UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[YL]

No way is Tory support up from 2010 in Donny North; the government is less popular than ebola in the area and the Tories have performed hideously in local elections. Duff poll.

It isn't, because this poll was conducted in some strange universe where Ed Miliband lost his seat to the Tories in 2010.  Look at the 2010 vote, after weighting.

Con 240
Lab 169
Lib Dem 78
(absolute numbers)

File straight into the nearest dustbin.  (Sorry for not noticing this earlier.)

The Hallam and Thanet polls have more reasonable 2010 figures, but I'm suspicious of them too, partly because of the crazy re-allocation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Did they only poll Sprotbrough or something? LOL

[YL]

Did they only poll Sprotbrough or something? LOL

They actually massively upweighted the 2010 Tory respondents and downweighted the Labour ones.  The unweighted figures in the same table (these are from Table 2, but the pattern is the same in the others) are Lab 368, Con 114, LD 47.

[Phony Moderate]

I wonder how well the English Dumbacrats will do there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Did they only poll Sprotbrough or something? LOL

They actually massively upweighted the 2010 Tory respondents and downweighted the Labour ones.  The unweighted figures in the same table (these are from Table 2, but the pattern is the same in the others) are Lab 368, Con 114, LD 47.

!??!?!

What were they even trying to do?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Lol wtf Ashcroft

That 7% in Camborne & Redruth even when Goldworthy is running again ... ouch

This might sound crazy, but I think the Lib Dems have a reasonable chance of taking Watford.

[morgieb]

That poll is terrible news for Ed Miliband.

[Bacon King]

This is a hilariously amateur mistake if true, but you know, if you flip the weighted votes for Labour and the Tories in the Doncaster North poll, then it actually looks similar to the real 2010 results...

[You kip if you want to...]

Ashcroft has retracted his Donny poll of EdM's seat and corrected it to

54 Lab (+7)
25 UKIP (+21)
13 Con (-8)
4 LD (-11)

Should've smelt a rat when it was showing the Tories UP on 2010 here.

Safe as houses. Terrible news for Ed Miliband.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

LOL

Anyway, it has been confirmed that Gordon Brown is standing down. Which means that three of Fife's four MPs are retiring. In the last parliament two of four died.

[YL]

Ashcroft has retracted his Donny poll of EdM's seat and corrected it to

54 Lab (+7)
25 UKIP (+21)
13 Con (-8)
4 LD (-11)

Should've smelt a rat when it was showing the Tories UP on 2010 here.

Safe as houses. Terrible news for Ed Miliband.

I've changed the figures in my original post to the corrected ones.

Of course, the thing about the original figures was that to journalists who couldn't be bothered to check the details they fitted in quite well with their "Ed is carp" narrative, and indeed with their "UKIP are taking lots of votes from Labour in white working class communities" narrative.

[freefair]

and indeed with their "UKIP are taking lots of votes from Labour in white working class communities" narrative.

It's possible for that to be true & for Labour vote to be going upwards, becuase of LibDem switchers.

[EPG]

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In fact, that is exactly what is happening, otherwise the current general election polling would mean a swing of Lib Dem voters directly to Ukip.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

otherwise the current general election polling would mean a swing of Lib Dem voters directly to Ukip.

What's so absurd about that possibility? Of course a very, very significant percentage of the electorate are not really 'Party X Voters' at all, and then will be people who voted in 2010 who will not do so in 2015 and vice versa...

[Bacon King]

Major caveat for using poll crosstabs, but here's the average of the 2010 breakdown in the last 5 YouGov polls:

2015 Intentions of 2010 Conservative Voters

Conservative	73.0%
UKIP	19.8%
Labour	4.6%
Green	1.6%
Lib Dem	1.0%
SNP	0.6%
Don't Know	9.6%
Not Voting	1.6%

2015 Intentions of 2010 Labour Voters

Labour	75.6%
UKIP	7.8%
Conservative	5.8%
SNP	4.6%
Green	3.4%
Lib Dem	1.4%
Don't Know	10.2%
Not Voting	2.2%

2015 Intentions of 2010 Liberal Democrat Voters

Labour	29.2%
Lib Dem	27.6%
Green	13.4%
UKIP	12.6%
Conservative	12.2%
SNP	3.6%
Don't Know	17.2%
Not Voting	3.2%

[You kip if you want to...]

