Scot Dutchy wrote:Portugal was not trying to leave the EU and it had a strong and stable currency. All those figures are useless if the economy is collapsing and your currency is going down the shitter.

A truly insightful analysis

Very strong and stable.

Most of the polling companies, may be all of them, are owned by Tories. The company that oversees the election counting (yes, that's been privatised), is owned by a Tory. We're constantly being told how badly Labour are doing in the polls, so it will not be any surprise when they lose. But what if Labour's really ahead, and Labour actually wins the popular vote? How would we ever know?

chairman bill wrote:Most of the polling companies, may be all of them, are owned by Tories. The company that oversees the election counting (yes, that's been privatised), is owned by a Tory. We're constantly being told how badly Labour are doing in the polls, so it will not be any surprise when they lose. But what if Labour's really ahead, and Labour actually wins the popular vote? How would we ever know?

There is a section for conspiracy theories - unless you want to present evidence?

The Tories clearly test where the red line is, but has anything in particular caught your eye that makes you think the Tories would screw with the vote count?

Electoral Commission

Pebble wrote:

chairman bill wrote:Most of the polling companies, may be all of them, are owned by Tories. The company that oversees the election counting (yes, that's been privatised), is owned by a Tory. We're constantly being told how badly Labour are doing in the polls, so it will not be any surprise when they lose. But what if Labour's really ahead, and Labour actually wins the popular vote? How would we ever know?

There is a section for conspiracy theories - unless you want to present evidence?

The Guardian has been running a few articles recently on the activities of Cambridge Analytica, which might amount to a conspiracy to subvert UK democracy. It all leaves me feeling uneasy.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/01/dark-money-threat-to-uk-elections-integrity
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/14/robert-mercer-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-referendum-brexit-campaigns

Have read them, does not implicate Tories, rather suggests that businesses are doing what they have always done, just with new tools. The Brexiteers didn't bother with the polling companies.

Pebble wrote:Have read them, does not implicate Tories, rather suggests that businesses are doing what they have always done, just with new tools. The Brexiteers didn't bother with the polling companies.

If you read the article you will see it implies election laws on spending were broken in a conspiracy to subvert the democratic process. I don't know if the report is accurate, but it's not business as usual.

chairman bill wrote:Most of the polling companies, may be all of them, are owned by Tories. The company that oversees the election counting (yes, that's been privatised), is owned by a Tory. We're constantly being told how badly Labour are doing in the polls, so it will not be any surprise when they lose. But what if Labour's really ahead, and Labour actually wins the popular vote? How would we ever know?

Push polling undoubtedly goes on, but not to the extent of wholesale fraud, for the simple reason that a polling company that consistently gets it spectacularly wrong ain't gonna have many clients. Push polling in far more subtle, subtly massaging opinion with slanted questions.

Regardless, the council elections gave a clear indication of what's gonna happen, and disturbingly for Labour, not only saw the party's tribal support collapse, but also saw the collapse of the tribal refusal to vote Tory.

GrahamH wrote:

Pebble wrote:Have read them, does not implicate Tories, rather suggests that businesses are doing what they have always done, just with new tools. The Brexiteers didn't bother with the polling companies.

If you read the article you will see it implies election laws on spending were broken in a conspiracy to subvert the democratic process. I don't know if the report is accurate, but it's not business as usual.

Yup, and it never will be again, 'cause the electoral spending laws are obsolete.

It's not even the cliche of analogue laws for a digital world: British electoral laws, obsessed with capping local spending, as if it's just a case of stopping the squire from bribing his electors with victuals and ale, have barely made it into the 20th century. In an age of smartphones and data-mining, they're not even a joke.

I've defended America's Citizens United ruling on here before on principled grounds, but the practical case has also become overwhelming. With global mass-communications, there's no practical way to control electoral speech. That being so, end the restrictions, and allow all sides to speak as they wish: until that happens, elections will be won by the most unscrupulous.

To be honest I think the polling companies owned by Tories don't need to do anything dodgy in a political sense, because the polling companies will ask any ridiculous & leading question *when their customer asks them to*, and with the majority being commissioned by the right wing newspapers ...

ronmcd wrote:To be honest I think the polling companies owned by Tories don't need to do anything dodgy in a political sense, because the polling companies will ask any ridiculous & leading question *when their customer asks them to*, and with the majority being commissioned by the right wing newspapers ...

Such as abolishing Westminster (hmmm, now you mention it ).

Exactly: fun as it'd be, no grand conspiracy's necessary. Polling companies exist to serve their clients, which is anyone who hires them. A company that churned out junk wouldn't stay in the game for long. To work, even push polls -- especially push polls -- need credibility.

