May 7th | UK General Election 2015 OT - Please go vote!

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Mr Git said:
45 minutes is ample time to produce some realistic looking jizz to adorn your artistic creations with.
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"Produce", eh? I hear ya.

Also...

CD7q28uW0AAQsRN.png:large


Dat UKIP falloff. Nice to see the District and Circle lines swirling the plug hole at the bottom whilst the Central and Victoria lines so battle at the top. The Lib Dems - being alternative - are the London Overground whilst UKIP are some sort of mad perversion of the Met line.
 
Par Score said:
Oh, hey, one of those crazy polls with a sudden massive Tory lead was probably just a weird outlier, what a shock.

NEW Survation @dailymirror HEADLINE (chg vs Apr 23) LAB 34 +5 CON 33 nc UKIP 16 -2 LD 9 -1 SNP 4 nc GRE 3 -1 AP 1 nc

Edit: Beaten with the graph!
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That's a much more realistic poll from survation. Their last two were a bit iffy to say the least. Again it's just a point or two in it. That's now four polls in a row with very, very similar amounts. I think we can say with some confidence that it's going to be very similar to the election result.
Yougov really have been very good through this whole thing. Very few outliners, good constancy.
 
Why is everyone following these overall opinion polls? These would be useful for an election based on PR, but as Britain does not have that, could a better and more accurate prediction of the outcome not be determined by monitoring only the marginal constituencies?
 
Scipius said:
Why is everyone following these overall opinion polls? These would be useful for an election based on PR, but as Britain does not have that, could a better and more accurate prediction of the outcome not be determined by monitoring only the marginal constituencies?
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That'd be much more expensive for only a very slightly better gain in predictive accuracy, so there aren't many marginal polls comissioned.
 
Crab said:
That'd be much more expensive for only a very slightly better gain in predictive accuracy, so there aren't many marginal polls comissioned.
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How are the numbers reported for UKIP and SNP in these polls accurate in terms of how many seats they will have in the end?

It just seems odd that people use this data when the correlation with the situation on the ground is somewhat tenuous.
 
Scipius said:
How are the numbers reported for UKIP and SNP in these polls accurate in terms of how many seats they will have in the end?

It just seems odd that people use this data when the correlation with the situation on the ground is somewhat tenuous.
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UKIP are competitive in so few seats there have actually been marginal polls done for them. Not many Scottish marginal polls, but there have been Scottish as opposed to GB polls done.

Either way, doesn't matter much. UKIP and SNP don't really matter to who forms government. UKIP only stands to win off the Conservatives and SNP only really stand to win off Labour, and both would probably support each party if the push came to the shove, so it's not what determines the outcome.
 
Must admit cannot wait to watch election 2015 next week on BBC, should be the most entertaining since 1997 when the cheers I could hear from my house in Glasgow South. I hope it ends dead level and drags on for days, will be fun watching the scramble to see who is Pm, I suspect it will be Ed Miliband in the end. Need to make sure I stock up on Irn Bru and pickled onion space raiders.
 
Crab said:
UKIP are competitive in so few seats there have actually been marginal polls done for them. Not many Scottish marginal polls, but there have been Scottish as opposed to GB polls done.

Either way, doesn't matter much. UKIP and SNP don't really matter to who forms government. UKIP only stands to win off the Conservatives and SNP only really stand to win off Labour, and both would probably support each party if the push came to the shove, so it's not what determines the outcome.
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My point is that if you already know the 15% of UKIP voters will translate to only a few seats, and the 5% of SNP votes might yield them most if not all of 59 Scottish seats, why is everyone so confident Red and Blue leapfrogging around 30-35% percent is representative of their final seat tally? There does not appear to be any correlation between vote share and seat share for any party, except for them.
 
Mindwipe said:
I quite like TRWBT, but jeez that's quite a beating.

