Why the Tories Won

gadgetmind

I'm afraid I haven't bothered going back to look at which poll this was, but I'm far more prepared to put this down to sampling bias than people being coy. As for margin of error, I think they need to accept that these polls are far more prone to error than they previously expected.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Generali wrote: »

No sign of buyer's remorse so far:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9435

I believe this is the first poll using updated polling methodologies using lessons learned from the last General Election.
.

Some interesting nuggets of information in that article.

The new ComRes methodology is more heavily weighted by patterns of demographic turnout observed at the General Election.

Specifically that...

there tends to be lower turnout in areas of social deprivation and in areas with a high proportion of social classes DE and low proportions of ABs.

And as is then noted...

younger and more working class respondents are assumed to be less likely to vote than they claim they are and weighted downwards accordingly.

It means, in effect, that the final headline voting intention figures are made up of 41% AB, 31% C1s, 19% C2, and just 9% DEs, so the effective sample once it’s modelled for the sort of people who actually turn out to vote is far more middle class than the pre-election samples that got it wrong.

It's an interesting way of looking at it and I suspect they are probably right, ie, that the polling data picked up voting intention correctly across the different segments of society but their weighting for voter turnout was wrong, and this caused the gap between polling data and actual results.

So on the new modelling....

The impact of the change is, as you might expect, to produce significantly more Conservative figures. In this particular poll it increased the Conservative lead from eight points to twelve points. In ComRes’s final pre-election poll it would have changed the result from a one point Tory lead to a five point Tory lead, significantly nearer what actually happened.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9435

I guess the real question is whether or not that turnout pattern holds true at the next round of elections, Euro, Regional assemblies, etc, and then on into the referendum and the GE.

It'll certainly be entertaining to watch.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

And by the way, can I just note again how absolutely remarkable this demographic weighting for voter intention figures looks...

41% AB, 31% C1s, 19% C2, and just 9% DE

Just.... Wow.

cepheus

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And by the way, can I just note again how absolutely remarkable this demographic weighting for voter intention figures looks...

Just.... Wow.

So a great propaganda victory against the working class by encouraging them not to vote, through wall to wall media coverage of the greatest Scottish invasion scare since the Jacobites marched into Derby.

Of course Russell Brand did his bit, as did the new registration system. Any news on those on those who didn't think they could vote or or really couldn't? I don't think my Brother voted because he wasn't sent a polling card which didn't necessarily matter of course. It's all been engineered before, remember the poll tax?

CLAPTON

cepheus wrote: »

So a great propaganda victory against the working class by encouraging them not to vote, through wall to wall media coverage of the greatest Scottish invasion scare since the Jacobites marched into Derby.

Of course Russell Brand did his bit, as did the new registration system. Any news on those on those who didn't think they could vote or or really couldn't? I don't think my Brother voted because he wasn't sent a polling card which didn't necessarily matter of course. It's all been engineered before, remember the poll tax?

not many labour voters remember the Jacobites marching into Derby

and only the racist SNP people remember the poll tax.

it's more likely that people realised that money has to be earned providing useful goods and services before it can be given away

Generali

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And by the way, can I just note again how absolutely remarkable this demographic weighting for voter intention figures looks...



Just.... Wow.

That amazed me too. So few Ds and Es are expected to turn out.

For the record, Ds are semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Es are people who solely or mainly rely on the state for their income including pensioners who rely on the state pension for the majority of their income.

A crueler man than me would say that Civil Servants and Council workers are thus Es socialogically.

D & E between them make up a quarter of people according to this mob:

http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/

Generali

cepheus wrote: »

So a great propaganda victory against the working class by encouraging them not to vote, through wall to wall media coverage of the greatest Scottish invasion scare since the Jacobites marched into Derby.

Of course Russell Brand did his bit, as did the new registration system. Any news on those on those who didn't think they could vote or or really couldn't? I don't think my Brother voted because he wasn't sent a polling card which didn't necessarily matter of course. It's all been engineered before, remember the poll tax?

To quote HAMISH, "Just....wow".

I haven't read this much crap since Polly Toynbee said that a single world currency should be adopted because at the time $1 ~ €1 ~ ¥100.

You are a parody, right...?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Generali wrote: »

That amazed me too. So few Ds and Es are expected to turn out.

D & E between them make up a quarter of people according to this mob:

http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/

Indeed.

The % of population in each category according to NRS is as follows....

A- Higher managerial, administrative and professional - 4%

B- Intermediate managerial, administrative and professional - 23%

C1- Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, administrative and professional - 27%

C2- Skilled manual workers - 22%

D- Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers - 16%

E- State pensioners, casual/lowest grade workers, unemployed-state benefits only - 9%

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

So...

-AB make up 27% of population but 41% of likely voters.

-C1 make up 27% of population but 31% of likely voters.

-C2 make up 22% of population but 19% of likely voters.

-DE make up 25% of population but only 9% of likely voters.

We always knew certain groups were more likely to vote than others, the older and wealthier tend to vote more than the young and the poor, but I am genuinely surprised at the scale of differential those figures show.

Although to be fair, so were the pollsters, as it seems they were caught out at the last election because of it.

Generali

So As and Bs make up 27% of the population and 41% of the voters whilst Ds and Es make up 25% of the population and 9% of voters.

Labour spent the Blair years setting up a huge client state to try to lock in a Labour vote and it seems that they simply don't turn out. If someone (UKIP?) could unlock that vote they'd be a long way towards Government or balance of power at least.

I wonder if that's the vote 'wot won it' for the SNP in Scotland. I would be very interested to see turnout there by sociological grouping. The SNP is the most left wing party since Foot's Labour and basically won a majority of votes in Scotland (50.0% according to the BBC). Perhaps Labour need to move away from the centre and shift to the hard left and concentrate on getting out Ds and Es that would benefit in the short term at least from a massive redistribution of income.