Saturday, June 3, 2017

We'll soon know a lot more than we currently do

Saturday nights are always the busiest time for opinion polls during an election campaign, because so many of the Sunday papers commission them.  We'll get the usual batch of GB-wide polls from Opinium, YouGov, ICM, ComRes, etc, but there's also going to be a full-scale Scottish poll from Survation.  I must say I'm just a tad nervous about this one, because it's presumably going to be the most up-to-date Scottish poll we've seen - the last one was Ipsos-Mori, which was conducted between the 22nd and 27th of May.  It's perfectly possible that Survation will pick up changes that have happened since then, with the most troubling potential scenario being a significant swing from SNP to Labour as a result of the Corbyn bandwagon.

As I always say, subsamples are our early warning system, albeit we never quite know whether that system is feeding us dud information.  There have been a couple of troubling subsamples over the last 24 hours : Ipsos-Mori put the SNP on 34%, Labour on 31% and the Tories on 25%, while a subsample of 18-24 year olds from ICM put Labour way out in front.  Both of those results can be explained away without too much effort - Ipsos-Mori's subsample was particularly tiny, and ICM may have just found a very weird sample, because it had Labour in the lead even on 2015 vote recall.  All the same, both polls are up-to-date, and are at least consistent with the possibility of a Labour surge at the SNP's expense.

On a more reassuring note, the YouGov projection model has remained relatively stable, and today's update suggests the SNP are on course to win 47 of the 59 seats in Scotland.  That's based on interviews over the last seven days, so it covers a slightly longer timescale than most regular polls, but it seems unlikely that the SNP would be as high as 47 if YouGov had picked up a sharp drop in their support over the last few days.  However, the floor for the SNP (ie. the minimum number of seats they're expected to win within a 95% confidence interval) has suddenly fallen from the low 30s to the high 20s - and that may well indicate some kind of boost for Labour, even if those votes aren't necessarily coming from the SNP.  There's no way the Tories on their own could ever be responsible for getting the SNP below 30.

15 comments:

  1. Taking with a pinch of salt as always, I've been keeping an on the figures in individual seats with YouGov's election model over the last few days. It looks like there has been a bit of a Labour uptick, however the Conservatives seem to be down a little from yesterday and the day before, for example in most of the north east seats the Tories seem a little down and in the Central belt seats Labour are beginning to overtake the Tories.

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    1. I also wonder if the model will show a more accurate picture in seats as interviews are carried out, I see the Lib Dem lead in Orkney and Shetland increased from yesterday for example.

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    2. And Green has gone from 2nd to 4th in Glasgow North.

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  2. James,

    It will be 'interesting' to see whether the direction of travel against Theresa May continues or not. Sadly, it is English constituencies that will make or break this election.

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  3. What's your gut feel on the election everyone?

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    1. Snp 50,tory 8 libdem 1 Labour nada
      Tories lose enough seats across UK for J-Corb to become pm propped up by snp
      :)

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    2. Ok, here's my prediction:

      Round about Wednesday teatime Theresa will have a wee panic about her prospects and spontaneously announce we're on a war footing with Madagascar. Boris will make up some vacuous shit about rogue lemurs and it will dominate the news for the following fortnight. Several action groups against rogue lemurs will spring up. During a particularly stressful interview Boris will invent a new disease. The entire military will be inoculated against parasitic lemur phage. We'll all forget there was an election about to happen and instead the country will split into three opposing factions - pro-lemurs, anti-lemurs and UKIP. Minor skirmishes will break out. Theresa will blame Jeremy. Jeremy will turn to the bong. Trump will denounce the lemur scourge and pledge to wipe them all out using nothing more than a slight increase in global temperatures and some missiles. Nigel will have an orgasm.

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  4. I given up trying to call elections. I actually thought we had that indy ref walked. I must be hanging out with the wrong crowd.

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  5. James, are you putting your hat in with predictions on the election in Scotland and then in UK?

    It seems (and I hope) that the majorities in yes leaning/labour areas are just too large for labour to beat if there is a bounce back. The main worry is turnout, driving round Glasgow today there is distinctly less political posters in windows for any party. Argyle Street today 3 snp and 1 Labour. Last general election it was certainly a lot more! However, turnout here will affect all parties. Tories are nowhere near it here, again I hope.

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  6. Remarkable turnout at Glasgow Green but I opted to do street work for local SNP candidate instead. The response was positive. I can't say I noticed any real downturn on the SNP support and the supporters of other parties, particularly the Tories was surprisingly subdued in what is one their few strongholds in the constituency.

    I'm not feeling a sudden Labour surge. I think a few seats may fall but I will be surprised if we drop below 40 seats. I said 44 seats in 2015. I think something similar this time. Anything above that will icing on the cake. 75% of seats is a big win any book. It would be like May taking 488 seats.

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  7. Vote Labour and get rid of the Nat sis and their Tory parent party.

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