Nothing too shocking. The two major stories being the collapse of the LDs to Labour (and, to a smaller extent, to the Greens and the SNP, but also the Tories is certain places), and UKIP taking a massive chunk from the Tories and a smaller chunk from Labour.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Be aware that as a collective group, voters are not noted for their ability to accurately remember who they voted for unless they always vote for the same party* so though this kind of thing can be interesting, it can never be anything more than interesting. I would tend to be even more suspicious of the value YouGov's internals than from other polling companies, but that's a minor point.

Though on the issue at hand, the fun part is that there are clear geographical differences. In and around London I doubt that many people (although there will still be some) who voted LibDem in 2010 will have even considered toying with UKIP. The situation is rather different out here in the provinces.

_{*And even then... well... an old man known to me would insist, if you ever asked him, that he has never voted anything other than Labour. I know for a fact that he voted Tory a couple of times in the 50s...}

[Bacon King]

YouGov's internals than from other polling companies

Is YouGov not reliable? I just went with them because they're the only ones that seem to be getting posted in this thread. In general terms, how would you rank UK pollsters?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issue is more with YouGov's subsample data than with its overall findings. They use an internet panel that is not demographically representative* and then weight the hell out of it to make it artificially so. Admittedly this sort of thing is becoming more and more common across the board, so perhaps its unfair to single out YouGov, but whatever.

_{*According to how this is conventionally defined, blah, blah, blah.}

[afleitch]

The issue is more with YouGov's subsample data than with its overall findings. They use an internet panel that is not demographically representative* and then weight the hell out of it to make it artificially so. Admittedly this sort of thing is becoming more and more common across the board, so perhaps its unfair to single out YouGov, but whatever.

_{*According to how this is conventionally defined, blah, blah, blah.}

Some panellists by their own admission who get regularly polled will often play silly buggers with the 2010 recall vote in order to make a point.

[Hatman 🍁]

Perhaps I'm biased, but opt-in internet panels tend to be junk.

[EPG]

otherwise the current general election polling would mean a swing of Lib Dem voters directly to Ukip.

What's so absurd about that possibility? Of course a very, very significant percentage of the electorate are not really 'Party X Voters' at all, and then will be people who voted in 2010 who will not do so in 2015 and vice versa...

It's much too large. Half of 2010 Lib Dems have not become Ukip voters, but that is what naive credence of the figures would suggest. As for churn, it doesn't help that 2010 old people were not particularly Lib Dem, nor will 2015 young people be particularly Ukip (unlike similar parties elsewhere in Europe).

Somewhere around 10% seems correct for Lib Dem -> Ukip. But, by the same token, somewhere around 10% seems correct for Labour -> Ukip, too.

[YL]

Perhaps I'm biased, but opt-in internet panels tend to be junk.

By default they are, but my feeling is that YouGov have a good enough track record (in the UK anyway) to suggest that they know how to sample from their panel (which is huge) and weight their sample in a way which gives reasonable results.  However, the possibility remains that a major change in British politics (and the rise of UKIP or the collapse of the Lib Dems might qualify) might mean the assumptions which have worked well for them don't any more.

None of the other online panel pollsters (Survation, Populus, ComRes, Opinium) have much of a track record.

By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that UKIP weren't getting any 2010 Labour voters, just that the scale of the movement of formerly Labour voters to them in historically strong Labour areas like Doncaster North is exaggerated.  I suspect that most "white working class" voters who fit the stereotype have never been particularly reliable Labour voters.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, this appears to be mostly a misinterpretation issue. I'm not suggesting - and I doubt that anyone else is has or will - that all (or even most!) possible UKIP voters voted for the LibDems in 2010.

[Bacon King]

Though on the issue at hand, the fun part is that there are clear geographical differences. In and around London I doubt that many people (although there will still be some) who voted LibDem in 2010 will have even considered toying with UKIP. The situation is rather different out here in the provinces.

None of the other online panel pollsters (Survation, Populus, ComRes, Opinium) have much of a track record.

With these two posts in mind I decided to check out a few of the more recent polls from a variety of pollsters. I just wanted to share with everyone here that ComRes believes the UKIP are leading in Wales with a four point margin (check page 12 of the pdf)