The third and fifth largest parties in the Scottish Parliament are a source of neverending bafflement to me. Labour and the Lib Dems have been constantly telling the SNP they need to pull their fingers out in support of the Remain campaign in the EU referendum. So what happens? Alex Salmond makes up 50% of the entire Remain side of the panel in the first big UK-wide TV referendum debate, and puts forward a relentlessly positive case for membership of the European Union. Kezia Dugdale and Willie Rennie then denounce him for being there, and Rennie in particular urges him to quit the Remain campaign before he does any more damage. Er, what?! Get the story straight, guys.
Rennie's main complaint seems to be that, by answering an audience member's question on whether a Leave vote would trigger a second independence referendum, Salmond may have indirectly encouraged independence supporters in Scotland to vote Leave. Let me just gently try to point out the bleedin' obvious here...
1) Rennie and his colleagues are forever telling us that the settled will of Scotland is to oppose independence. If he really believes that, it surely follows that more people in Scotland will be scared into voting Remain by the prospect of a second indyref than will be encouraged to vote in the opposite direction.
2) This was a UK-wide debate in a UK-wide referendum. More than 80% of the population of the UK live in England. As we know from polling during the indyref, there is only limited sympathy for Scottish independence south of the border. It therefore doesn't take a genius to work out which side will benefit from the prospect of a Leave vote bringing about independence. That's probably why David Cameron has gone out of his way on a number of occasions to warn English voters about the SNP's plans for a second indyref in the event of Brexit.
3) What Salmond said in no way contradicts his genuine support for the Remain campaign and desire for a Remain victory. It's perfectly reasonable to say "I hope you take my points on board, but if you don't, you at least need make the decision with your eyes wide open and in full awareness of the consequences. Because we're determined to make sure Scotland's interests are protected whatever happens."
4) If a political leader is worried about "damage" being done, surely the NUMBER ONE thing you DON'T want to do is castigate one of the two representatives of YOUR OWN CAMPAIGN in the first big TV debate? Just a thought, Willie.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Friday, May 27, 2016
Alex Salmond seizes the initiative and boosts the chances of a second independence referendum in the event of Brexit
Alex Salmond is certainly a man who knows how to lay down a marker. When he was asked during tonight's televised EU debate whether Brexit might lead to a second independence referendum, I'm sure many people were expecting him to give a cagey answer. Instead his message was utterly uncompromising -
* A second referendum would be justified.
* It would happen within two years.
* There would be a mandate for it because a) there is a pro-independence majority in the elected Scottish Parliament (thus liberating us from the fatuous obsession with the questionable results of a single ICM opinion poll), and b) the SNP's share of the vote this month was greater than that received by any other lead party of government in the whole of western Europe.
As always, he made clear that he was expressing a personal view, and we know it's likely that there is a genuine difference of emphasis between himself and the more cautious Nicola Sturgeon. So there's still wiggle-room for the SNP if Brexit occurs and for some reason they decide not to push for a second indyref. But it's hard to believe Salmond would have spoken so emphatically unless there was a collective desire within the party to at least keep the option of a post-Brexit referendum firmly open - and that's what has been achieved.
Ultimately, this has always been a question of narrative more than arithmetic. In the immediate aftermath of the election, the SNP were temporarily on the back foot, and they allowed both unionist politicians and unionist journalists to weave a narrative that the prospect of a second referendum had somehow receded. That claim never had any rational basis, but it could easily have become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it hadn't been challenged in a telling way. With perfect timing, Salmond has seized back the initiative and probably repaired pretty much all of the damage at a stroke. His comments are currently the lead headline on the BBC news website, so they're going to be heard loud and clear.
And yes, I know some of you will be muttering to yourselves that Brexit isn't going to happen and this whole strategy will prove to be a dead end in a few short weeks. But I don't know of anyone - bookies, academics, pundits - who rates the probability of a Leave vote as lower than 15%. So it's a non-trivial chance, and we have to be prepared for it.
