EP elections 2014

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If things stay as they are right now, the Tory vote will probably halve from 2009 and the Greens might finish ahead of the LibDems.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is sort of ironic that a massive victory for the right in Belgium would translate into an increase in the size of the Green fraction. Never ceases to amaze, that particular affiliation.

Appropriate given, you know, Belgium. No offense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

haha, comres.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not exactly, its more that polls for European Elections are a complete waste of time and are rarely reflective of anything. Nobody here cares about them, you see.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Even for a European 'party' the ALDE is an impressive absurdity, so the current situation probably shouldn't come as a great surprise for anyone...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

UKIP's voter profile certainly tends to skew older, but YouGov's internals are pretty much openly useless.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

People don't give a sh!t about Euro elections, see.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ICM/Guardian poll...

Labour 35% (+19)
Tories 25% (-3)
UKIP 20% (+3)
LDems 9% (-5)
Greens 7% (-1)
Others 4% (-14)

Take with as much credibility as seems appropriate for a poll of the Euro elections in this country.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Who is in 'others'? (-14 is a lot)

The last Euro elections were held in the middle of the parliamentary expenses scandal and on the usual low turnout, so all sorts of cranks and weirdos polled well.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Another British poll, this time by YouGov:

Labour 32 Con 24 UKIP 23 LDem 10 Green 5

[Filuwaúrdjan]

German speaking countries have the worst election posters in the world.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wee bit inbred for any risk of that, methinks.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most of the EuroParl Party groups are jokes, yeah.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How about if people vote for the groups not the party. So, rather than voting for, say, a Labour candidate to join the SandD coalition; we straight out vote for "Social Democrats".

That would hopefully remove the situation whereby people use the EU election to punish their own government.

Turnout 3%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is a well known fact that German speaking countries have the worst election posters in the world.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

New ICM/Grauniad poll for GB:

Labour 36%, Con 25%, UKIP 20%, LDem 6%, Greens 6%, Others 7%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I feel like the aftermath of such a terrible Tory result would cause an earthquake in the party. Their worst national showing in their history.

I'm sure that's what everyone in the media would call it, but calling a European election a 'national election' is taking a technicality for a very long walk in a very big park.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Key term here being 'that wasn't'. And which never had any chance of actually succeeding. Though, saying all that, I don't doubt that there would be internal 'trouble' in the Tory Party if they are pushed into a poor third.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Misleading use of the word 'big'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ComRes and TNS are both infamously terrible polling firms. These polls were done at the same time as the last YouGov one which had UKIP on 31%, for whatever that's worth.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Broadly speaking, yes. UKIP came second at the last EuroParl elections and polled derisively at the General Election less than a year later. They'll do better this time, but how much better? Besides if your vote is fairly evenly distributed you can easily take 10% of the vote in a General Election and win no seats. And UKIP's vote tends to be unusually evenly distributed for a British party.

But it seems - assuming that the polling firms are in general broadly correct - that UKIP and Labour will both roughly - and that word is important - double their shares from last time at the expense of just about everyone else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Constituency polling is terrible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I know this is widely believed, but is it actually true?

Yes. They used to be much more common in the UK than they are now (local media was very keen on them) and have fallen out of favour for a reason. But they are still common in Canada and Australia, and...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

YouGov/The Scum: Labour 29, UKIP 28, Con 22, LDem 9, Green 8, Nat 3, Others 2

---

Basically polling for Euro elections is a total crapshoot. The poor polling firms don't even really know what they're measuring or how to do so. *shrugs*

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A possible repeat of the Literal Democrat fiasco?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

YouGov's solution to the EuroParlPollProblem seems to be to release a billion polls so that at least one of them is right.