Some general election thoughts

So the election is over and the polling industry had a bit of a nightmare. We'll get to that in a few days time as we pore over spreadsheets and come up with explanations and solutions. Our initial statement is here and we'll be putting up a more detailed breakdown later this week..

So here are some more general observations that came into my head as I powered myself through election night and the day after with eye watering quantities of coffee and red bull.


Read more »

Despite the hung parliament, who wins the election matters

Another one from "the other place" so, again, apologies about charts not quite fitting. This is about the potential legitimacy crisis that we're heading for if the party that 'loses' the election forms the government. In practice, I suspect that Conservative supporting newspapers will support any arrangement that puts the Conservatives back in office as just and proper while any arrangement that puts Labour in will be a stitch-up or a coup. Similarly for the Labour supporting papers.

Here's the actual post and I've added a few more comments at the end.

Most sensible predictions for the election are that, barring a late swing one way or the other, Britain will elect another hung parliament in May. Whether the Conservatives or Labour are the largest party varies between forecasts but, either way, on May 8th David Cameron and Ed Miliband will be scrambling around trying to put together a deal with the other parties to form a majority in the House of Commons.

In 2010 the fact that the parliamentary arithmetic so favoured a Conservative-Lib Dem deal meant that we didn’t face the issue of the party that ‘won’ the election not forming the government. That is much more of a possibility in 2015 and any government that emerges could face a crisis of legitimacy, regardless of what is constitutionally proper.

Read more »

Local vs. national issues

Again, we're into election season so most of my work is happening on the work site. I've reproduced one of the things I found more interesting below. Apologies in advance for the messy pictures.

When people talk about 2015 being the least predictable election of modern times they’re usually referring to seats each party will have in the House of Commons in the new parliament.

They have to be because the national share of the vote remains largely unchanged as it has done for the last few weeks. The two big parties are tied on 34% with UKIP in the mid-teens and the Greens and Liberal Democrats scrapping for fourth place.

George Osborne has an opportunity in the next few weeks to try to shake up that status quo but for this week we've decided to look at some of the other issues that might affect voters' decisions. People are notoriously bad judges of what motivates them to vote the way that they do so with that caveat in mind, this week’s poll looked at what voters thought about the different issues facing the country.

Read more »

Updates from the other place

Things have been a little quiet here but I've had a few pieces up on the work site and there should be a new one every Monday.

Some recent highlights:

John Rentoul at the Independent on Sunday asked the heads of all the regular polling companies to give their predictions for the general election (a poll of pollsters). Ours is on the page for that article but there's a bit more explaining why we said what we said here. There's also an interesting post here by the team at Survation on their prediction.

At the start of February we rolled out some methodology changes for our general election polling. To overdramatise significantly we're moving from 'peacetime' (i.e. mid-term between elections) to 'wartime' (the informal and formal election campaign periods) so I wrote a little explainer of the changes here.

We did a little work on tactical voting and whether people had chosen their parties because they like them or dislike someone else. It's impossible to measure particularly closely but I think we get a flavour here of what voters would do in different situations where their party isn't really in contention.

I also had two related blog posts about the central conundrum in election polling at the moment. Namely that Labour lead in most polls despite trailing badly on the other traditional predictors of elections: leader ratings and who you trust to handle the economy. The first basically lays out that situation in more detail while the second comes after we first showed the Tories leading in voting intention (albeit within the margin of error). While the economy is affecting how people will vote, it's quite a nuanced subject so we've tried to come up with a way of measuring that in a way that, coincidentally, tracks vote share. More details in the post itself.

Political podcasts to listen to

One of my hobbies is running and I also tend to get extremely bored if I'm walking somewhere so I need something to occupy myself that doesn't me to take my eyes off where I'm going and risk colliding with someone.

Accordingly one of the most-used apps on my phone is the podcast player. It has all the convenience of listening to the radio (there's a reason why drivers are the only people who listen to the radio anymore) but with the on-demand certainty that it'll be something I'm interested in.

