UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The ancient and noble principle of 'well look some polls have us with twenty point leads'. 'pon such things the British Constitution is founded.

Anyway looked at rationally - which isn't very easy - a landslide isn't actually guaranteed, though the return of the government pretty obviously is. Corbyn should step aside, but I suspect that won't happen.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

RIP LABOUR

The Labour Party will survive. Even if it's as bad as 1931 it will survive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's interesting she's not waiting till after the May locals before deciding.

Yes, this is the curiosity. I was starting to think that maybe she might pull the trigger, but would do what Thatcher always used to and wait to see what the locals looked like just in case.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is it mandatory to have leadership elections after a lost GE?

Strangely enough no, but I suspect we'll have one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An argument for a GE following May's ascent to the Premiership existed, but this moment is gone as she's already done things in Parliament. There's no case for an election now other than a purely partisan one; this is a decision taken largely out of opportunism and arrogance. Of course this is how politics works, but this is the line that other parties should take whether they vote for dissolution or not.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Suggested swings from the most recent poll of each pollster to have polled since the start of March:

ICM +5.5
YouGov +7.0
ComRes +7.0
Opinium +1.0
GfK +3.0
Ipsos MORI +3.0

[Filuwaúrdjan]

She found a good excuse.

Not really, but I suppose the assumption is that they barely need one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I know whenever we have these over-confident snap elections in Canada, the governing party gets turfed. See Ontario 1990 and Alberta 2015.

The relevant British example is February 1974. Labour was in a mess then as well. But the Leadership was more credible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's pretty much no way that a credible poll could be produced and processed within the space of a couple of hours fwiw...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/854371831196913664

This is not an encouraging rumour.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In fairness, the NHS crisis this winter was so historically bad that a Kinnock or a Blair (certainly) would have brought the government to it's knees on that one.

And was a direct result of governmental incompetence. Oh well.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the bright side, polling is error-prone in the UK. Unfortunately, those errors are usually in favor of the Conservatives.

Labour were underpolled in 1983 and 2010 which is probably notable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Could the table breakers please FIX THEIR POSTS thank you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just deleted some FAKE NEWS I hope phew.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tendencies of all sorts exist and people should be aware of them, but the circumstances of each election differ and the polling industry has changed a great deal.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Stop turning this thread into a sewer the lot of you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is there any way we can ban Americans from posting in this thread unless they pass an IQ test or something?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But... lol.. I don't think it's possible to formulate a post that would bug Al any more than that one.

#triggered yes...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Because there's no prospect of winning a majority. But don't believe everything you read about campaign strategies (certainly such calculations would not be based on raw majorities - because that varies based on turnout and the size of constituencies - but percentage ones) or, frankly, most rumours repeated by journalists at all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The LibDems have just nominated an unrepentant racist at Bradford East.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Opinium;
Con 45 (+7) Lab 26 (-3) LD 11 (+4) UKIP 9 (-5)

Amusingly blatant herding there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Theresa May: 49% approval/28% disapproval (net +21)

It's easy to mock firms like Opinium - and right to really - but this is a telling statistic. Those are by no means terrible figures, but they should not be leading to a potential landslide.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ComRes is dogsh!t but Survation aren't much better. And tbh neither are YouGov, though they do have an excellent PR operation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ComRes is dogsh!t but Survation aren't much better. And tbh neither are YouGov, though they do have an excellent PR operation.

Has anyone got the "polling errors" for each pollster from the 2015 election and the 2016 referendum?

You would also want to throw the 2010 GE (which was another fiasco) into the mix.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway there's a distinct possibility that the massive Tory figures (which are, we must note, not shown by everyone) may be like the LibDem surge in 2010 (or the smaller movement to Labour in 2015 even) in which real enthusiasm was picked up as real support (which it wasn't). There are also numerous instances of this happening in elections before then. But it's hard to discuss this sort of thing rationally without sounding like someone in denial, which is a comment in itself.