The This Week panel is actually pretty good right now. Portillo might have been a bit of an arse, but he's bloody clever, and Neil is the BBC's hidden gem.
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Johnson is better than he was. He's still perhaps a little to close to some Labour higher up's to really tell it like it is.

Portillo is great. You may not have liked his politics but i like that he's not afraid to put the boot into his old party and his views on what goes on at Westminster are very informative.
 
Scipius said:
My point is that if you already know the 15% of UKIP voters will translate to only a few seats, and the 5% of SNP votes might yield them most if not all of 59 Scottish seats, why is everyone so confident Red and Blue leapfrogging around 30-35% percent is representative of their final seat tally? There does not appear to be any correlation between vote share and seat share for any party, except for them.
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I don't think people are saying "Labour will win 35% of the vote, therefore they'll win 35% of the seats". The predictions usually go something like "if Labour wins 35% of the vote, they'll have got an extra 6% compared to last time. 6% more in every constituency would have won them X amount more seats". Obviously this wobbles about a bit given constituencies don't all perform the same as the average, but it's not an inaccurate way of predicting elections. Some of the more advanced forecasts (ElectionsEtc, ElectionForecast, etc.) fiddle with this to get even more accurate results.
 
CyclopsRock said:
Crikey, Jolyon made such a cock of himself here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05t5y42/this-week-30042015

Andrew Neil, Portillo and Alan Johnson just pissed all over his face. In a good way.
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i love this

that guy is absolutely insufferable. my generation. my generation. my generation. who all believe as i do. lol. we've got the internet so we know so much more - ignores the idiocy retweeted as fact on twitter, can't even get the history of the suez canal remotely right.
 
Anyone who believes X group all votes the same way is almost always wrong.
 
Kuros said:
Johnson is better than he was. He's still perhaps a little to close to some Labour higher up's to really tell it like it is.

Portillo is great. You may not have liked his politics but i like that he's not afraid to put the boot into his old party and his views on what goes on at Westminster are very informative.
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Also he presents a pretty good travel program too!
 
Crab said:
I don't think people are saying "Labour will win 35% of the vote, therefore they'll win 35% of the seats". The predictions usually go something like "if Labour wins 35% of the vote, they'll have got an extra 6% compared to last time. 6% more in every constituency would have won them X amount more seats".
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Ah, so they apply the general variance to the previous election across individual constituency results. That makes some sense, though it seems fairly lazy. A lot can change locally in five years, but at least the UK isn't redefining its constituencies for every election.

Obviously this wobbles about a bit given constituencies don't all perform the same as the average, but it's not an inaccurate way of predicting elections.
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I would disagree with that qualification and call it highly inaccurate. It may somewhat confidently predict who will be the largest, but it seems particularly unfair to smaller parties. These polls must be frustrating for them.
 
Scipius said:
Why is everyone following these overall opinion polls? These would be useful for an election based on PR, but as Britain does not have that, could a better and more accurate prediction of the outcome not be determined by monitoring only the marginal constituencies?
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In a weeks time politicians will be screaming MANDATE TO RULE MANDATE TO RULE MANDATE TO RULE non stop for several days, and whoever gets the most votes will probably use that to claim that they, in fact, have a mandate to rule. So it does matter, at least more than it normally does.
 
Scipius said:
Ah, so they apply the general variance to the previous election across individual constituency results. That makes some sense, though it seems fairly lazy. A lot can change locally in five years, but at least the UK isn't redefining its constituencies for every election.
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I mean, if we had better data we'd do more with it. You need a sample size of around 1,000 people to have a poll accurate to within 3 points. There are about 50 important marginals in the country. That means you need to sample about 50,000 people to get a good idea of the marginal situation. That is absolutely ludicrously expensive. Conducting an accurate national poll needs just a 1,000 people; and your predictions don't end up being significantly different. It's not laziness so much as making the best out of what you have available.

We also do redefine our constituencies fairly often for changing populations; every other election normally.

