United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[DaWN]

Salisbury is a seat that I can't quite believe never went Lib Dem between 97 and 10. It feels like a seat that should have done, right? In any case, 'politican goes to x seat that shouldn't be competitive' very rarely means the seat actually is.

[CumbrianLeftie]

TBF, Salisbury the town is a lot less strongly Conservative than Salisbury the constituency.

I know, but still makes you wonder why he was there.

[afleitch]

Anecdote alert warning - there are now a few fairly reliable accounts of a few of the, utterly beloved by our media, LIFELONG LABOUR HEARTLAND ("red wall" in current parlance) voters who were going to make a HISTORIC EPOCHAL SWITCH to the Tories BECAUSE BORIS OVEN READY BREXIT getting cold feet at the last minute and actually sending their postal votes off with a cross for.......Labour. "I just couldn't do it" some have reportedly said

On this now almost hackneyed subject, the Graun has a typically awful - and cliche strewn - piece about Bishop Auckland. Written by somebody who popped up a few years ago with the then almost de rigeur line that LIFELONG LABOUR HEARTLAND voters were poised to switch to UKIP en masse for quite literally no other reason than Paul Nuttall (remember him?) having a scouse accent.

Equally unsurprisingly, they are one of those who get paid to grift about "towns".

It's the equivalent of the same Trump voters always being interviewed in Pennsylvania. A weird political fetishism of the white working class as the 'real voter'.

[afleitch]

TBF, Salisbury the town is a lot less strongly Conservative than Salisbury the constituency.

I know, but still makes you wonder why he was there.

Probably just for local press. And by local I mean rural Wilts. It might not be seat specific.

[KaiserDave]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

[Oryxslayer]

I'm sure everyone has heard about the leaked video of Trudeau, Macron, Princess Anne, and the rest gossiping about Trump. Well, the fallout from that video may result in one of the best possible outcomes for Boris, so much so that one has to wonder if his team was involved. Trump 's energy and fury is focused on Trudeau and not meddling in the GE, he leaves early so there is less worries about him making statements of friendship, and Boris is in the video as well, which helps counteract the narrative of him being a puppet of Donald.

[KaiserDave]

I'm sure everyone has heard about the leaked video of Trudeau, Macron, Princess Anne, and the rest gossiping about Trump. Well, the fallout from that video may result in one of the best possible outcomes for Boris, so much so that one has to wonder if his team was involved. Trump 's energy and fury is focused on Trudeau and not meddling in the GE, he leaves early so there is less worries about him making statements of friendship, and Boris is in the video as well, which helps counteract the narrative of him being a puppet of Donald.

I think people are overestimating Trumps impact on the race

[afleitch]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

That's also possible. Labour could theoretically be overstated.

[Oryxslayer]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If pollsters know what their are doing, they corrected for 2017. However, there will still likely be errors, it's just that those errors are  unlikely to be the same ones as previously. We won't know for 8 days whether that potential error was because of overcorrection.

[CumbrianLeftie]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

That's also possible. Labour could theoretically be overstated.

It is possible, but given that some pollsters are still (for instance) factoring in a notably lower turnout for younger voters (Kantar continues to claim only 20% of age 18-24 are "certain to vote") perhaps not.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It isn't entirely clear (and I suppose now never will be) quite what went wrong in 2017, so adjusting for whatever that was isn't really possible.* Adjustments, though, are made all the time, usually to fit in with whatever is presumed to be the reality at the present moment. The British polling industry is really not very good and when it gets things about right it is mostly by accident.

_{*Although ICM no longer make the structural pro-Conservative adjustment that caused them so much embarrassment that year.}

[Oryxslayer]

YouGov's got an interesting chart out. While the numbers look bleak for Labour, remember that voters cast ballots on more issues than Brexit.

[Baki]

To me the bleak part are the Labour-Leave numbers, not the remain ones.

[EastAnglianLefty]

YouGov's got an interesting chart out. While the numbers look bleak for Labour, remember that voters cast ballots on more issues than Brexit.

Given that the Lib Dems have dropped Revoke as a policy because it's turned out be extremely unpopular on the doorstep, there are reasons to doubt the accuracy of this finding.

[Arkansas Yankee]

What is the one factor that that played a very large part in the election of Trump and the passage of Brexit. It probably will give qthqe Tories a majority this year.

A hint: Merkel was instrumental in setting up this factor in Europe.

Another hint: the Democrats are going to use this issue to re-elect Trump next year.

[CumbrianLeftie]

YouGov's got an interesting chart out. While the numbers look bleak for Labour, remember that voters cast ballots on more issues than Brexit.

