Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Does the Clegg constituency poll tell us anything about the potential incumbency bonus in Scotland?

A few hours ago, ICM released a constituency poll from Sheffield Hallam, suggesting that Nick Clegg has a 7% lead over his Labour opponent.  On the face of it, this contradicts a string of Ashcroft polls in the same seat, the most recent of which gave Labour a slender 1% advantage.  It's being widely assumed that the divergence can be explained by ICM providing respondents with the names of the leading candidates, something which Ashcroft never does.  The Lib Dems are obviously keen to spin this as meaning that the Ashcroft polls are unreliable in general, including the ones that have shown them on course to lose seats in Scotland.

That may sound plausible, but there are a number of caveats.  First of all, it's not actually clear that the ICM and Ashcroft polls are even in disagreement.  The two results are within the margin of error of each other, and it's particularly noticeable that ICM have Labour fractionally ahead before applying the turnout filter and the 'spiral of silence' adjustment.  Secondly, it can't automatically be assumed that naming the candidates down the phone produces a more accurate result.  That certainly doesn't replicate the polling booth experience, because while some voters may scan the ballot paper carefully for the names of the candidates, others will just quickly look for the party emblems before marking their cross.

Most importantly, the Lib Dems mustn't get away with claiming that their 'comfort polling' - including the poll purporting to show Jo Swinson narrowly ahead of the SNP in East Dunbartonshire - is now vindicated simply because it names the candidates.  The main reason those polls have no credibility is that they use a question sequence designed to get respondents thinking positively about the local Lib Dem MP just before they are asked the voting intention question.  Needless to say, ICM haven't done anything as silly as that.

But if we assume for the sake of argument that the ICM poll in Sheffield is a useful guide to how much Ashcroft may be underestimating the Lib Dem incumbency bonus, what does that mean for the SNP's prospects in Lib Dem-held seats north of the border?  Ashcroft has polled seven such seats, including six in which the SNP have emerged as the main challengers.  In those six, the smallest SNP lead he's found is 11% in East Dunbartonshire.  The difference between the Ashcroft and ICM polls in Sheffield is equivalent to a 4% swing - so if the same applies in Scotland, the SNP would still be ahead in all six seats.  Admittedly, it would be a close run thing in a couple of them - but not in Inverness.  Unless Danny Alexander turns out to have a bigger personal vote than Nelson Mandela, he really is toast.

23 comments:

  1. James, can I ask: Will you be posting all through Thursday night/Friday morning? It would be great if you could analyse the early results.

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  2. Danny Alexander does have a huge personal vote. Thousands of his constituents will be heading to polling stations specifically to vote him out.

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  3. Amazing to think nick Clegg might hold on. Could part of the reason be success for the Tories in painting ed Miliband as sturgeons puppet?

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  4. Could be tactical blue voting - the Tories know that the LibDems "may" support Cameron again, and they definitely do not want Ed Milliband to become pm. Was it not rumoured that the Tories were campaigning very lightly in Clegg's constituency?

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    1. Good point Luigi - looking at polls in Sheffield Hallam, the Conservative share seems to have halved from 24% in May 2010 to 12% in current polls.

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  5. And yet, over months of telephone canvassing and doorstepping in a central belt constituency, I encountered more UKIP supporters than LibDems. Indeed I think I never spoke to a single person who would declare for them. Maybe in a constituency where they are contenders they have more voter appeal. But I suspect they will be punished in Scotland. So don't panic. We just need to work hard for 3 more days, and get the vote out on Thursday.

    Please, anyone who can lend any help at all on polling day, get in touch with your local SNP branch and volunteer. You are needed.

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    1. That has not been my experience. I put my details in several weeks ago and have heard nothing. I'm not a party member mind. But I take from it that at least here in the Yes City they don't need any more volunteers.

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    2. Wrong. I don't believe anyone has time to monitor these online things at this stage, never mind reply to them.

      Get out there, find an SNP stall or campaign room or even stop a leafleter or a canvasser and talk to them. Someone will point you at the person in charge of allocating the work.

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    3. Try here to find out where your local events are - at worst it may provide you with a phone number to someone locally you an ask.

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    4. Sorry here: http://events.snp.org/

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  6. There's a poster on Pie and Bovril (football forum, which has a Politics sub-section) who posted this

    "Got some third-hand info from the Lib Dem camp in the Highlands - they expect Danny Alexander to be no more than 2000 votes behind his opponent."

