UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Insula Dei]

Total random question, but is West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine a potential Scottish pick-up for the Tories, even if they lose the general election?

[Insula Dei]

Labour have selected one Oliver Coppard as their PPC for Sheffield Hallam, and thus as the most likely recipient of my vote.  A pity about Arsenal.

I envy you the chance to vote for him. (or well, against his opponent)

[Insula Dei]

First YouGov of the year: 34/31/14/7/8

Also, it seems that the official campaign has begun, and it will be four months long. Yet another argument for the repeal of that idiotic Fixed Terms (aka Americanization) bill.

Why is it Americanisation? Most countries have fixed terms. Why couldn't it be Germanisation, or Swedenisation?

There still are early elections in Germany and Sweden.

[Insula Dei]

This week's YouGov polls:

6 Jan: Lab 34 Con 31 UKIP 14 Green 8 LD 7 SNP/Plaid 4
7 Jan: Con 33 Lab 33 UKIP 13 Green 8 LD 7 SNP/Plaid 4
8 Jan: Lab 33 Con 32 UKIP 15 Green 7 LD 7 SNP/Plaid 4
9 Jan: Lab 33 Con 33 UKIP 13 LD 8 Green 7 SNP/Plaid 5
11 Jan: Con 32 Lab 32 UKIP 18 LD 7 Green 6 SNP/Plaid 4

Terror bounce ?

Well, within the normal range for UKIP in YouGov polls, I'd say. You really need to have 2 or 3 polls in a row showing a certain trend before trying to pronounce upon it. The big news from this batch of polls seems to me to be the Labour lead over Con all but evaporating.

[Insula Dei]

Yes, and the main reason for the wipeout of the Labour lead over the past few months appears to be a leaking of Labour support to those three parties. If those voters come home, then for the most part the said home will not be the Conservative Party.

Best case scenario for both Labour and the Tories in the PV is a 5% win imo. The Tories need a disasterous Miliband campaign and to win back some UKIPers to achieve theirs and Labour needs to claw back Greens/UKIP/SNP defectors (coupled with at least a decent campaign) for theirs.

Does anyone on this forum have confidence that he'll have a good election campaign personally?

My intuition tells me the more the public sees and hears him during the campaign the less they'll like him. That's what several Labour shadow cabinet members were fearful of a couple months ago which is why they were causing all that kerfuffle at the time.

To be absolutely fair, Miliband being exposed to a lot of straightforward media attention can hardly be worse than him being constantly mocked for looking weird and having a slightly funny voice. At least he will get to make his case directly to the electorate. Close scrutiny might actually benefit his approval ratings.

[Insula Dei]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11339580/The-last-five-years-in-politics-in-Peep-Show-quotes.html

Misses a fairly obvious trick in not including the 'I'm just following orders, like Vince Cable' line.

[Insula Dei]

If this election's lost because of Green voters, Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas deserve to be 'Nader'ed.

Are you becoming BTRD? The Greens don't have the power to tank the election. Labour seem perfectly happy to do that to themselves - as the behaviour of Murphy and various other people coming out of the woodwork demonstrates.

I'm increasingly glum about this election mainly because of Scotland.

A major problem also is that Labour's been banging on about the 'cost of living crisis' for the past two years and that wages do seem to be picking up at just about the worst possible moment for that tortuous case to cut any wood, so that they're stuck with attacking the government over the NHS, which is going to look slightly disingenuous. There's no clear message to show for  5 years of opposition as far as I can see.

On the other hand, if the party is in the low 20's in Scotland and still ahead of the Tories in national polls, they're presumably doing okay in English marginals.

[Insula Dei]

A major problem also is that Labour's been banging on about the 'cost of living crisis' for the past two years and that wages do seem to be picking up at just about the worst possible moment for that tortuous case to cut any wood,

On the contrary, it will take years (and not one or two at that) for living standards to recover to where were before the financial crisis hit, and people are aware of this instinctively (i.e. when people talk of there being 'no recovery' - as they still often do - this is what they mean). It's a good line of attack (and happens to be morally right, though that's by the by), but the question is whether Labour can deliver it effectively during the campaign.