I listen to podcasts on lots of things, films (Kermode and Mayo), comedy (The News Quiz but never The Now Show) and recently I've started to subconsciously associate going for a run with the murder case so fascinatingly documented in Serial. My favourite overall is probably the Cracked.com podcast which is pretty wide-randing but, as this is a politics themed blog, most of the podcasts I listen to are political in nature.

So here's my rundown of those I enjoy and, with an election looming, they will only become more relevant over the next 5 months. I say 5 months because we're expecting a hung parliament and the coalition negotiations will probably take longer than last time.

BBC Radio 4 - Westminster Hour

A bit more traditional but mainly listened to for the final 10 minutes of each podcast where they get into more psephological topics. Recent example is an interview with the editors of (the excellent) Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box.

BBC 5 Live - Pienaar's Politics

I was put off this for a long time by the politicians' interviews but actually once I started listening I realised that John Pienaar is a great interviewer to listen to, calling bullsh*t exactly when you want him to.

Leo Barasi and Keiran Pedley - Polling Matters
A new one but focused entirely on my subject which is most welcome. Leo Barasi runs Noise of the Crowd, a blog about public opinion, and Keiran Pedley is a political pollster with GfK NOP (and formerly ComRes). They're only about 5 episodes in but have already had Hopi Sen and Stephen Bush as guests and it's a fascinating discussion, particularly given the record number of opinion polls that will be published between now and May.

Matt Forde - The Political Party
Matt Forde starts each episode with a bit of stand-up comedy which can be hit and miss but the man does killer impressions of Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage. But the reason to listen though is the middle 45-60 minutes where he interviews a major political figure and it's often pleasantly surprising. Frontline politician interviews are extremely dull with rehearsed party lines repeated ad nauseam but because Forde tends to get prominent backbenchers they can be a bit more candid and interesting. David Davis is someone I tend to disagree with politically but his interview was genuinely interesting throughout.
It's only a shame about the sound mixing. The interviewees are pretty quiet but Forde's laugh is extremely loud which leads so some rip-out-the-earphones moments.

The Bugle

For an explanation of why the Bugle is so good, listen to the episode that covered Margaret Thatcher's death and funeral. The Bugle was famously dropped by The Times for their coverage of the phone hacking scandal and it's easy to see why. It's a caustic, hilarious look at the news and the week's events (at least it is when John Oliver can take time off from his TV show to record them) and one of the only topical comedies where it's really rewarding to listen to archives of old episodes.

The Spectator - The View from 22 / The New Statesman podcast
The two main news magazines of the right and left (I'm excluding The Economist as I'm a print subscriber) both have podcasts which tell you a lot about how their respective sides view events. Both are just as critical of their respective parties as of their opponents which gives you a good insight into the internal divides affecting each one. Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman from the Spec and Helen Lewis and George Eaton from the NS are the regulars and always interesting (although I'll skip any episode of the former if I see James Delingpole is featuring). They also both have a nice habit of covering a non political story in the third segment which is a nice breath of air if you're in danger of consuming too much politics.

The Guardian - Politics Weekly / The Times - Did You Read?

As with the magazines so with the broadsheets. In fairness to tabloids I think The Sun has a podcast but it's about Big Brother and does anyone really expect the Express to produce a podcast?

These again are a great way to contrast how left and right view the same events but if you're not a Times subscriber (and £6 a week when I'm only really going to read the comment section is not going to happen) then this is how you keep up with their contribution to the conversation without paying for it. Matthew Parris vs. Tim Montgomerie also tends to be as good as they were in their recent debate and the great thing about this and the Guardian podcast is that you get the best debates between informed partisans.

So those are my regular listens when I'm walking or running (but not cycling, that's just asking for trouble in traffic and I've already been shouted at by one Smart car driving psychopath this week). Other honourable mentions go to the Political Scene from the New Yorker which is great for US and international politics and the LSE also do occasional editions of Democratic Audio and the podcast from their department of government though these are every few months at best.

So fire up your iPhone or whatever it is you use and get listening!

We won't know for 10 years whether the Coalition was good or bad for the Lib Dems

On the face of it, "has coalition been good or bad for the Lib Dems" has a pretty obvious answer: Bad. Catastrophically, apocalyptically bad. They have lost almost all of the local government base they spent decades building up, all but one of their MEPs which, for a party more committed to Europe than any other, means a disproportionate loss of influence considering how the ALDE group held the balance of power in the European Parliament. And they look set to lose most of their MPs next year.