    Which if true - would point to some form of constituency/name support, but I've seen posts on there in the past that have added up to nothing at all e.g not the same guy, but another poster had heard that poll a month back (the one we were all fearing) that he had good source saying SNP 40 Lab 37, which we know turned out to be SNP nearing 49%!

    Och well, 2 more days of this, then we'll find out for oursevles on Friday.

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    1. The LibDems are notorious for overoptimistic projections.

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    2. If the LibDems' own canvassing returns are showing them behind by a small (but significant) margin, they're in deep shit.

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  7. My understanding, based on what I have read over on UKPR, is that ICM are using two questions to look at the extent of tactical voting, with the first question being how the respondent will actually vote, and the second trying to how they would vote if tactical voting were not an issue. Both ICM and Ashcroft ask a neutral question first; for the second question, Ashcroft ask the respondent to think specifically about their constituency, while ICM asks them to try to ignore factors specific to their constituency.

    I really doubt whether the ICM tells us anything reliable about Ashcrofts methodology.

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    1. The difference being that ICM headline the results of the question they ask first, not second, which is better practice.

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  8. Any chance of a final SgP poll of polls?

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  9. It isn't Danny Alexander I'm worried about, it's Charles Kennedy. I dread to think of him just scraping it and surviving. The Northern Isles are also not looking good, I'd like to think the SNP have a chance there despite everything.

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    1. I think Charles Kennedy may hold on, and even speaking as a LD, I hope Danny Alexander does not. Just not someone I've ever had much time for.

      Without condoning any of David Law's behaviour, at least he had an intellect.

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    2. I think the best case scenario (if we're going to have surviving Lib Dem MPs) would be somebody like Charles Kennedy surviving, while Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg lose their seats. That would allow the Lib Dems to go a bit further to the left where they actually belong rather than acting as Tories with yellow ties under Clegg.

      I know the Lib Dems in Scotland under Willie Rennie like to portray themselves as a centrist party a lot of the time, what with their "look left, look right, cross" slogan, but they're a union of the SDP (Social Democrats) and Liberals (centrists). Unless the whole Social Democratic part of that coalition doesn't exist anymore surely their natural home is going to be left-of-centre, not right of centre as it is under Clegg?

      As a nationalist I also hope the Lib Dems hold onto Cornwall to stop the Tories getting in down there. At least the Lib Dem candidate supports Cornish autonomy.

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    3. Yeah, I think we're heading to a bit of a schism.

      There's always been an internal tension between the classical (or Gladstonian) liberals and the social liberals, the former skew right while the latter lean left.
      As a Social Liberal I was unhappy that we chose coalition with the Conservatives, and given how badly we're getting kicked for that I wonder if our party will now shift left.

      Although if someone took a purely mercenary view, there's probably more political space on the centre right. The centre left is a bit crowded these days.

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    4. "The centre left is a bit crowded these days" - I agree, and I look forward to a time in the future when we can have a centre-right in Scotland that isn't beholden to UK wide interests. You can almost see what it would look like if you look at certain SNP figures (Fergus Ewing for instance, I'd say Swinney but he's clearly a centrist), certain Lib Dems (Rennie perhaps), some Labour and even Conservatives. There's also room at UK level for a centre-right party that isn't as pro-privatisation as the Conservatives.

      The problem is that if the Lib Dems try to fill that role they will kill a lot of their popular support stone dead. Their only chance to regain some of the support they lost to the Greens and Labour is to endorse a Labour/Lib Dem coalition.

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  10. We finally have the YouGov/Sunday Times poll, some interesting questions were asked on the public's perceptions of the parties.

    Also, the FM's approval rating is +56, Jim Murphy's is -35

    http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tbq1budwf1/SundayTimes_Scotland_150501_VI_Trackers_Website.pdf

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  11. YouGov have (finally) published the Sunday Times Scotland poll.

    http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tbq1budwf1/SundayTimes_Scotland_150501_VI_Trackers_Website.pdf

    Conducted 29 April to 1 May (last Wednesday to Friday).

    Murphy's approval rating down again, Sturgeon's back up.

    Miliband's rating finally better than Cameron.

    The independence VI movement (48-52 to 47-53) seems to be caused by some 2014 yes voters saying "don't know".

    Some other stuff about tactical voting. If anything, the proportion saying they are voting for a second choice party is lower than their previous poll.

    Usual problem with too many born in rUK. I think the poll is a bit better than it looks for the SNP because the small number of foreign-born respondents is less pro-SNP than in previous polls, which I thought was flattering the SNP a wee bit.

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