On the debate more broadly, I'm not sure whether the official campaigns were allowed to nominate their own representatives, but I presume that's unlikely (would Remain really have risked alienating Tory England by nominating Salmond, for example?). If it was actually the BBC who made the selections, I can imagine that the Leave campaign may have been pretty unhappy with the line-up - it essentially framed the choice as being between pro-EU progressives and hard right Europhobes. They could really have done with Kate Hoey being there in place of Diane James. Even Tom Harris would have been better - we political obsessives may know all too well what he's really like, but most people don't, and he's just about capable of passing himself off as a progressive with a bit of effort.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Nats for AV
Sometimes a mischievous thought won't let you go, and you just need to get it out of your system, even though you have a horrible feeling that not everyone will get/appreciate the joke...
So who's with me in the Nats For AV campaign? At least it'll save us the embarrassment of being on the same side as either David Cameron or Michael Gove.
Today I'm launching a campaign for people to spoil their EU ballot papers by writing "AV" on them. #gamechanger #masterstroke #BellaTribute— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 26, 2016
@JamesKelly excuse me, but what is the point of this? Talk about the weak kicking the weaker.— Pat Kane (@thoughtland) May 26, 2016
.@thoughtland I'm not quite sure what you're asking me, Pat?— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 26, 2016
I'm slightly disappointed not everyone got the AV joke, so I'm seriously thinking of doubling down and setting up a Facebook campaign group.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 26, 2016
So who's with me in the Nats For AV campaign? At least it'll save us the embarrassment of being on the same side as either David Cameron or Michael Gove.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Leave campaign holds narrow lead in BMG online poll
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 44% (+1)
Leave 45% (n/c)
Not a huge amount to say about this one, other than that it adds even further to the weight of evidence that online polling is not picking up the swing to Remain reported by the ORB and Ipsos-Mori phone polls. There have now been seven online polls published over the last ten days or so, and six of them have failed to show a meaningful swing to Remain (once methodological tweaks are allowed for).
The fact that Leave's support is proving resilient this week of all weeks is absolutely critical - because postal voting is about to get underway in earnest. It would be the worst possible moment for either side to suffer a collapse.
Drama as Survation reports that Remain's lead has dropped to just SIX points - unusually low for a telephone poll
It's beginning to look like the signs over the weekend and Monday that Remain were pulling clear in the EU referendum may have been illusory. Hot on the heels of YouGov and ICM polls suggesting that Remain have made no progress at all in online polling (and have possibly gone backwards), we have a new Survation telephone poll that puts the Remain lead at just 6%. As far as I can see from the records, that's the third worst showing for Remain in any phone poll from any firm - the only worse ones were a freakish ORB poll in March, and YouGov's rather artificial experiment earlier this month that was intended to illustrate that phone polls are inaccurate.
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 44% (-1)
Leave 38% (n/c)
The change from the last Survation poll may look insignificant, but it has to be remembered that the previous poll was already the worst for Remain in the series by some distance - Survation were showing a gap of eleven points in March, and fifteen points in February. Perhaps more to the point, if Ipsos-Mori and ORB were correct that the Remain lead has dramatically surged recently, you wouldn't expect Leave to be narrowing the gap in any other phone poll - even by the smallest of amounts. So in spite of the claims from Downing Street that private polling corroborates the Remain-friendly findings from ORB, the evidence from public polls now looks very shaky - three out of five telephone firms (ICM, ComRes and Survation) are failing to support that narrative, as are three out of four online firms (YouGov, ICM and TNS).
It's also worth emphasising just how bad yesterday's ICM poll was for Remain, once you take account of the methodological tweaks. ICM have noticed that the earliest responders to their online polls are disproportionately likely to be Leave supporters, so they've introduced two changes to resolve that problem - they're downweighting early responders, and are also staggering survey invitations in the hope of attracting a more representative sample in the first place. Crucially, we're told that the weighting changes alone were responsible for the equivalent of a 2% swing to Remain - meaning that without them Leave would have had a 4% lead in the poll. But it's surely logical to assume that the staggering of the survey invitations also worked in Remain's favour, which may well mean that without any methodological changes at all, the Leave lead would have been even higher than 4% - and that would have been the best ICM poll for Leave to date. So in terms of the trend, ICM, YouGov, ComRes and Survation all seem to be singing from the same hymn-sheet - either no real change, or minor progress for Leave.