Labour just aren't popular, Bill, despite fielding many popular policies. On this, the polls don't lie. Sure, a lota that's down to the smear campaign directed at Corbyn, but that's where we are. It may be possible to fight back, at least limiting the Tories' majority, maybe even achieving a hung parliament; but denying the problem just guarantees defeat.

If you dig around for the detail, it's possible to find the exact question wording for most if not all of the major opinion polls. It's usually pretty fair. The worst that's usually on offer is asking for voting intention after some selective/skewed questions on individual policies, but most polling is pretty straight-down-the-line "In the June 8 General election, which party do you intend to vote for?" sort of stuff.

Yes, the pollsters tend to be both fair with the question and accurate with the reporting when it comes to things like general election voting. It's not exactly in their interests to do otherwise.

Where they tend to fall down is with shy voter effects. While it might often work to assume that those with unknown intentions will split roughly equally, we've recently seen a fair few votes where they've significantly skewed to one side, and that's almost always been to the right. Mind you, the hard Brexit crowd certainly isn't shy these days, and the far-right have under-performed in every European election since the UK referendum, so perhaps it'll be Labour voters bottling it up until election day this time around; even if they are though, I doubt they're likely to make much of an inroad into a 17% lead.

To give credit to mrjonno, he's long gone on about how Labour would be fucked if the Tory and UKIP vote merged, which is basically what seems to be happening. Labour (and the LibDems) are consistently polling around what they achieved in 2015.

Byron wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Pebble wrote:Have read them, does not implicate Tories, rather suggests that businesses are doing what they have always done, just with new tools. The Brexiteers didn't bother with the polling companies.

If you read the article you will see it implies election laws on spending were broken in a conspiracy to subvert the democratic process. I don't know if the report is accurate, but it's not business as usual.

Yup, and it never will be again, 'cause the electoral spending laws are obsolete.

It's not even the cliche of analogue laws for a digital world: British electoral laws, obsessed with capping local spending, as if it's just a case of stopping the squire from bribing his electors with victuals and ale, have barely made it into the 20th century. In an age of smartphones and data-mining, they're not even a joke.

I've defended America's Citizens United ruling on here before on principled grounds, but the practical case has also become overwhelming. With global mass-communications, there's no practical way to control electoral speech. That being so, end the restrictions, and allow all sides to speak as they wish: until that happens, elections will be won by the most unscrupulous.

You raise valid issues, but are you really so resigned to the rich and unscrupulous buying elections? Are you unconcerned about a rich foreign national covertly funding two apparently separate campaigns?

There could be some confusion about what I was commenting on, which was not polling companies but the Observer/Guardian reposrts on EU referendum campaing funding / manipulation mentioned in the post immediatle preceding mine.

fisherman wrote:

Pebble wrote:

chairman bill wrote:Most of the polling companies, may be all of them, are owned by Tories. The company that oversees the election counting (yes, that's been privatised), is owned by a Tory. We're constantly being told how badly Labour are doing in the polls, so it will not be any surprise when they lose. But what if Labour's really ahead, and Labour actually wins the popular vote? How would we ever know?

There is a section for conspiracy theories - unless you want to present evidence?

The Guardian has been running a few articles recently on the activities of Cambridge Analytica, which might amount to a conspiracy to subvert UK democracy. It all leaves me feeling uneasy.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/01/dark-money-threat-to-uk-elections-integrity
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/14/robert-mercer-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-referendum-brexit-campaigns

Accuracy is important for polling companies if they want future business. I agree Labour is in a shit position. Producing popular policies is not enough. The leader is also important and that is where it has failed.

OlivierK wrote:If you dig around for the detail, it's possible to find the exact question wording for most if not all of the major opinion polls. It's usually pretty fair. The worst that's usually on offer is asking for voting intention after some selective/skewed questions on individual policies, but most polling is pretty straight-down-the-line "In the June 8 General election, which party do you intend to vote for?" sort of stuff.

The order of asking the questions, eg following a leading question, makes a huge diffference to the outcome even when it's technically the same quesiton asked, after the setup questions. afaik

GrahamH wrote:

Pebble wrote:Have read them, does not implicate Tories, rather suggests that businesses are doing what they have always done, just with new tools. The Brexiteers didn't bother with the polling companies.

If you read the article you will see it implies election laws on spending were broken in a conspiracy to subvert the democratic process. I don't know if the report is accurate, but it's not business as usual.

Not clear what is ambiguous about "have read them" apparently I just skimmed through them without any fundamental understanding?

Perhaps if you look a little further up the thread, you can work out why I wrote, what I wrote. You think election rules are not flouted right, left and centre? I think we only get to hear about it when the occasional one gets caught.