I would disagree with that qualification and call it highly inaccurate. It may somewhat confidently predict who will be the largest, but it seems particularly unfair to smaller parties. These polls must be frustrating for them.
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If you use UNS from the last elections for England and Wales and Scotland based on the current polling average, you get this as a result:

269 CON
285 LAB
18 LD
54 SNP
1 GRN
2 UKIP

I'd be surprised if that wasn't fairly accurate. It's probably going to be a little bit inaccurate because the Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed differently in some areas to others, but if any of the major parties were more than ~20 seats away from this, and any of the minor parties more than ~5 away, I would be shocked.
 
Crab said:
I mean, if we had better data we'd do more with it. You need a sample size of around 1,000 people to have a poll accurate to within 3 points. There are about 50 important marginals in the country. That means you need to sample about 50,000 people to get a good idea of the marginal situation. That is absolutely ludicrously expensive. Conducting an accurate national poll needs just a 1,000 people; and your predictions don't end up being significantly different. It's not laziness so much as making the best out of what you have available.
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But would one not achieve better accuracy if you only sampled from the marginals as a group? If you know which constituencies are Lab/Con marginals, then select a 1,000 people from these and you get a more relevant indication of what the swing there may be.

We also do redefine our constituencies fairly often for changing populations; every other election normally.
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But not all of them, right? At least the UK manages to keep the gerrymandering to a minimum.

If you use UNS from the last elections for England and Wales and Scotland based on the current polling average, you get this as a result:

269 CON
285 LAB
18 LD
54 SNP
1 GRN
2 UKIP

I'd be surprised if that wasn't fairly accurate. It's probably going to be a little bit inaccurate because the Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed differently in some areas to others, but if any of the major parties were more than ~20 seats away from this, and any of the minor parties more than ~5 away, I would be shocked.
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I was more referring to using overall vote share as an indication of seat share. If you show someone unacquainted with the UK that Survation chart and the final results, it's obvious there's some element missing.
 
Scipius said:
But would one not achieve better accuracy if you only sampled from the marginals as a group? If you know which constituencies are Lab/Con marginals, then select a 1,000 people from these and you get a more relevant indication of what the swing there may be.
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You can, yes, and this is occasionally done; but it's usually not useful because if you average out a load of marginals you normally just find that Labour and the Conservatives are very close to each other - after all, that's the whole point of them being marginals - and you lose out the fine detail this was supposed to provide in the first place.

But not all of them, right? At least the UK manages to keep the gerrymandering to a minimum.
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Boundary redrawing is done by an independent committee, parties don't have much say over it.
 
Crab said:
You can, yes, and this is occasionally done; but it's usually not useful because if you average out a load of marginals you normally just find that Labour and the Conservatives are very close to each other - after all, that's the whole point of them being marginals - and you lose out the fine detail this was supposed to provide in the first place.
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But would it not be possible for there to be a comparatively larger or smaller swing in marginal than in safe seats? There seems to be an assumption there wouldn't be, but if there is one, it could greatly distort the results. The general vote share would not be able to reflect that.
 
Tak3n said:
and one for you lefties!!

need sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMpl7eDEeYg&feature=youtu.be
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I have to say as a lifelong Labour voter I did not take to Ed Miliband at all, I supported his brother for leadership and thought he was weak, how mistaken I have been my mum reckons he has been excellent during the last month and actually I find myself agreeing. He had taken all the abuse from right wing press and is standing as tall as ever and I now think he would make an excellent Prime Minister.
 
ferrasvansen said:
I have to say as a lifelong Labour voter I did not take to Ed Miliband at all, I supported his brother for leadership and thought he was weak, how mistaken I have been my mum reckons he has been excellent during the last month and actually I find myself agreeing. He had taken all the abuse from right wing press and is standing as tall as ever and I now think he would make an excellent Prime Minister.
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I voted for him to lead the party, I'm fairly happy with him.