One thing that's got on my nerves during this campaign is the succession of smug articles from pollsters along the following lines : "Hmmm, yes, it does look like phone/online (delete as applicable) polls are turning out to be more accurate. But what's interesting is why that should be the case. Let's have a discussion about why online/phone (delete as applicable) polls are so useless at the moment." YouGov are at it today (arguing that online polls are best), and their ex-President Peter Kellner was at it a few days ago (ironically he took the side of phone polls). Seriously, chaps, what you're doing is putting forward speculative theories. It won't "turn out" or even "look like" one side or another is more accurate until we see the actual referendum results. Then the side that got it right can gloat to its heart's content, but it really is the height of arrogance to do it now when nobody actually has a sodding clue how things are going to play out on June 23rd.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 45.9% (-0.6)
Leave 40.6% (-0.3)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 42.1% (-0.3)
Leave 42.2% (-0.5)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 49.6% (-0.9)
Leave 38.9% (-0.1)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from YouGov, three from ICM, one from TNS and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on seven polls - two from ORB, one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from ComRes and one from Survation.)
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 44% (-1)
Leave 38% (n/c)
The change from the last Survation poll may look insignificant, but it has to be remembered that the previous poll was already the worst for Remain in the series by some distance - Survation were showing a gap of eleven points in March, and fifteen points in February. Perhaps more to the point, if Ipsos-Mori and ORB were correct that the Remain lead has dramatically surged recently, you wouldn't expect Leave to be narrowing the gap in any other phone poll - even by the smallest of amounts. So in spite of the claims from Downing Street that private polling corroborates the Remain-friendly findings from ORB, the evidence from public polls now looks very shaky - three out of five telephone firms (ICM, ComRes and Survation) are failing to support that narrative, as are three out of four online firms (YouGov, ICM and TNS).
It's also worth emphasising just how bad yesterday's ICM poll was for Remain, once you take account of the methodological tweaks. ICM have noticed that the earliest responders to their online polls are disproportionately likely to be Leave supporters, so they've introduced two changes to resolve that problem - they're downweighting early responders, and are also staggering survey invitations in the hope of attracting a more representative sample in the first place. Crucially, we're told that the weighting changes alone were responsible for the equivalent of a 2% swing to Remain - meaning that without them Leave would have had a 4% lead in the poll. But it's surely logical to assume that the staggering of the survey invitations also worked in Remain's favour, which may well mean that without any methodological changes at all, the Leave lead would have been even higher than 4% - and that would have been the best ICM poll for Leave to date. So in terms of the trend, ICM, YouGov, ComRes and Survation all seem to be singing from the same hymn-sheet - either no real change, or minor progress for Leave.
One thing that's got on my nerves during this campaign is the succession of smug articles from pollsters along the following lines : "Hmmm, yes, it does look like phone/online (delete as applicable) polls are turning out to be more accurate. But what's interesting is why that should be the case. Let's have a discussion about why online/phone (delete as applicable) polls are so useless at the moment." YouGov are at it today (arguing that online polls are best), and their ex-President Peter Kellner was at it a few days ago (ironically he took the side of phone polls). Seriously, chaps, what you're doing is putting forward speculative theories. It won't "turn out" or even "look like" one side or another is more accurate until we see the actual referendum results. Then the side that got it right can gloat to its heart's content, but it really is the height of arrogance to do it now when nobody actually has a sodding clue how things are going to play out on June 23rd.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 45.9% (-0.6)
Leave 40.6% (-0.3)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 42.1% (-0.3)
Leave 42.2% (-0.5)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 49.6% (-0.9)
Leave 38.9% (-0.1)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from YouGov, three from ICM, one from TNS and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on seven polls - two from ORB, one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from ComRes and one from Survation.)
