Election night result rumours that turned out to be BS

[Deleted]

The BBC predicted the Lib Dems would regain Gordon - they actually ended up with 11.6% of the vote...

[timmullen1]

Mar 9, 2018 1:33:21 GMT Foggy said:

Mar 9, 2018 1:23:48 GMT timmullen1 said:

Sorry about Môn, fat finger syndrome; I should know better as we used to go on childhood holidays there for the first 19 years of my life.

Aside from that, yes to your analysis, although if they were going to do that with the exit poll it does beg the question why they didn’t do a few seat specific polls as they did in (I think) October 1974 when they certainly successfully picked up Bob Cryer gaining Keighley for Labour.

No worries. Having honed my French and German skills just across the Menai Strait from there, I am quick to spot a rogue umlaut where a circumflex should be!

That's not begging the question ( ), but I think by last year Lord Ashcroft's attempts at constituency-level polling from before the 2015 GE had convinced them that it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

I think one of the problems with the Ashcroft constituency polls was most of them were done way before polling day and thus missed any late movement to or from a Party. A constituency based exit poll should(!) overcome that.

[nodealbrexiteer]

Mar 9, 2018 1:23:48 GMT timmullen1 said:

Mar 9, 2018 1:19:13 GMT Foggy said:

*Môn

The regional swing model isn't reliable for predicting individual seats. In Wales you may well be right that a small sample size was the problem. In Scotland it was more of a problem that using 2015 as a base didn't help with clarity as to which party would be the main beneficiary of any SNP collapse, especially in the North East (where the Lib Dems had finished second in many seats that were ultimately won by the Conservatives). 

Nevertheless the exit poll for the last GE came remarkably close to getting the national seat totals spot on, which is its main purpose. Broadcasters shouldn't pretend that it can be extrapolated to point to a particular result in a single contest, and viewers shouldn't believe them when they do so... then again, they do have a few hours to fill with chatter before most of the results start pouring in!

Sorry about Môn, fat finger syndrome; I should know better as we used to go on childhood holidays there for the first 19 years of my life.

Aside from that, yes to your analysis, although if they were going to do that with the exit poll it does beg the question why they didn’t do a few seat specific polls as they did in (I think) October 1974 when they certainly successfully picked up Bob Cryer gaining Keighley for Labour.

Sorry to be pedantic but the BBC forecast Keighley as a hold for Bob Cryer in the Marplan exit poll in October 1974. I guess the seat specific polls stopped after 1979 as the record was scratchy after the 1970 Gravesend poll and with greater 3rd party votes and more diverse swings they weren't deemed as useful

[heslingtonian]

Mar 9, 2018 2:25:13 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

The BBC predicted the Lib Dems would regain Gordon - they actually ended up with 11.6% of the vote...

Talking of Gordon, the BBC claimed it would be the only Conservative seat in Scotland for much of the 1997 election broadcast.

[bjornhattan]

One rumour that I wish had been true from the EU referendum - there was talk of even larger Leave votes in some areas than we actually got. One of the BBC's reporters in the Midlands claimed that Leave were on 80% in one of the Warwickshire districts (either Nuneaton and Bedworth or North Warwickshire, can't recall which). Sadly, these extraordinary figures never came to pass.

[Harry Hayfield]

BBC Exit Poll 2019 was full of them: Lab HOLD Blyth Valley, Lib Dem GAIN Sheffield, Hallam from Lab, Lib Dem GAIN Ceredigion from Plaid, Lab GAIN Cities of London and Westminster from Con.

[Harry Hayfield]

Sept 17, 2020 21:39:57 GMT heslingtonian said:

Mar 9, 2018 2:25:13 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

The BBC predicted the Lib Dems would regain Gordon - they actually ended up with 11.6% of the vote...

Talking of Gordon, the BBC claimed it would be the only Conservative seat in Scotland for much of the 1997 election broadcast.

That's because the boundary changes turned it from a Lib Dem marginal in 1992 (Lib Dem 37.4%, Con 37.0%) into one of the safest Conservative seats in Scotland (Con 48%, Lib Dem 27%)

[The Bishop]

Though the actual result made it clear that the notional 1992 outcome had over-egged the Tory lead there - one of a handful of instances where they were significantly out.

[iainbhx]

Sept 18, 2020 9:58:22 GMT The Bishop said:

Though the actual result made it clear that the notional 1992 outcome had over-egged the Tory lead there - one of a handful of instances where they were significantly out.

When you get significant numbers of Indos or only partial slates, reallocating local results gets tricksy. From what I remember in 1997, we thought Gordon was probably Tory in 1992, but not by that much.

Wasn't Basildon one of the others?

[johnloony]

Feb 28, 2018 20:52:15 GMT mondialito said:

The BBC declared a Lib Dem Hold in Newton Abbot in 2010 before having to announce a correction.

Bizarrely, they also announced an Independent Gain in Manchester Central that election, which was also corrected.

The Independent candidate in Manchester Central in 2010 was a J. Cartwright, so that would have been interesting

[johnloony]

Mar 2, 2018 10:49:21 GMT hullenedge said:

Shirley Haines was a firebrand who rattled many cages in York. The Tories were shocked when she won Fishergate in 1981, N Yorks CC. She was (is) a v.confident lady.

Derbyshire West - there's a Spectator article about the 1986 by-election. The correspondent didn't rate the Tory. The Labour candidate was praised.