He's put the boot into Murdoch and said no to US military action, not bad.
 
There's that blog/site (I think it got swallowed by a major media outlet) that does in-depth stats-based predictions and analyses for the US elections. The name is just a number (it's like the total number of representatives or votes or something) Can anyone remember the name, and whether they do UK coverage?
 
Crispy75 said:
There's that blog/site (I think it got swallowed by a major media outlet) that does in-depth stats-based predictions and analyses for the US elections. The name is just a number (it's like the total number of representatives or votes or something) Can anyone remember the name, and whether they do UK coverage?
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fivethirtyeight. they're largely not covering this election as they got it totally wrong last time, I believe.
 
Scipius said:
But would it not be possible for there to be a comparatively larger or smaller swing in marginal than in safe seats? There seems to be an assumption there wouldn't be, but if there is one, it could greatly distort the results. The general vote share would not be able to reflect that.
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Prior to this election, UNS was a very good way of using national polls to work out the final tally of seats. Sure, some marginals behave oddly, but the idea is that over the 650 seats all the weird stuff kind of evens out. UNS was always unlikely to be exactly right, but you usually didn't need to be exactly right, because the overall picture would be largely definitive (A majority of 39 vs a majority of 52 makes bugger all difference).

UNS is less useful in this election because:
  • The vote is a lot tighter than usual (less likely to be a clear winner).
  • The boundaries are a lot older than usual (more weirdnes in individual constituencies).
  • The vote is a lot more fragmented by smaller parties (hard to capture concentrated support using UNS).
  • There are more marginals than normal (more scope for absolutely minute numbers of voters to massively change the result)
Etcetera, etcetera.

But! UNS is still useful to get a broad picture, which you can then finesse with the few constituency polls we do have.
 
ferrasvansen said:
I have to say as a lifelong Labour voter I did not take to Ed Miliband at all, I supported his brother for leadership and thought he was weak, how mistaken I have been my mum reckons he has been excellent during the last month and actually I find myself agreeing. He had taken all the abuse from right wing press and is standing as tall as ever and I now think he would make an excellent Prime Minister.
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I have been saying for so long in UK Poligaf that he's actually ok. Not great, but way better than his media depiction. I have been vindicated!

There was an interesting article with quotes from leading tabloids saying that they fear him becoming a PM because he'd be the first in a long time without any favours to the media.
 
vcassano1 said:
I have been saying for so long in UK Poligaf that he's actually ok. Not great, but way better than his media depiction. I have been vindicated!

There was an interesting article with quotes from leading tabloids saying that they fear him becoming a PM because he'd be the first in a long time without any favours to the media.
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I voted for him in the Labour leadership election.

#smug
 
Crispy75 said:
There's that blog/site (I think it got swallowed by a major media outlet) that does in-depth stats-based predictions and analyses for the US elections. The name is just a number (it's like the total number of representatives or votes or something) Can anyone remember the name, and whether they do UK coverage?
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Five Thirty-Eight, run by Nate Silver. He did this week's Panorama trying to pedict the result I believe but I haven't watched it. As said above, last time he got it very wrong because demographically speaking Britain is less predictable than the US.
 
Mr. Sam said:
Anybody else find those UKIP numbers genuinely upsetting?
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If immigration wasn't affecting people however slight as much as the politicians say people wouldn't vote for them as that is their only hook.

The party is one full of loons but entire communities are struggling because of immigration and there's is felt that are the only ears that will listen to their vote.
 
kitch9 said:
If immigration wasn't affecting people however slight as much as the politicians say people wouldn't vote for them as that is their only hook.

The party is one full of loons but entire communities are struggling because of immigration and there's is the only ears that will listen to their vote.
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It's strange how UKIP support is highest in the constituencies where immigration is lowest. I mean, if people voted UKIP because they were being affected by immigration, you'd expect London to be solid purple. But hey, facts, right? We don't need those here.
 
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