Leave campaign draws level in startling new YouGov EU poll
There's been conflicting evidence over the last week on whether telephone polling is picking up a significant swing towards Remain, but we can now say with a fair bit of confidence that online polling is failing to do so. Of the last six online polls, only Opinium at the weekend showed any sort of meaningful gains for Remain, and that now looks firmly like an aberration. Here is YouGov's latest bang-up-to-date estimate, based on interviews conducted yesterday and the day before -
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 41% (-3)
Leave 41% (+1)
Leave 41% (+1)
* * *
UPDATE : A new Survation telephone poll is also out today, showing an unusually small lead for Remain. More details can be found HERE.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
ICM online poll suggests the EU referendum race is absolutely level
This may help to steady the ship slightly for the Leave campaign, after a couple of recent polls that made some commentators wonder if the referendum was gradually ceasing to be competitive.
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 45% (+2)
Leave 45% (-2)
In spite of the tie for the lead, the percentage changes in this poll look perfectly consistent with the modest movement to Remain suggested by the Opinium poll at the weekend. They're quite hard to interpret, though, because the last ICM poll was unusually good for Leave, so even if the underlying state of play had remained static over the last week, we might have expected some kind of reversion to the mean in the new poll. Certainly if the wheels were coming off for Leave to quite the extent reported by the ORB series of phone polls, it's likely that ICM would have shown a clear Remain lead today. Perhaps the ICM online methodology is just proving slow in picking up a pro-Remain trend that will eventually become apparent in all polls, but at least for the time being there are grounds for the Leave camp to feel somewhat reassured.
(UPDATE : It turns out that ICM have made an important methodological change, which entirely explains the small swing to Remain - without it, Leave would still have been 4% ahead. That's incredible - it suggests that ICM haven't picked up any sort of movement over the last week at all, in spite of the hype over the Remain surge in the Ipsos-Mori and ORB phone polls, and to a lesser extent in the Opinium online poll.)
In the wake of the ORB poll yesterday, there was a lot of talk about the supposedly decisive shifts in opinion among pensioners and Tory voters. Well, you wouldn't know that from the ICM poll, which gives Leave a more than 2-to-1 lead among over-65s, a slender lead among people who would currently vote Tory, and a healthy 9% lead among people who actually voted Tory in the general election last year. The reason for the conflicting results is of course the well-established divergence between online and phone polls, which if anything may be growing wider. The trouble for the Leave campaign, though, is that it's beginning to look like they may need online polls to be completely right and phone polls to be completely wrong - somewhere in the middle probably isn't going to be enough. And even if online polls are bang-on accurate, Remain would still have at least a 50% chance of winning.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 46.5% (+1.0)
Leave 40.9% (-0.1)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 42.4% (+0.5)
Leave 42.7% (n/c)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 50.5% (+1.5)
Leave 39.0% (-0.2)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from ICM, three from YouGov, one from TNS and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on six polls - two from ORB, one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Remain 45% (+2)
Leave 45% (-2)
In spite of the tie for the lead, the percentage changes in this poll look perfectly consistent with the modest movement to Remain suggested by the Opinium poll at the weekend. They're quite hard to interpret, though, because the last ICM poll was unusually good for Leave, so even if the underlying state of play had remained static over the last week, we might have expected some kind of reversion to the mean in the new poll. Certainly if the wheels were coming off for Leave to quite the extent reported by the ORB series of phone polls, it's likely that ICM would have shown a clear Remain lead today. Perhaps the ICM online methodology is just proving slow in picking up a pro-Remain trend that will eventually become apparent in all polls, but at least for the time being there are grounds for the Leave camp to feel somewhat reassured.
(UPDATE : It turns out that ICM have made an important methodological change, which entirely explains the small swing to Remain - without it, Leave would still have been 4% ahead. That's incredible - it suggests that ICM haven't picked up any sort of movement over the last week at all, in spite of the hype over the Remain surge in the Ipsos-Mori and ORB phone polls, and to a lesser extent in the Opinium online poll.)
