Tag archives for Opinion poll
Snap Election – Some Analysis GE2017
London skyline, with Big Ben (Elizabeth Tower) in the background. (Photo: James Kemp) Yesterday's unexpected announcement of a snap election for 8 June is an interesting development for the UK government. It makes complete sense when you view things with a Conservative party lens. The Conservatives are massively ahead in the polls. The Labour party clearly aren't united enough for an election (especially as it is three years early). It deals with the jibes that the Prime Minister has no electoral mandate (whether you believe those claims or not). Caveats on Polls Opinion polls have significant margins of error. I've blogged about this previously several times. Mid term polls are especially prone to large errors. Voters blatantly misdirect pollsters, or simply change their minds on the day. Either way the apparent 25 point Conservative lead over the Labour part doesn't…
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Is the UK 2015 General Election the Most Boring Ever?
English: Graph of Ipsos MORI UK general election opinion polls, created from data at Opinion_polling_in_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I'd intended to follow the General Election coverage, opinion polls and party manifestos and the comment in them to the extent that I am allowed to given the political restrictions on my job. I haven't done this because frankly there is almost nothing to say. None of the main UK parties appear to want to be elected given the way they are campaigning. The stars of the show are the SNP, who at best will only represent the views of 45% of Scotland, about million people. Related articles General Election 2015: New poll shows increasing gap between SNP and Labour Expect Vote Rigging An #indyref2 on the back of a big SNP election win is inconceivable UK party leaders campaign hard in…
General Election Opinion Polls
All the opinion polls that you look at for the UK General Election in May show a hung Parliament as the most likely outcome. However, things are likely to crystallise a bit more over the next few weeks now that Parliament has been prorogued and the election officially called (although we've not had any doubt over the date this time). If you read my previous series on the opinion polling for the Scottish Independence Referendum then you might be familiar with the graphs I produced. However that approach isn't really helpful for the General Election. With the Independence Referendum there was a single binary question, and the aggregate national answer was what counted. So to predict the result you could simply track the polls and look at the trends. The 2015 General Election is a series of 650 first past the…
Opinion Polling Accuracy
In September I did a series of factual posts on the opinion polls for the referendum. There is stuff we can learn from comparing the actual result to what the polls said beforehand. Especially as we have a General Election in a few months. It is also worth pointing out that my day job is politically restricted and so I can only offer factual analysis and need to avoid political partisanship. That said I may say positive or negative things about party positions, that shouldn't be construed as support for any party. Many political positions are not supported by relevant evidence but the public doesn't often know or listen to evidence and politicians that want to be elected must listen to the public. Many people, mainly pro-independence supporters, were surprised by the 55% no vote. The polls had narrowed in…
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Scottish Independence – Make Sure You Vote
August and September 2014 opinion poll results on Scottish Independence I've scoured the Web for all the Scottish Independence opinion polls I could find. My conclusion is that it's pretty much neck and neck in the final straight. So if you've got a vote it's vital that you use it. There was a slew of polls released on 11th & 12th September, and as you can see from the graph they basically overlap. This means that the differences between them are all down to the margin of error in the polling methodology. Given how close it is every vote will count. If you haven't yet made up your mind then it is time to do so, see my previous post on cutting through the bias inherent in every campaigner's rhetoric. You might also want to skim Robert Hutton's Would They…