Given that the Lib Dems have dropped Revoke as a policy because it's turned out be extremely unpopular on the doorstep, there are reasons to doubt the accuracy of this finding.

Especially since Corbyn actually said *he* would stay "neutral", not the wider party.

[mileslunn]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

Quite possible, certainly I think part of the reason for the miss in 2017 was overcorrection from 2015.  Survation and Yougov were accurate so doubt you are seeing one there, but I noticed ComRes and ICM had most Pro-Tory numbers in 2017, while are now showing the narrowest gap so for those giddy about the closing gap, those ones may be overcorrecting.  That being said I think turnout amongst younger voters which is anyone's guess will be key.  If they show up in big numbers it will be closer than polls suggest, if they have usual turhout, Tories will probably win quite comfortably.

I would also focus on seat and regional polls as this election a uniform swing will do terrible.  A uniform swing would show Labour holding a lot of their traditional Northern seats they probably wouldn't while in South show them well back in ones they are likely to hold or at least be competitive in.  A uniform swing probably wouldn't show them in danger of losing Sedgefield which they are while in the same time suggest Canterbury is lost even though I think Labour has a decent chance at holding it.

[Oryxslayer]

What's the chance of a polling overcorrection from 2017?

Quite possible, certainly I think part of the reason for the miss in 2017 was overcorrection from 2015.  Survation and Yougov were accurate so doubt you are seeing one there, but I noticed ComRes and ICM had most Pro-Tory numbers in 2017, while are now showing the narrowest gap so for those giddy about the closing gap, those ones may be overcorrecting.  That being said I think turnout amongst younger voters which is anyone's guess will be key.  If they show up in big numbers it will be closer than polls suggest, if they have usual turhout, Tories will probably win quite comfortably.

I would also focus on seat and regional polls as this election a uniform swing will do terrible.  A uniform swing would show Labour holding a lot of their traditional Northern seats they probably wouldn't while in South show them well back in ones they are likely to hold or at least be competitive in.  A uniform swing probably wouldn't show them in danger of losing Sedgefield which they are while in the same time suggest Canterbury is lost even though I think Labour has a decent chance at holding it.

Hey, we think alike! Since we do, I'll throw on another data point that I agree with. Today I was reading something from Peter Kellner and he made a good point about the YouGov model. His basic point was that the YouGov model broadly shows whats going on in seats 'like this one' not 'exactly this one.' He brings up local cases like Barnet, since YouGov's MRP poll doesn't weight for Jews (too small of a demo, explained why they got Barnet wrong in 2017 as well), IDS and Raab's prominence in the Tory party, and Caroline Flint's pro-Brexit views in Don Valley. Essentially, if a seat has X demos and filed candidates, it should have X percentages, which is good for almost every situation. In some situations though, individual issues matter that are beyond a MRP polls capability to cover. This is why we should believe that Canterbury is more likely to stay Red than Bassetlaw, despite Canturbury having a smaller labour Margin in 2017.

[Kyng]

YouGov's got an interesting chart out. While the numbers look bleak for Labour, remember that voters cast ballots on more issues than Brexit.

The figures on the bottom row add up to 122%... so, what gives :-/ ?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm really not convinced that fussing excessively over subsamples of subsamples is a particularly good use of everyone's time.

[DistingFlyer]

Three-day poll aggregate update:

Cons - 43.0% (-0.5%), 344 MPs (+26)
Lab - 33.0% (-8.0%), 220 MPs (-42)
Lib Dem - 13.2% (+5.6%), 17 MPs (+5)
Nat - 3.8% (+0.2%), 50 MPs (+11)
GP - 2.8% (+1.2%), 1 MP

Overall majority: 38
Overall swing: 3.7% to Cons

[Silent Hunter]

An overall majority like that would be a good result for Johnson, who hasn't exactly run a stellar campaign.

[Oryxslayer]

An overall majority like that would be a good result for Johnson, who hasn't exactly run a stellar campaign.

And the overall majority is likely larger since their should be at least 7 non-voting members: 6 is the average Sinn result right now and 1 Lab MP is the speaker.

[DistingFlyer]

An overall majority like that would be a good result for Johnson, who hasn't exactly run a stellar campaign.

And the overall majority is likely larger since their should be at least 7 non-voting members: 6 is the average Sinn result right now and 1 Lab MP is the speaker.

It might also be a rare occasion where a party's lead was about the same - or maybe even larger - on election day than when the campaign began, though it's close.

[CumbrianLeftie]

Getting a bit ahead of ourselves here aren't we?

And this may be an occasion when the polls "average lead" turns out to be not much use.