Opinium

[Sibboleth]

I think we've been over all of this before a few times. Opinium have shifted towards a model of polling that leans heavily towards being a projection, rather than the traditional 'social survey that asks a voting intention question' model. For the time being this means lower Labour leads - it also probably means (and so far seems to have meant) much greater stability than in other polling as well. It also means that whatever patterns and results they show, they can't be compared to those found by other polling firms at present.

[The Bishop]

Jun 11, 2022 20:05:32 GMT casualobserver said:

Jun 11, 2022 19:14:36 GMT batman said:

their polls are out of line with everyone else's though. Other polls find the opposite.

I know what you mean. Just too many of these ‘outlier’ polls not painting the picture you want to see.

A reminder that batman does some work for a pollster whose results tend to be more Tory-favourable.

[mattbewilson]

Jun 12, 2022 11:08:15 GMT The Bishop said:

Jun 11, 2022 20:05:32 GMT casualobserver said:

I know what you mean. Just too many of these ‘outlier’ polls not painting the picture you want to see.

A reminder that batman does some work for a pollster whose results tend to be more Tory-favourable.

bare in mind he doesn't work for part of Kantar that does political polling. I had a friend who worked for TNS before they merged with Kantar. His role was to liaise with business.

[nodealbrexiteer]

Jun 12, 2022 11:07:43 GMT Sibboleth said:

I think we've been over all of this before a few times. Opinium have shifted towards a model of polling that leans heavily towards being a projection, rather than the traditional 'social survey that asks a voting intention question' model. For the time being this means lower Labour leads - it also probably means (and so far seems to have meant) much greater stability than in other polling as well. It also means that whatever patterns and results they show, they can't be compared to those found by other polling firms at present.

This kind of thinking was one of the results of the 1992(and 2015) debacle,always seems daft to me to be 'predicting' an election than a general summary of the political mood like the old style polls

[batman]

Jun 12, 2022 11:16:18 GMT mattbewilson said:

Jun 12, 2022 11:08:15 GMT The Bishop said:

A reminder that batman does some work for a pollster whose results tend to be more Tory-favourable.

bare in mind he doesn't work for part of Kantar that does political polling. I had a friend who worked for TNS before they merged with Kantar. His role was to liaise with business.

I have done opinion poll work, but not for over a decade. I work exclusively on the London Travel Demand Survey now.

[timmullen1]

[Jack]

[andrew111]

I would not be surprised if Johnson's departure has effectively cancelled out the chaos that preceded it.

[aargauer]

I refuse to believe we are only 5 points behind.

[Adam in Stroud]

Jul 9, 2022 19:28:15 GMT aargauer said:

I refuse to believe we are only 5 points behind.

I think the figure to focus on is the Conservative vote share rather than the actual Labour lead.

Opinium is fairly generous, putting it in the low 30s, with some other pollsters creeping below 30%, but somewhere around 30-33% is fairly consistent across all posters and IMO both credible and very bad. It would be OK if there was as a strong RefUK or similar share to squeeze, but instead there's 60%+ going to Labour, LD, Green, SNP.

Given the lack of either charisma or policy for Starmer I don't find a relatively small Labour lead incredible but in an actual GE now I'd expect that 60% to coalesce around the non-Tory challenger, with the Lab national figure rising but LDs benefitting where clear local challengers.

I would expect these figures to mask a strong showing for the Sit-On-Hands Party which a new Tory leader might win back.

[batman]

You probably aren't. Opinium aren't really snapshot opinion polls as such, as pretty much all other polls are. Their methodology is intended to be more like a predictor of voting intention in the near future. Their methodology has been enormously changed to that end. As such, their polls will almost always tend to be rather out of line with the others, most of which have significantly bigger Labour leads than that, especially in the last few days.

[Adam in Stroud]

Jul 9, 2022 19:43:21 GMT batman said:

You probably aren't. Opinium aren't really snapshot opinion polls as such, as pretty much all other polls are. Their methodology is intended to be more like a predictor of voting intention in the near future. Their methodology has been enormously changed to that end. As such, their polls will almost always tend to be rather out of line with the others, most of which have significantly bigger Labour leads than that, especially in the last few days.

That's interesting, I hadn't picked up on that and will have to bear it in mind.

[The Bishop]

Jul 9, 2022 19:20:47 GMT andrew111 said:

I would not be surprised if Johnson's departure has effectively cancelled out the chaos that preceded it.

Fieldwork dates for this one aren't much different from the polls showing 11-14 point Labour leads.

It seems to claim fewer people are switching from Tory to Labour than their previous survey a fortnight ago, which is perhaps surprising.

[andrew111]

Jul 10, 2022 8:52:01 GMT The Bishop said:

Jul 9, 2022 19:20:47 GMT andrew111 said:

I would not be surprised if Johnson's departure has effectively cancelled out the chaos that preceded it.

Fieldwork dates for this one aren't much different from the polls showing 11-14 point Labour leads.

It seems to claim fewer people are switching from Tory to Labour than their previous survey a fortnight ago, which is perhaps surprising.

The figure I pay attention to is the Tory %, which only has one set of errors affecting it rather than the Labour lead which has two. The Tory % has been in the 31-35 range for quite a while. Two recent polls have them on 29%, Techne was on July 7th, post resignation, Yougov was 6th to 7th, so half and half, and this one is 6th to 8th.

It is too early to say, but the Tories got an immediate polls boost when Thatcher resigned, and before Major was elected (which only took a week, probably good for them given the back biting that seems to be happening this time.

So my "would not be surprised" is mainly based on that precedent.

[The Bishop]

Did these publish a VI poll yesterday? Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere if so.

[mattbewilson]

Jul 24, 2022 10:26:14 GMT The Bishop said:

Did these publish a VI poll yesterday? Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere if so.

[The Bishop]

They did do a poll last weekend (though the VI figures took some time to emerge) and the Labour lead was unchanged at 37-34.

[msc]

The government polling so badly at the moment, they've broken Opinium. 

[batman]

now they really are in trouble. It would be interesting to see what the pollsters who have the most pro-Labour house effect would find. Perhaps we won't have that long to find out.

[timmullen1]