Michael Ashcroft's reputation as a pollster has taken a battering today, after he admitted that the results of three key English constituency polls published towards the end of last year were inaccurate due to a basic error of arithmetic. At the time, it was reported that Ed Miliband was under severe pressure from UKIP in Doncaster North, that Nigel Farage was trailing the Tories by a significant margin in Thanet South, and that Nick Clegg was very slightly ahead of Labour in Sheffield Hallam. It turns out that all three narratives were totally misleading - Miliband was in fact light-years ahead of UKIP, Farage was more or less level-pegging with the Tories, and Clegg was slightly behind Labour. And to make it even more embarrassing, this is the second time the Doncaster North result has been revised.
When I heard about what had happened, my initial reaction was "how refreshing to see a pollster openly admit they've made a pig's ear of it". But in fact Ashcroft hasn't done that - he's instead tried to shunt the blame onto the (unnamed) firm he commissioned to conduct the fieldwork for the polls. That's rather unseemly. It would be fair enough for that firm to take the rap if they had been allowed to publish the poll under their own name. But if Ashcroft wants to set himself up as a pollster in his own right, then the buck stops with him - he chooses the weightings and adjustments to apply to the raw data, and it's ultimately up to him to ensure they are applied correctly. If he doesn't bother double-checking before hitting "publish", he has no-one but himself to blame.
The most important upshot of this is that we now have two constituency polls in Sheffield Hallam which agree that Nick Clegg is on course to lose his seat. That's not to say that he necessarily will lose - the decks are stacked in favour of any party leader in this situation because of all the free publicity they get, and because people seem to like the 'honour' of having their constituency represented by someone important. On the other hand, there are examples from other countries of even the most revered leaders being swept away when the electoral tide is strong enough - Helmut Kohl was defeated in his constituency seat in the 1998 German election. And Nick Clegg is scarcely a Helmut Kohl.
If he does lose, the Liberal Democrats will be plunged into chaos at exactly the moment they hope to be negotiating a new coalition with either Cameron or Miliband. They'll not only be without a leader, but also without a deputy leader, because Malcolm Bruce will have departed the scene by then. Presumably an interim leader will quickly "emerge", but it's difficult to imagine that person carrying much authority ahead of a leadership election that will decide whether the party returns to its radical traditions, or perseveres with the hellish Orange Book experiment. Would Labour or the Tories even know who they were negotiating with? Would a coalition deal be worth the paper it was written on?
In such circumstances, a deal involving the SNP might look like the only game in town.
I was the impression that Ashcroft normally used Populus for his polls, but it's been said that these incorrect polls were carried out by an unnamed "well-known but relatively new polling firm". If he's using different polling firms for the fieldwork then surely that doesn't bode well for the consistency of his polls? After all, different firms will have different approaches towards the collection of data, even if Ashcroft weighs all the data in the same manner.
ReplyDeleteHe revealed a year or so back that he used a variety of different firms. I think we just assumed that he had mainly settled on Populus because of the anecdotal evidence of people being called by Populus when his polls were in the field.
DeleteRe Lib-Dem Leadership.
ReplyDeleteRecent Express headline: Fury as convicted criminal Chris Huhne handed Parliament pass.
No surely they wouldn't. But then again these days there seems to be no limits to the lies that WM politicians will tell with nary so much as a blush, so why not? At least it wasn't paedophilia.
I have to say that I'm beginning to feel that things are getting a bit unreal a la “Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
I hate to say it, but wouldn't the most likely leader in that situation be Tim Farron? The man who disgracefully smeared the SNP 2 weeks ago on Question Time?
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that Farron would probably be the least worst option in some ways. Almost all Westminster politicians have an attitude problem with respect to Scotland, so I suppose we just have to try and separate that out.
DeleteTrue. I just find myself incredibly disappointed by politicians like Farron, who I would expect to speak sensibly and responsibly under any other circumstance. It comes as a shock when democracy in Scotland sends them over the edge.
DeleteThe BBC attitude is pretty telling.
ReplyDeleteNick Robinson 'Can Democracy Work?
Coverage of hung parliament options.
Archive on 4 tonight's topic Coups and Coalitions: The Two Elections of 1974
During the Referendum it was “Scottish independence would be cataclysmic for the world" but now it seems that a hung parliament with a cohort of SNP MPs would too!
And now the possibility of a leaderless Lib-Dem party - the end of the world is nigh! Arghhhh!
Iain McWhirter has a point that, with SNP declaring no deals with the Tories,they have lost their only bargaining chip with Labour. This makes a minority Labour government very likely. Tories backing Labour up in votes on austerity, Trident and the mini-vow.
ReplyDeleteThat would play comfortably into the Red Tories narrative though, basically handing the SNP another Holyrood majority in 2016.
Delete"with SNP declaring no deals with the Tories,they have lost their only bargaining chip with Labour"
DeleteThat's simply not true. A commitment to vote against the Tories in a confidence vote does not equate to a commitment to prop Labour up. Without a deal with the SNP, Ed Miliband would find himself "in office, but not in power", and would soon have to seek a fresh mandate (if he could get past the Fixed Terms Parliaments Act), which he almost certainly wouldn't get. If he's unpopular now, can you imagine how unpopular he'll be as Prime Minister? That's the bargaining lever the SNP have - they can offer Labour four or five years of protection from the electorate.
And if the SNP didn't declare "no deals with the Tories" it would be exploited by Labour and they'd never win enough seats to make it worth their while.
ReplyDeleteI'm more concerned about the accuracy of Ashcroft's polls. If important ones like these are so wide of the mark, can we trust the recent Scottish sample of 16 constituencies? Should we anyway?
Ashcroft said in the apology piece that the incorrect polls were conducted by a company he hadn't used before or since. He also dropped a pretty big clue by saying it was a recently-established firm (i.e. not Populus, who did the Scottish polls for him).
DeleteJames, do you have any idea who he means? By a process of elimination all I could think of was Survation - I can't think of any other relatively new but well-known firm that would have the capability or willingness to conduct telephone constituency polls.
DeleteI'm sure there was a post on UKPR last night, including a link which confirmed that it was Survation. I now can't find this, so either I imagined it, or the post has been removed.
DeleteI'm also worried about all the recent polling showing a huge SNP lead.
ReplyDeleteThe British State thought a No vote would crush the Scottish spirit, and it didn't. Maybe they think that raising our hopes, but delivering another 'No' will do the trick?
Would you feel less worried if the polling showed Labour in the lead?
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