I'm clearly in no position to estimate the mood on the ground (who is, though?), but as far as I can see the line doesn't play too well with the mainstream media. The narrative at this point seems to be one of economic growth and dipping unemployment figures. There are worse circumstances for an incumbent government to be fighting an election campaign under.

(I'm not disagreeing with you as to the reality of the matter, but I'm feeling slightly despondent of the quality of Labour's communication at the moment. Not saying it'll cost them the election, as what's actually being said is hardly the most important thing at this point.)

[Insula Dei]

If we're letting Plaid in, why not the DUP as well?

The DUP itself is also curious about this.

[Insula Dei]

I think we need Galloway up there.

[Insula Dei]

Happy news from Michael Green.

[Insula Dei]

If I'm not mistaken May2015's forecasting model uses Lord Ashcroft's constituency polls to predict the results in some 100  seats that are marginal or otherwise of interest (your Thanet Souths and Sheffield Hallams), so that there is a considerable part of their prediction that is completely independent of the national polling figures. Very dubious, I'd say.

[Insula Dei]

If I'm not mistaken May2015's forecasting model uses Lord Ashcroft's constituency polls to predict the results in some 100  seats that are marginal or otherwise of interest (your Thanet Souths and Sheffield Hallams), so that there is a considerable part of their prediction that is completely independent of the national polling figures. Very dubious, I'd say.

It's possible to turn those polls off when using the calculator.

Yes, but don't they include them in their own prediction?

Cf. The discussion higher up in this thread about the Tories having a plurality of seats in their forecast while their poll of polls have them on the same PV percentage as Labour.

[Insula Dei]

Speaking of large swings, we have a Survation poll of Sheffield Hallam: Lab 33 LD 23 Con 22 Green 12 UKIP 9.

Take with appropriate quantities of salt, especially the ward crossbreaks, which are hilarious, though given the methodology (no reallocation of don't knows) the headline figures tell a similar story to the other polls of the constituency (including the ICM/Oakeshott one Survation themselves publicly criticised).

Survation's previous constituency polls - before by-elections - have been pretty poor, especially when compared to the Ashcroft ones. I wouldn't read too much into this.

Anthony Wells has written an article on UKPollingReport about the Hallam polls, specifically the Ashcroft and Survation ones and the methodological differences between them.  As he says, most of the difference between their headline figures is down to the reallocation of don't knows, because there are a lot of 2010 Clegg voters in Hallam who are now telling pollsters they don't know.  Survation didn't do any reallocation of don't knows at all, and Ashcroft, unusually, reallocated all don't knows back to their old parties.  As I said above, once you take account of this, the polls aren't telling very different stories.

Wells doesn't mention the ICM/Oakeshott poll.  That poll had fairly similar methodology to the Survation poll, though its question was a little less constituency-specific and its sample size was smaller, and it produced pretty similar figures.

I still tend to think that Clegg will just about hold on.  Many of those don't knows probably will go back to him, he'll squeeze the Tories, the local Lib Dem party is very well organised (though Labour seems to be getting its act together too), the demographics aren't those of a Labour seat, and there's always a bit of a suspicion that constituency polls are prone to dodgy samples.  But I think it's fair to say that he has problems.

The thing is that 'Nick Clegg could lose his seat' is the sort of line that will inevitably wind up living a life of its own, and that polls like the Survation one will influence the course of the election within the seat itself.

(Btw, iirc even the Ashcroft poll had a generic Labour candidate  up like 10-15 percentage points over a generic LibDem candidate in Hallam, and it was only after being explicitly prompted to consider the situation in their own constituencythat those interrogated broke narrowly in favour of Clegg.)

[Insula Dei]

I seem to remember a similar effect last time out with 1 or 2 pollsters still insisting on a 10-15% Tory lead right up until the day of the 1st debate.

Funny that Angus Reid hasn't been heard of since the last election.

Last poll from them was from April 2013, but they do issues polls in Canada/USA/UK once in a while, last time in May about Ukraine crisis.

AngusReid's post-2010 polls had a tendency to show larger Labour leads than other polling companies, incidentally.

[Insula Dei]

UKPR weekly average now stands at LAB 32 (-2), CON 33 (-), LIB 7 (-), UKIP 15 (-), GRN 6 (-).