Tory marginals poll

[Davıd Boothroyd]

The rules of the British Polling Council are that if an organisation conducts a poll, and wants to release some details of its findings, the full findings have to be released within two days.

Yesterday Dan Hodges wrote, inter alia, of a comment from a Conservative analyst: "To underline the theory, he points to the poll of key seats, published by Lord Ashcroft, which gave Labour a 15 point lead. 'We reran it in the seats we hold,' he said, 'but included the name of the sitting MP. We were ahead by 2 per cent.'"

If that counts as a release, we would expect to see the full details of the poll by tomorrow. And the founder of the British Polling Council thinks it does count, and the poll should be published: www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/lord-ashcroft-and-andrew-cooper-call-tories-publish-private-marginals-poll

[Philip Davies]

More info here: www.conservativehome.com/platform/2013/11/from-lordashcroft-if-the-tories-are-returning-to-comfort-polling-thats-a-bad-sign.html

If they asked the question in for example Stockton South, will you vote for

James Wharton, Conservative
Labour
Lib Dem
UKIP

rather than

James Wharton, Conservative
Louise Baldock, Labour
Lib Dem
UKIP

Then it will add bias to the result. And as there are not candidates selected in all the seats then there is bound to be some methodological issues here.

[Deleted]

it is also a rather sad and desperate attempt by the Tories using Hodges we should note (I would stay away from him if I were them) to try and get some cheer.

I think even I trust Ashcroft polling far better ...

[Merseymike]

Actually I do trust Ashcroft. He came to see the Tories were failing and probably wants to give them a kick up the arse.

[Rose Tinted Lane]

Agree that Ashcroft is on the ball. His polling tends to be spot on and his analyses are usually pretty good. He is an asset to the Conservative Party and the way he gets treated by them is pretty appalling.

[Deleted]

Nov 21, 2013 12:58:43 GMT @ianrobo said:

it is also a rather sad and desperate attempt by the Tories using Hodges we should note (I would stay away from him if I were them) to try and get some cheer.

I think even I trust Ashcroft polling far better ...

Ashcroft polling is normally pretty non-partisan and good, whatever you think of the man.

[Deleted]

indeed and you see Labour speaking to him etc.

If the Tories are ignoring his marginal polling then good because they are showing an heavy defeat in most of them

[Deleted]

Nov 21, 2013 17:16:11 GMT @ianrobo said:

indeed and you see Labour speaking to him etc.

If the Tories are ignoring his marginal polling then good because they are showing an heavy defeat in most of them

Incumbency factor is important in marginals. Especially as many will have a double factor this time round.

Seriously - the hugely divergent results do probably suggest that this data is very poor quality. I would much rather judge by national polling. Different marginals will swing by different amounts.

E.g. you might do very well in Illford North, but really struggle to gain somewhere like Elmet and Rothwell.

To treat them as one dataset is a bit silly - and if you are going broad you may as well just go for national polling.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Hodges does of course have form on quoting anonymous sources...

[Deleted]

true and some MP's will hang on however most of the incumbents will be first termers and think that will have little impact.

[Deleted]

Nov 21, 2013 17:24:43 GMT @ianrobo said:

true and some MP's will hang on however most of the incumbents will be first termers and think that will have little impact.

On the contrary unless they are first terms the incumbency factor should already be there (obviously it could grow  if they are seen to do a good job).

You also have to add in the loss of labour incumbency (unless the previous MP is standing again, and even then it probably declines with time out of parliament).

[Deleted]

but in the seats we would target most we won from us in 2010 and a lot of them were more right wing than Cameron pretends to be in the so called centre.

[Deleted]

Nov 21, 2013 12:28:12 GMT Philip Davies said:

More info here: www.conservativehome.com/platform/2013/11/from-lordashcroft-if-the-tories-are-returning-to-comfort-polling-thats-a-bad-sign.html

If they asked the question in for example Stockton South, will you vote for

James Wharton, Conservative
Labour
Lib Dem
UKIP

rather than

James Wharton, Conservative
Louise Baldock, Labour
Lib Dem
UKIP

Then it will add bias to the result. And as there are not candidates selected in all the seats then there is bound to be some methodological issues here.

Im not sure it is that biased, as few will know Louise Baldock as she isn't a sitting MP. Its a way of identifying incumbency effects. 

I don't trust the data, but the idea is fair enough.

[Deleted]

Mike Smithson said incumbency factor only adds on 0.3%

[Sibboleth]

He is, however, an idiot. Some incumbents have very large personal votes, some (probably the majority) don't have any to speak of, some essentially have negative ones. You can't quantify that sort of thing; if you try you end up spouting gibberish like you're an American sociologist.

[Deleted]

however do first termers ever get the amount of personal votes to defy a national swing ?

[Sibboleth]

It's actually quite a well known (and more to the point, observable) phenomenon. Though (again) it doesn't happen with all first termers.

[The Bishop]

Nov 21, 2013 17:46:52 GMT Sibboleth said:

He is, however, an idiot

You mean Smithson? I know why you say that, but everything is relative - one guilty pleasure on Twitter recently has been his pwning the Hodges on a regular basis

[Deleted]

Hodges' response to Ashcroft btw was "let's see who is right in 18 months' time" - confirming again that he neither knows nor cares what polling is for and how it works.

[Deleted]

Nov 21, 2013 23:50:27 GMT @strinity said:

Hodges' response to Ashcroft btw was "let's see who is right in 18 months' time" - confirming again that he neither knows nor cares what polling is for and how it works.

Polling isn't really predictive though - not in that sense. It can't tell us who will win the next GE.