Sunday, January 25, 2015

Sizzling Syriza surge to historic Hellenic haul

I think the last time I mentioned Syriza on this blog was during the Greek election three years ago, when I felt moved to point out that, contrary to the claim of one particularly excitable journalist, the said election was not the most important in the whole of human history.  Given that a German election in the 1930s brought Hitler to power and led to the deaths of sixty million people, there's some pretty tough competition on that front.

I don't think today's election was the most important in human history either, but it certainly has the potential to be a crucial turning point in the history of Europe.  At some point after the end of the Cold War, democracy essentially withered - you could have any government you liked, as long as it was neoliberal-flavoured (or as long as it "lived in the real world", as Tony Blair liked to put it).  At long last, big ideas and real electoral choices are back on the menu - and Scotland has played as much of a part in bringing that about as Greece.

I've been pondering whether Syriza's triumph could be of any help to the Scottish independence movement, and I think there's one sense in which it might.  If there's a snowball effect leading to a Podemos victory in Spain later this year, that could clear the path for an official Catalan independence referendum.  And the fates of Catalonia and Scotland do seem to have become entwined somehow.

26 comments:

  1. I would be curious to know how Syriza got its message out. Is it like here where the entire press (newspapers or TV) tow the neo-liberal line?

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  2. Recent events in Greece only seem set to destabilise the European single currency even further. As independence was only ever likely to lead to one realistic currency outcome for the Scotland - euro membership - then I would say the Greek election makes Scottish independence even less likely.

    And I would contest the point that Scottish politics has influenced the Greek election. Five years of recession and deep austerity has led to this outcome i.e. the suffering of the Greek population. To try and connect Scotland with it is somewhat pretentious.

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    1. "I would contest the point that Scottish politics has influenced the Greek election."

      Oh come on. The blog post was only three paragraphs long. You could at least have read it.

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    2. You are Ian Smart and I claim my £10.

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  3. Somewhat notable landmark today - first poll this year of any description (full scale or sub-sample) to give Labour a lead over the SNP. The sub-sample of today's effort by Populus has Labour 37, SNP 35 and Tories 18.

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    1. We've still got it! :0)

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    2. One out of fifty* ain't bad, I suppose.

      *guess-timate of the number of polls (three Scottish + about two GB per day) so far this year.

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    3. I see no change in populus once you undo their weird 2010 ID weighting. SNP high 40's, Lab mid 20's.

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    4. Not being a polling expert (I understand the basics but not some of the more intricate stuff), could someone explain why Populus' polling figures for Scotland are generally regarded as being duff? I think I get the idea of political weighting (if 30% voted for party x last time then you make sure that 30% of the people in your poll are party x supporters from the previous election). But if this is what Populus is doing, shouldn't it show big movements between labour and SNP anyway, if they are happening? Or perhaps my idea of political weighting isn't quite accurate. Would be good to hear an explanation if someone has the time.

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    5. Populus weight by party 'identity' in 2010. At that time, at most 25% of Scots idenfied as SNP. It's now ~35% (keep in mind that 20-25% never vote normally / have no idea). In contrast, Labour had ~33% identifiers in 2010, which is down to 20% or so now. So, populus get a sample with too many SNP and too few Labour identifiers and thus weight the sample to what they think it should be, i.e. 2010 numbers. Ergo, SNP get much lower values and Labour higher.

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    6. Do Populus keep track of how their panel voted in the previous elections (The ones who were signed up back then, at least) or do they ask them how they voted during each poll?

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    7. @stoat

      My understand is that they don't do past vote weighting, although they do ask what you voted last time. This means that while the SNP take a hit from 2010 party ID weighting, they don't take a further hit on past vote as per other pollsters (although the other pollsters don't do past ID).

      http://www.populus.co.uk/Our-Methodology/Polling/

      "Populus has therefore sought a different way to make its samples more politically representative consistent with the fact that it doesn’t profile its panellists in advance, preferring instead to ask them their demographic characteristics afresh each time and to use random online sampling for a significant proportion of our responses. We weight by Party ID using British Election Survey studies of party identification conducted around the time of the last General Election."

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    8. SNP identifiers are ~1/3 of the populus unweighted base. Comres get roughly the same since the iref (shot up after the iref after already having climbed a bit post 2010). Populus then down-weight these to ~21% of the sample. Shaves a good 10% of the SNP vote.

      It happens in every single poll which should have alarm bells ringing at populus HQ, but then it's only 1% off SNP (3% instead of 4%) in term of the total UK results so...

      If you attempt to correct for this, you get values just like Scotland-wide polls on average.

      My current populus average (corrected) is 48% SNP, 24% Lab, 17% Con, 5% Lib which seems not far off.

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    9. Just been going back through populus polls removing the ID weight. Actually looks like SNP hitting new highs with them recently.

      Ironically, the more people have started IDing with the SNP, the worse it gets for them due to the ID correction. People saying they ID as Labour but plan SNP are better for SNP VI.

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    10. So Populus surveys people who give their voting intentions and then they think "nah, that's not quite right" and ignore their respondents.

      Sort of defeats the purpose of the whole thing really.

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  4. far left syriza making a pact with the extreme right wing parties does prove one thing, the political 'spectrum' is a circle, at the ends it curls round to join up - the anti-nazis and the nazis are one and the same

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    1. Pish. The extreme right-wing party in Greece is Golden Dawn.

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    2. Anon : If the Greek party you're referring to is "extreme right", then so is the UK Conservative party - they sit in the same group in the European Parliament.

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    3. I noticed James Mates of ITN News mentioned that nugget, James, even mentioning that they were 'far right' but tried everything in his power to avoid noting that this meant the Tories must be the same sort of party by extension.

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  5. Ashcroft sub-sample (size <100): SNP 38, Lab 29.

    More significantly, he says the constituency polling will be released next week.

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    1. Turnout and past vote weighted numbers:
      40% SNP
      23% Lab
      16% Con
      11% Green
      6% UKIP
      5% Lib

      All in normal ranges.

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  6. Survation sub-sample (size<100): SNP 48, Lab 25, Tories 12.

    http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Daily-Mirror-General-Election-Poll-I.pdf

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    1. Man you are even keener than me! ;-)

      Just to add something, again...

      When they asked about 'your own constituency', it became:
      52% SNP
      23% Lab
      13% Con
      7% Lib
      6% UKIP

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    2. That's odd. I would have thought that question would help Labour (compared to the headline) given that they have most of the incumbents.

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    3. I was looking at this too and thought that people might be saying 'Labour' in the earlier questions but remembering they are sick of their own MP when it came to the constituency question. Wasn't certain that was the right analysis, of course, but I did wonder why there was a discrepancy. It might make sense if it was coming from seats where Labour were not amongst the challengers, but there didn't seem to be any great increase in VI for the Libs or Cons to make up for this.

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  7. ComRes / Independent sub-sample (size<100): SNP 50, Lab 26, Tories 14.

    https://comres.co.uk/polls/Independent_Political_Poll_January_2015_34234.pdf

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