UK General Election, June 8th 2017

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Pretty clear that the rise in Labour support is mostly not coming from that sort of direction.

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Implied swings from most recent poll of each outfit since the campaign pause:

ICM - 3.5
ComRes - 2.5
Opinium - 1.5
SurveyMonkey - 0.5
YouGov - 0.5
ORB +0.5

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The social grade breakdowns aren't much use from any pollster but from YouGov are worse than useless and not worth paying attention to. Can explain in tedious detail later.

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Does anyone else miss the days when discussion of say UK Elections on Atlas was erudite, informed and for the most part good natured? As it stands this thread is a disgrace; I keep meaning check back a few pages to see if I have replies to make but I'm not sure if I can be bothered.

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How exactly is Corbyn catching up to May? I don't understand it.

Back in the old days, when threads such as this weren't clogged up by sh!tposts from sh!tposters, it would be easy enough to spot quickly the explanations. Alas we do not live in the old days! The answer is simple: the Tory manifesto was an appallingly arrogant document which included certain extremely unpopular policies (notably over social care). And Labour have run an old fashioned Party campaign (rather than one based around the personality of the Leader) and have a manifesto full of populist policies.

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An important thing to remember: even if the polls are not only overestimating Labour but are doing so significantly (neither fact is certain) then Labour is still looking at a significantly better result than seemed likely when the election was called. Anyway, I think the best thing for those on the Left to assume is that the election will be a worse loss than 2015, though this is for reasons of psychological preparation/emotional management than the product of rational analysis.

Still, there's a definite feel of UNSKEWED POLLS!!! to a lot of recent analysis; rather too blatant attempts to find reasons to dismiss findings that appall. Opinion polling in this land is very bad, but the one thing it can pick up fairly well is momentum. As David Butler has pointed out this election has seen the biggest ever in-campaign Lab/Con polling shift; there is simply no way that this has been caused purely by more young people telling pollsters that they will vote.

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He was on Newsnight the other day; seemed in pretty good nick.

And is now active on twitter!

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The thing about statistical seat model projects of that sort is that they're basically junk even if they end up being about right. I wouldn't pay them - whichever seat out this year we're discussing - much heed.

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Foot represented the old Devonport division (parts of which are in both present constituency) until he lost in 1959, Owen gained Sutton in 1966 and switched to Devonport in 1974 - which had not been won once since Foot's defeat, even in 1966 - when Plymouth gained a seat and neither the new Drake nor the redrawn Sutton looked particularly friendly. Plymouth has a very odd electoral history, but then that's often the way with naval towns. Presently Plymouth is split between three seats; Sutton & Devonport which covers most of its core, Moor View which covers the stunningly unremarkable northern suburbs, and S.W. Devon which covers the very middle class eastern suburbs (Plymstock etc) and a great swathe of commuter village hinterland.

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Not totally sure this is true. Cleggmentum was only 7 years ago.

But there's no doubt that there really was a Centre surge during the middle of that campaign; the polling firms, however, were not prepared for this and so their models seem to have blown up...

And that's the thing this time: there's no doubt that Labour have made up significant ground during the campaign. How much? No one actually knows.

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Let's turn this into swings...

YouGov: 3pt
Survation: 6pt
Kantar: 10pt
FT poll of polls: 9pt
ICM: 12pt
ComRes: 12pt
Panelbase: 15pt

Panelbase: -4.0
ComRes: -2.5
ICM: -2.5
Kantar: -1.5
SurveyMonkey: -0.5
YouGov: 0.0
Survation: +0.5
Orb: +0.5
YouGov: +1.5

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No evidence that giant polls are any better tbh.

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Regarding the Survation poll of Jewish voters... polls of specific minorities are problematic. Particularly when the minority is diverse, not very concentrated and quite small. I suspect the sort of figures Survation showed in 2015 and this survey are about right for people who are at least technically Orthodox, subscribe to the JC and are at least vaguely involved in community organisations (which is hardly a coincidence as unless their methodology has changed then that's basically the only people they're polling anyway). Not uninteresting,* but, as I said, obviously problematic as one of the main political dividing lines in British Jewry has always been Orthodox/Secular (note for Americans: in Britain the former are the majority, not a relatively small minority). Some attempts by other firms have been made in the past for a much broader sample, but I'd guess that'd either be crazy expensive or heading deep into voodoo territory. There have been similar issues with e.g. surveys of Sikhs etc. Not that there's much doubt that Corbyn-as-Leader is not great news for Labour candidates in certain constituencies.

_{*But in the same way that e.g. specific surveys of regular Anglican churchgoers - which are sometimes wheeled out during elections as well - are.}

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I assume this is a big deal that they endorsed May right?

No. The Suppress and Slur is a nasty right-wing rag.

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y name does give that thought.

An apt username for you would be Dunning-Kruger.

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Please take your sh!tposts elsewhere sh!tposters. You are not welcome here.

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I wonder how many more dodgy constituency PROJECTIONS based on STATISTICAL MODELS (roflmao) we can expect over the next week.

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Anyway if you want some sobering facts - just in case you really are getting carried away - consider the following: in 2015 Labour won ninety eight fewer seats than the Tories and were ninety four seats short of a majority. The swing needed to pull of this feat is just shy of 9pts. The sort of swing needed for a minority backed by the various Nationalist parties (and it's questionable whether this would actually happen for various reasons) is just shy of 4pts. You will note that even the latter figure is double that suggested by even the eyebrow-raising GB YouGov polls. Note also that in order for the government to lose its functional majority - because in practice the Unionists are absolutely part of it - the required swing is 2pts. Most polls, of course, have the swing going the other way.

If the Tories really do make significant gains in Scotland then the latter two required numbers both get a little higher.

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Still, one must admit that when the election was called that is a post that I did not expect there to be any need to write.

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So this happened to-day:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-40129826

Please be very careful as how you comment on this story

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Children, please desist. Thank you.

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Given the sort of election this is the swing matters more than the lead. And the implied swings from the latest poll of each outfit are as follows...

Survation +3.0
YouGov +1.5
Norstat +1.5
Ipsos/MORI +1.0
Opinium +0.5
SurveyMonkey +0.5
Panelbase -0.5
ORB -1.0
Kantar -1.5
ICM -2.0
ComRes -2.5

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Given the sort of election this is the swing matters more than the lead. And the implied swings from the latest poll of each outfit are as follows...

Survation +3.0
YouGov +1.5
Norstat +1.5
Ipsos/MORI +1.0
Opinium +0.5
SurveyMonkey +0.5
Panelbase -0.5
ORB -1.0
Kantar -1.5
ICM -2.0
ComRes -2.5

If you do the average there's a 0.05% swing towards Labour. So, barely anything changes compared to 2015?

If the polling is correct, yes. Though you'd see a few seats ping around if that were to happen.

However there are two major caveats and both concern the Conservative vote. The first is that London polling suggests they're losing a small amount of support or only level on last time (seemingly due to a loss of support to the LibDems as the picture for Labour there is about the same as nationally; perhaps a Brexit factor), while in Scotland the polling suggests that they could as much as double their support from last time.

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Pathetic and based on a complete misunderstanding of Prime Ministerial powers and authority. And certain other things as well.

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Well the last one is totally out of their hands and the focus of the Labour campaign has been on the second of those things to the expense of the first (quite correctly, obviously) so...