one person on the panel had the balls to defend her, and the chairman did not have the wit to correct either the audience hyenas or the panelists.
i) at no point in anyway has Palin said she is a creationist. While running for Alaska she was asked if creationism should be allowed to be discussed in school, and she made a comment about everything being discussed neither side should be worried about debate.
ii) Her position on war with Russia is identical to every other NATO country, Nato has agreed that Ukraine and Georgia should join when they are ready and want to. If a Nato country is attacked it is necessary for all other nato countries to come to their aide.
Palin grasped this, and despite having no foreign policy experience articulated it quite accurately.
The die is now cast, Palin is an evil rightwing daughter of Bush and cheney who will bring war, famine, pestilence and destruction upon the world.
127 Although Roger is overstating the public’s doubts of Cameron so are you understating these . This Mori poll with it’s record Conservative vote share has his approval ratings at 48% and dissatisfaction rating at 32% so rather more than just Roger and Brown are unimpressed .
139 The chances of a Brown bounce would be significantly improved if his own MPs weren’t saying how bad he was all the time.
Cat’s out of the bag now. Everything can just be repalyed over and over again.
Nick. To be fair I don’t think the media coverage has been too bad but I think some parts of the media, especially the reporting of the banks have been trying to act ‘in the national interest’ which means avoiding making suggestions that the guy in charge in a total muppet [something which has been said repeated on air by those in the city].
When the dust settles, and lets hope for eveyone’s sake its soon, I don’t think he will come ouf of the analysis well.
MUST go shopping. Nevermind, those prices will be just tumbling in my absence.
150 - Eek.
152
The die is now cast, Palin is an evil rightwing daughter of Bush and cheney who will bring war, famine, pestilence and destruction upon the world.
I’ve always thought that! glad too have you on board.
the crisis is at least in part of Brown’s making having been chancellor for 10 years and overseeing the regulation of financial services. As well as presiding over an uncontrolled credit boom in order to engenger a feel good factor - so in that sense he’s only dealing with a mess he created. You are naive if you think a day of grandstanding and banning short selling, a complete red herring,is going to change much though. You must know Nick that the huge credit and house price boom, way beyond anything we have seen in the last 50 years, which the government did nothing to stop or curb as it was suiting them, has now collapsed in spectacular fashion. Unemployment and poverty now beckon for millions - its a tragedy. All Brown can do is try and point at scapegoats and save his own skin. The conservative party before the 89-91 recession also blamed “global economic forces” for their failings. It didnt work as everyone knew there shortcomings at the time had contributed to it. Your party is no different - in fact the country’s finances are even worse now - and you really deserve to be kicked out of office for what you have done, or not done over the past 10 years. I for one - and i’m not usually a political activist - will be fighting with every bone in my body to make sure you are beaten.
@ 40: the politicisation of the