General election 2017: How reliable are the polls?

[muriel_volestrangler]

"There was a particular problem with young voters. The ones who agreed to answer pollsters' questions tended to be more interested in politics and more left-wing than young people generally.

"That led to bad estimates of how many young people would actually vote. We've known for a long time that young people are less likely to vote than older people. But what the polls failed to pick up was the size of the turnout gap between young and old. That led them to overestimate Labour's share of the vote."
...
"ComRes and ICM now estimate how likely somebody is to vote based on their age and class background. Broadly speaking, young working-class voters are assumed to be much less likely to vote than older middle-class voters even if they say that they will do so. That tends to suppress the estimate of Labour's vote share.

"YouGov and Ipsos MORI have also made changes to how they estimate turnout. They now take into account whether respondents have voted in the past or whether they usually vote. However, these changes have a much smaller impact on their topline voting intention numbers than the ComRes/ICM approach. That means they suggest a closer contest."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40123231

Interesting, since the difference in poll numbers has been considerable. I had been trying to work out how this ICM poll went from a Con/Lab/don't know figure of 35/29/16 to a "likely vote" Con/Lab split of 48/33. Even with their "how likely are you to vote" figures, it made no sense, but if they were assuming that Labour would lose young voters even if they said they were likely to vote, that could explain it.

[Denzil_DC]

1. I've seen this election described as "an experiment" by various pollsters.

They're all fiddling around with their poll weightings after the debacle of the last GE.

By the law of averages, at least one of them's likely to get close to the final result (unless it's a Labour landslide ...). Whether that will result in a repeatable methodology is something only time will tell.

Modelling our multi-party system's a nightmare for polling firms - that and the relatively small number of polls compared to the US's (more or less) two-party setup etc. led to Nate Silver coming a cropper in the last election.

[sandensea]

2. Are they still using the famed Swingometer?

And if so, how reliable is it these days.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. What they'll drag out this time, I have no idea

The swingometer made a bit of sense when it was almost a two party "left and right" system in Britain, but since the rise of the SDP/Liberal alliance and then the Lib Dems, and then UKIP, plus the SNP and to a certain extent Plaid Cymru complicating things in their nations, that kind of approach been less meaningful. Plus things like Brexit complicate it.

What it was good for was an easy-to-understand visual representation, in the days before loads of computer graphics could be pre-made. I fully expect Jeremy Vine to make a Computer Aided Tit of himself again.

Talking of election coverage, I think Channel 4 will be the best to watch - they've snapped up Jeremy Paxman (I wonder what John Snow thinks of that?), but it's David Mitchell and Richard Osman who may keep it watchable. The best election coverage I remember was done by Armando Iannucci, who had already made The Day Today, and went on to create The Thick of It and Veep. Sceptical comedy is the way to go.

[sandensea]

4. Thank you, Muriel, for that very informed and thorough reply.

One for the bookmarks.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Things didn't go so well when they tried other methods:

[sandensea]

6. That there Jeremy Vine sounds - and shoots - like a regular good ol' boy.

Thanks for that. That was priceless.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Quite notable demographic splits by now

Take this Survation poll: http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Final-MoS-Post-BBC-Event-Poll-020617SWCH-1c0d4h9.pdf and the "weighted and likely to vote" figure from table 4:

Men: Con 45.6% Lab 31.4%
Women: Con 34.1% Lab 47%

18-34: Con 24.4% Lab 57.1%
35-54: Con 32.3% Lab 45%
55+: Con 56% Lab 23%

and the region with the largest Tory lead over Labour is ... Wales! (A small sample there, so maybe not reliable. The Plaid vote has collapsed in this poll - just 4 out of 57 surveyed). After that, their next largest lead is in the Midlands, not the South.

[Matilda]

9. I'm reading reports saying "the young won't turn up to vote",

thereby swinging the election in favour of the Tories.

Given the enormous crowds turning up to listen to Corbyn, and their tremendous enthusiasm, I can't see why this would be so, no matter what has happened with the 18-24 demographic in the past.

I was in that age group when I lived in London decades ago, and I registered to vote. I was very enthusiastic, and couldn't understand people who didn't want to have their say.

What are your thoughts?

[T_i_B]

10. You have to think about all the people who don't go to rallies

For a lot of young people, politics is something remote from them. Many struggle to see how it relates to their lives. There is also a lot of cynicism about politics. That much has been the case for a while.

The "they're all the same argument" should be irrelevant with Corbyn leading Labour, but we shall see.

[Dworkin]

11. Voting Labour

Hi folks,

Don't know about the polls, but I will be voting Labour tomorrow. Thought of a tactical LD vote and then read some sh** that Nick Clegg was spouting. Nope, I'm voting my principles.

D.

[T_i_B]

12. Strangely enough.....

....after reading the shite my local Labour MP has come out with this time around I too have decided to vote my principles!

[Dworkin]

13. Tactical voting

TiB,

I don't know how it is in your area, but tactical voting wouldn't have made enough difference here to change the MP, so there wasn't much point anyway. Quite a lot of Lib Dem window and garden posters in our road though, and no Tory, which is a change from the last general election. As these are very expensive houses, I have been pleased to see that. In fact, the only Tory posters I have seen are on the usual landowner's fields and even some of those have gone to Lib Dem this time.

Of course, I'm still expecting a Tory victory, but it will be interesting to see what the majority is, locally and nationally.

D.

[T_i_B]

14. The main person responsible for the Tories winning where I am is the outgoing Labour MP.

See the "Who's your MP" thread for more on that. Especially with reading the letter in support of fracking she sent to everyone in my postcode.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10887759#post19

There was a fair bit of tactical voting, as the UKIP vote collapsed into the Tories and the Lib Dems and Greens were both hit by tactical voting for Labour, even though the Lib Dem and Green candidates where I am were both much much better than Natascha Engel and quite frankly both deserved a lot more votes than they got.

I have been one of the more pessimistic members of this group during the election, largely because I have tended to base my views on what's been happening locally to me. I am now left wondering if Labour might have retained the seat where I live with a better candidate and more engaging local party.

[T_i_B]

15. Replacing Clegg with Labour's Jared O'Mara has not worked out at all

Last edited Sat Oct 28, 2017, 04:46 AM - Edit history (2)

O'Mara has just been suspended from the Labour party after misogynist and homophobic online posts he's made online have come to light.

Knowing something of Jared "I wish I were a misogynist I'd smash her in the face" O'Mara's reputation round these parts (from when he ran West St Live) it is not unreasonable to expect that there is plenty more stuff on him still to come to light.

You wouldn't think it would be possible for Labour to find a worse MP than Clegg to represent the constituency I grew up in but they managed it! It's a major problem for Momentum as well as O'Mara was heavily backed by them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41750136

MP Jared O'Mara has been suspended by Labour while it investigates misogynistic and homophobic comments he is alleged to have made.

On Monday, Mr O'Mara resigned from the women and equalities committee after political website Guido Fawkes unearthed offensive comments made by the 35-year-old MP online as a younger man.

The Guido Fawkes site has also found another post made by Mr O'Mara in his mid-20s, a review of an Arctic Monkeys gig, in which he calls women "sexy little slags".

And it has published details of a post to a music forum, allegedly made by Mr O'Mara in 2009, which includes offensive remarks about women.

[T_i_B]

16. Jared O'Mara has resigned from Labour

Only days after being reinstated by the party.

What a terrible MP he has been!