The Ryedale by-election count...it was said that a 'new system' was employed to count the votes that would lead to a much quicker result being declared. No idea what the system was but a distant memory of the reporter saying that the bundles were checked as the count progressed.

It was at about that time (the mid1980s) when a change in the law meant that counts could become a bit quicker. Before then, the law said that all ballot boxes had to arrive before they started counting them. The law change was that they only had to wait for three or more boxes before they start. Unless I am misunderrememberating the details.

[bsjmcr]

I think the exit poll predicted Worsley and Eccles South to go blue, instead Barbara Keeley (who? to most people outside Salford, but that’s probably why she held on!) held on fairly comfortably and the Tory vote share was stagnant if not slightly down.

I’m sure the exit poll predicted Labour to have fewer than 200 seats, in the end this wasn’t the case - what are the other handful of seats they clung on to that they ‘ought’ to have lost?

[Clark]

The projected Labour vote in Sunderland (South) always seems to be lower than predicted based on the Exit Poll for the first result of the night.

This year it'll be -  "listen for the returning officer to call the name - Phillipson, Bridget and if our exit poll is correct, we should hear a figure of around 24,000" - then the actual figure announced will be around 21,000 !

[batman]

Not in 1997, as Anthony King said "the forecast is right on track" after Chris Mullin's positive swing of 10%+ in the seat as it was then.

Another BS piece of news at the 1986 local election count was we heard that Labour was going to take Wandsworth. Labour did obtain more votes, but the Tories held on by one seat. So it was bullshit but only narrowly. One of the narrowly defeated Labour candidates was Mike Gapes in West Hill ward.

[nodealbrexiteer]

Mar 2, 2024 20:42:37 GMT bsjmcr said:

I think the exit poll predicted Worsley and Eccles South to go blue, instead Barbara Keeley (who? to most people outside Salford, but that’s probably why she held on!) held on fairly comfortably and the Tory vote share was stagnant if not slightly down.

I’m sure the exit poll predicted Labour to have fewer than 200 seats, in the end this wasn’t the case - what are the other handful of seats they clung on to that they ‘ought’ to have lost?

yes 191 vs the actual 203 but as in each seat a candidate is assigned a win probability the forecast team don't definitively say this or that seat will change hands

[nodealbrexiteer]

Mar 3, 2024 21:43:54 GMT batman said:

Not in 1997, as Anthony King said "the forecast is right on track" after Chris Mullin's positive swing of 10%+ in the seat as it was then.

Another BS piece of news at the 1986 local election count was we heard that Labour was going to take Wandsworth. Labour did obtain more votes, but the Tories held on by one seat. So it was bullshit but only narrowly. One of the narrowly defeated Labour candidates was Mike Gapes in West Hill ward.

Though he did  mildly alarm John o farrell and a few others of us when he said Mullin needed 34000 votes to match the 13% exit poll swing but he hadn't reckoned on the lower turnout(mullin got 27k+)

[borisminor]

Mar 3, 2024 21:48:39 GMT nodealbrexiteer said:

Mar 3, 2024 21:43:54 GMT batman said:

Not in 1997, as Anthony King said "the forecast is right on track" after Chris Mullin's positive swing of 10%+ in the seat as it was then.

Another BS piece of news at the 1986 local election count was we heard that Labour was going to take Wandsworth. Labour did obtain more votes, but the Tories held on by one seat. So it was bullshit but only narrowly. One of the narrowly defeated Labour candidates was Mike Gapes in West Hill ward.

Though he did  mildly alarm John o farrell and a few others of us when he said Mullin needed 34000 votes to match the 13% exit poll swing but he hadn't reckoned on the lower turnout(mullin got 27k+)

With turnout and electorate figures often tweeted out/reported before hand, and the exit poll team predict the percentage of vote for each candidate it would be a lot easier to declare early on election night that the exit poll is correct if Chi Onwurah gets 30,000 votes.

[The Bishop]

It is now generally forgotten, but the BBC exit poll in 1997 projected a similar turnout to 1992 - and it actually being significantly lower (from 78% to 71%) was maybe the main factor in it overstating the Labour lead a bit (47-29 as opposed to the actual 44-31) King was almost certainly working on said assumption when he mentioned the 34k figure.

(and it was notable the programme pretty much stopped using numerical vote "targets" after that)

[nodealbrexiteer]

Mar 7, 2024 11:41:47 GMT The Bishop said:

It is now generally forgotten, but the BBC exit poll in 1997 projected a similar turnout to 1992 - and it actually being significantly lower (from 78% to 71%) was maybe the main factor in it overstating the Labour lead a bit (47-29 as opposed to the actual 44-31) King was almost certainly working on said assumption when he mentioned the 34k figure.

(and it was notable the programme pretty much stopped using numerical vote "targets" after that)

I agree Prof King was thinking of higher turnout but the actual shares for an exit poll shouldn't be affected by differential turnout(maybe differential refusal to take part and other factors), i think in 2001 he said watch for a Chris Mullin figure of 21k

[The Bishop]

Feb 28, 2018 19:52:19 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I also remember some mention of them having erroneously announced a Liberal gain in Bermondsey in 1979 which would have been remarkably prescient but that may be an old wives tale

I definitely recall that the BBC incorrectly called it as a Labour *gain* in 1987 - the story is that this was met with widespread boos at party HQ because the candidate was actually a Militant supporter. I think that they also wrongly had Geoffrey Dickens losing his seat at that election.