Browsed by
Category: General Election

Four hours and 26 minutes after exit poll Betfair punters rated a CON majority as a 28% shot

Four hours and 26 minutes after exit poll Betfair punters rated a CON majority as a 28% shot

Comments 0 Comment

Screen grab of Betfair GE2015 outcome market timed 2.26am May 8th Two months to the day after the election and people are still talking about the outcome which I would argue was a bigger shock than what happened in 1992. Then there was just one poll that was showing a Tory lead. In the run up to May 7th quite a number of the phone polls had reasonable CON margins including a couple which had a blue lead of 6%….

Read More Read More

At exactly 2200 on May 7th UK politics totally changed in the biggest shock election since 1970

At exactly 2200 on May 7th UK politics totally changed in the biggest shock election since 1970

Comments 0 Comment

An invitation to PBers to join an academic/Ipsos-MORI post GE15 conference next week After every election since 1979 there’s been a joint academic and MORI (now Ipsos-MORI) conference to look by at what happened and the lessons for the future. The 2015 one takes lace next Monday and Tuesday in London. The organisers tell me that PBers are very welcome to apply for tickets. The only cost might be a small catering charge. Full details and links can be found…

Read More Read More

Nick Sparrow, the pollster who did most to change post-1992, on poll averaging, herding and the pressure to conform

Nick Sparrow, the pollster who did most to change post-1992, on poll averaging, herding and the pressure to conform

Comments 0 Comment

< Why Polls End Up Saying The Same Thing Following the General Election, the pollsters have been accused of having herd instincts.  How else do so many polling companies, acting independently, get to the same – wrong – answer? In the final days of the campaign, the polls mainly agreed on the likely outcome, and even a late movement to Labour.  Polls of polls ironed out small differences and gave an even greater feeling of certainty.  But the natural belief...

Read More Read More

Continuing his series on the boundaries Antifrank on the role of the Boundary Commission

Continuing his series on the boundaries Antifrank on the role of the Boundary Commission

Comments 0 Comment

The body that will oversee the shake-up In my last two posts, here and here, I’ve looked at the likely impact of the boundary review and considered how the parties might wish to see those boundaries fall.  To date I haven’t really looked at the role of the Boundary Commissions at all.  This is a serious omission. In fact, it will be the Boundary Commissions that determine the constituency boundaries. The parties can make representations but the Boundary Commissions will have…

Read More Read More

How the voters moved on May 7th

How the voters moved on May 7th

Comments 0 Comment

Superb work from Martin Baxter of Electoral Calculus on how the votes switched on May 7th http://t.co/4fOpjObE7x pic.twitter.com/A29Y8a37ss — TSE (@TSEofPB) June 29, 2015 This is a great bit of analysis of how the voters moved on election day from the previous general election, Martin Baxter explains The graphic shows the various migrations of one hundred typical voters from 2010 to now. Voters who have switched from one party to another are shown moving along the corresponding arrow. “Lost” supporters…

Read More Read More

Guest Slot: Social media and shy rightwingers

Guest Slot: Social media and shy rightwingers

Comments 0 Comment

Tissue Price on the polling errors across Europe The inquest into the polling disaster at the UK General Election continues. Matt Singh of NumberCruncherPolitics provided an excellent overview of the pollsters’ initial thoughts last week, ahead of the first meeting of the official BPC/MRS inquiry. Some pollsters think faulty sampling was the principal cause of error, some blame turnout modelling, and one thinks a genuine late swing was the biggest single factor. Dan Hodges channels Emile Zola in accusing the…

Read More Read More

Guest slot: The boundaries of reason

Guest slot: The boundaries of reason

Comments 0 Comment

Antifrank looks at The boundaries of reason: the possible shape of the 2020 election I previously looked back at the impact of demographic changes on party politics from 1992 to 2015.  That’s all well and good, but what changes can we expect for 2020?  To determine that we first need to consider what the new boundaries are likely to look like. It might be thought that the future musings of the Boundary Commissions are imponderable, but we have quite a…

Read More Read More

Antifrank compares 2015 to 1992

Antifrank compares 2015 to 1992

Comments 0 Comment

We spend much time looking at the most recent developments.  But every now and then it is profitable to stand back and look at longer term trends.  That is most easily done by comparing elections which produced quite similar overall results and then looking at the detail.  The 1992 and the 2015 election results are sufficiently similar overall to make that a valuable exercise.  Except in Scotland. The overall result in 2015 was as follows: Con 330 Lab 232 SNP 56 Lib Dem 8 Plaid…

Read More Read More