UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[EPG]

Oh dear, is there anything by anyone that this forum likes? I may be insufficiently cynical for its tastes.

[Zanas]

I've seen 2 polls this morning. One had Conservatives up 36-34 and the other had Labour up 33-31.

Glad to see UK polling can be just as erratic as ours.

This is not called erraticness ; this is called margin of error.

Oh dear, is there anything by anyone that this forum likes? I may be insufficiently cynical for its tastes.

The correct answer to that question is no. Except maybe Aliya Mustafina.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Oh dear, is there anything by anyone that this forum likes? I may be insufficiently cynical for its tastes.

It's just that the article you posted is clear and utter nonsense.

[jaichind]

One aspect all these polls seems to be similar. CON+UKIP is always around 46-48.

[YL]

Oh dear, is there anything by anyone that this forum likes? I may be insufficiently cynical for its tastes.

I don't think you need to be particularly cynical to notice that quite a lot of political punditry is Not Very Good.  This isn't an exclusively UK phenomenon either; remember the 2012 US campaign, especially that Dick Morris Obama vs. Romney map?

In this case, the article quotes Matthew Goodwin; did you expect Al to have a high opinion of it?  (Actually, I'd be quite interested if Al would find the time to give a more detailed critique of Goodwin and Ford.)

[YL]

UKIP's parachuting of George Hargreaves into Coventry South is apparently off, and the original candidate has been reinstated:
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/ukip-scraps-general-election-plan-8670771

[ChrisDR68]

Should we have state funding for UK political parties to level the financial playing field somewhat (and have less buying of influence over policy) or whether the status quo is generally okey dokey?

2010 General Election spending:

Conservatives...... £16.6m
Labour.................. £8.0m
Liberal Democrats £4.7m
UKIP..................... £0.7m
SNP...................... £0.3m

The Standards In Public life Committee recommended in 2011 state funding of £3 per vote for the parties, representing £23m a year over five years. This amounts to 50p per elector a year, little more than the cost of a first-class stamp
 

[joevsimp]

UKIP's parachuting of George Hargreaves into Coventry South is apparently off, and the original candidate has been reinstated:
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/ukip-scraps-general-election-plan-8670771

That's a shame, could've been entertaining (not to mention damaging:)

[Clyde1998]

Survation Scotland Poll:
SNP - 45% (-1)
Lab - 28% (+2)
Con - 15% (+1)
Lib - 5% (-2)

Seems to just be margin of error noise.

[doktorb]

UKIP's parachuting of George Hargreaves into Coventry South is apparently off, and the original candidate has been reinstated:
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/ukip-scraps-general-election-plan-8670771

Shocked, I am, shocked.

[Phony Moderate]

But that Winston "Farage is Jesus" McKenzie will be standing for UKIP somewhere no doubt.

[You kip if you want to...]

UKIP struggling to make a breakthrough in places they're targeting, where they did well in May last year.

[DL]

Notice that at the constituency level support for the Greens falls to low single digits

[Hifly]

Notice that at the constituency level support for the Greens falls to low single digits

Uhh it's already on low single digits in the standard voting intention...

[Phony Moderate]

Also, I think 20-36 point increases counts as a breakthrough.

[DL]

Notice that at the constituency level support for the Greens falls to low single digits

Uhh it's already on low single digits in the standard voting intention...

Some national polls suggest the Greens are as high as 7 or 8 percent. This suggests they are more like 2 or 3%

[YL]

Notice that at the constituency level support for the Greens falls to low single digits

Uhh it's already on low single digits in the standard voting intention...

Some national polls suggest the Greens are as high as 7 or 8 percent. This suggests they are more like 2 or 3%

These are not constituencies you would expect the Greens to be doing well in.

[You kip if you want to...]

Notice that at the constituency level support for the Greens falls to low single digits

Uhh it's already on low single digits in the standard voting intention...

Some national polls suggest the Greens are as high as 7 or 8 percent. This suggests they are more like 2 or 3%

These are not constituencies you would expect the Greens to be doing well in.

These seats are anathema to the Greens. Wait for polls in studenty seats where all the inner-city hipsters live.

[Phony Moderate]

Yeah, the Greens will pick up a lot of the trendy left-liberal middle-class student types who would be backing the Lib Dems if not for the coalition. They are reluctant to vote Labour due to the party's (still) working-class image and they'd eat their own babies before voting Tory or UKIP.

[You kip if you want to...]

Yeah, the Greens will pick up a lot of the trendy left-liberal middle-class student types who would be backing the Lib Dems if not for the coalition. They are reluctant to vote Labour due to the party's (still) working-class image and they'd eat their own babies before voting Tory or UKIP.

PC way of calling them snobs.

They agreed with Nick last time and got Dave. They'll agree with Natalie and Caroline again this time and swing open the back door of Number 10 for Dave (again).

[DL]

In Canada the typical Green Party voter is either a trust fund kid who thinks he is an activist because they put their food scraps in a composter or some very wealthy semi-retired eccentrics with million dollar solar panels on their roof (aka "Tories with composters). Is it the same in the UK?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is this the point where I make my usual remarks about the need to be wary of constituency polling?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As for the Greens, well we've not yet had a General Election where they've polled 'respectable' single digits (yet), so we have to be careful about generalisation. Brighton Pavilion, as previously noted, skews massively left/alternative (as opposed to left/proletarian) and also has a substantial student population: these are ideal conditions for a high Green vote. They have also had (since the 1980s) a (sometimes occasional) local government presence in some affluent but also rather alternative (at least in part) towns, which has rarely translated into votes in General Elections (but may do this time round).

[YL]

UKIP struggling to make a breakthrough in places they're targeting, where they did well in May last year.

This is quite a big change from Survation's poll of Boston & Skegness released last September, which had UKIP 20 points ahead of the Tories.

There are various things which may help to explain this:
- Dodgy sampling in one or both polls.
- Survation's sample size was pretty small, so they had a big margin of error.
- Methodological differences.  Ashcroft's mystery pollster reallocated some don't knows (not 100%), without which UKIP would have been slightly ahead; Survation didn't.  (As we've seen in Hallam, the choice of what to do with don't knows can make a big difference when looking at a large swing.)  I think the weighting methods, including the handling of turnout, are also different, and Ashcroft's turnout weighting certainly cut the UKIP figure.

Or perhaps UKIP's bubble really has burst a bit there.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In Canada the typical Green Party voter is either a trust fund kid who thinks he is an activist because they put their food scraps in a composter or some very wealthy semi-retired eccentrics with million dollar solar panels on their roof (aka "Tories with composters). Is it the same in the UK?

The uk greens are definitely on the left of the global greens movement, whereas the Canadian Greens are amongst the most right-wing Greens around outside of Mexico.