The trade-off when the coalition began was that spurning the chance to govern would make the Lib Dems look like a permanent protest party while taking it would add a new layer of realism to Lib Dem manifestos and promises in the future by making voters think of them as a 'party of government'. I remember before the 2010 and 2005 elections seeing Lib Dems touting polls saying that 35% to 40% would vote for them "if they thought they could win" so realism can be a factor.

The problem is that it's very hard to tell whether voters see the Lib Dems as a 'party of government' as the effects on voting aren't exactly uniform. Current popularity / unpopularity aside, Lib Dem minded people might be more likely to vote for them if being a 'party of government' makes them seem more likely to be able to carry out their policies. Equally, people who voted Lib Dem mainly as a protest or tactically may be less likely to vote for them if there's a chance of their policies being put into practice.

Both of these effects are fairly subtle and may cancel each other out but Clegg & Co. clearly decided that the former outweighed the latter.

Unfortunately both of these effects are totally overwhelmed by tuition fees (and all the broken promises that symbolised) and the very fact of being in government with the Conservatives. Tuition fees have almost irreparably destroyed the value of Lib Dem promises, particularly with younger people who, more than any other demographic, were their core supporters in 2010. This is the sort of Thatcher-vs-the-miners betrayal whose effects will last a generation and taints everything else they do. Being in government with the Conservatives may be temporary but both of these are going to be in force at the 2015 election, making the Lib Dem result in that election a poor measure on whether the 'party of government' thing has been beneficial or detrimental.

Assuming the coalition doesn't resume after the 2015 election, the 'in bed with the Tories' factor will start to subside but tuition fees will take much longer. It may be 2020 or 2025 before we have an election where the Lib Dem vote share isn't affected by either of those factors. That is if they aren't wiped out in 2015.

Of course voters prefer single-party governments!

For the political geek there were some interesting stats in this week's Opinium / Observer poll, centred around what should happen if there's another hung parliament in 2015.

We asked whether government made up of just one political party or governments made up of multiple parties in coalition best served Britain and the result was fairly overwhelming support for single-party governments by 55% to 15%.

There are a few explanations for this and one is that the majority of governments since our political system began its current incarnation in 1945 have been single party and all of the ones that are remembered generally as successful are single party including the icons of the left (Clement Attlee) and the right (Maggie). Aside from the national government during the second world war, which I expect most simply associate with Winston Churchill rather than parties, the only period of multi-party government was the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970's which few remember fondly.


Read more »

A two tiered debate in 2015 looks more and more possible

I don't remember where I first read it but the most interesting solution to the "Farage" question when it comes to party leader debates in 2015 is to have two tiers or debates like they do in Germany and other countries with multi-party systems.

You take the two candidates most likely to be prime minister, in 2015 this will be David Cameron and Ed Miliband, and put them in a debate on their own and then take the leaders of all the other smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, potentially the SNP or Plaid depending on where it's being broadcast, and maybe the Greens and put them in another debate by themselves. This gives everyone exposure but doesn't create the sort of trainwreck that we saw with the Republican debates in the US in 2012 where you had one, maybe two, serious candidates and several others who were there to get exposure or sell books.

Obviously Nigel Farage would prefer a four-man (and it is men, how strange that 25 years after Thatcher resigned we'd still only have male leaders) debate with the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and UKIP while Nick Clegg may want this or the same set-up as 2010. But it's hard to see David Cameron agreeing to it given his apparent regrets over the 2010 debates.

Having a separate Cameron vs. Miliband debate would no doubt work best for Cameron and the broadcasters would probably come around as well. The only sticking point would likely have been Miliband.

Until now.

In our polling for the Clegg-Farage debate last night we asked about whether voters would support or oppose this (it's near the bottom, just before we traumatised hundreds of people by forcing them to choose between Clegg and Farage for prime minister). The results were a bit mixed which suggests that people didn't really read it too carefully but as we get closer to 2015, the German option seems more and more like the only real debate compromise we'll get.