In the wake of the ORB poll yesterday, there was a lot of talk about the supposedly decisive shifts in opinion among pensioners and Tory voters. Well, you wouldn't know that from the ICM poll, which gives Leave a more than 2-to-1 lead among over-65s, a slender lead among people who would currently vote Tory, and a healthy 9% lead among people who actually voted Tory in the general election last year. The reason for the conflicting results is of course the well-established divergence between online and phone polls, which if anything may be growing wider. The trouble for the Leave campaign, though, is that it's beginning to look like they may need online polls to be completely right and phone polls to be completely wrong - somewhere in the middle probably isn't going to be enough. And even if online polls are bang-on accurate, Remain would still have at least a 50% chance of winning.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 46.5% (+1.0)
Leave 40.9% (-0.1)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 42.4% (+0.5)
Leave 42.7% (n/c)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 50.5% (+1.5)
Leave 39.0% (-0.2)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from ICM, three from YouGov, one from TNS and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on six polls - two from ORB, one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
Saturday, May 21, 2016
EU Poll of Polls tightens after release of YouGov's split test
When I posted about the EU referendum polls yesterday (and updated this blog's Poll of Polls), I somehow managed to miss the big polling story of the day - that YouGov had conducted side-by-side online and phone polls to test a theory about what might be causing the discrepancy between the findings produced by each method, and that both polls had shown a small Leave lead. This is just the second time in the whole campaign that a phone poll has reported an outright lead for Leave. It only seems to have happened because YouGov were especially persistent in trying to contact potential telephone respondents, and as a result eventually managed to speak to enough non-graduates, who are more likely to be Leave voters. Bizarrely, at almost exactly the same moment that these findings were released, the very recently-retired former President of YouGov Peter Kellner was expounding his own theory that greater persistence in reaching respondents would have precisely the opposite effect - it would turn up hidden masses of socially liberal people who are more likely to vote Remain.
It was rather amusing to see the personal attack that YouGov's current management then made on Peter Kellner. I seem to recall that whenever I criticised Kellner during the indyref or questioned his motivations, it was cited as evidence that I was plainly an uncivilised cybernat lunatic! It's gratifying to see they've belatedly come around to my way of thinking...
Seriously, though, it's hard to escape the impression that YouGov were casting around for a reason why they as an online pollster might be right and the phone pollsters might be wrong. They homed in on educational attainment and it gave them the results they wanted, but you do have to wonder if they could have magically 'proved' the complete opposite - ie. that phone polls are more accurate - if they had lavished their attention on a different factor instead.
The bottom line is that the uncertainty continues, although two newly-released polls showing a Leave lead obviously has a significant impact on the Poll of Polls. (Both polls are somewhat out of date, but they were mostly conducted within the last three weeks, and therefore qualify for inclusion in the Poll of Polls.)
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 45.5% (-2.3)
Leave 41.0% (-0.7)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 41.9% (-1.4)
Leave 42.7% (-1.3)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 49.0% (-3.3)
Leave 39.2% (-0.1)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on seven polls - three from ICM, three from YouGov and one from TNS. The telephone average is based on five polls - one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from ORB, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
It was rather amusing to see the personal attack that YouGov's current management then made on Peter Kellner. I seem to recall that whenever I criticised Kellner during the indyref or questioned his motivations, it was cited as evidence that I was plainly an uncivilised cybernat lunatic! It's gratifying to see they've belatedly come around to my way of thinking...
Seriously, though, it's hard to escape the impression that YouGov were casting around for a reason why they as an online pollster might be right and the phone pollsters might be wrong. They homed in on educational attainment and it gave them the results they wanted, but you do have to wonder if they could have magically 'proved' the complete opposite - ie. that phone polls are more accurate - if they had lavished their attention on a different factor instead.
The bottom line is that the uncertainty continues, although two newly-released polls showing a Leave lead obviously has a significant impact on the Poll of Polls. (Both polls are somewhat out of date, but they were mostly conducted within the last three weeks, and therefore qualify for inclusion in the Poll of Polls.)
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 45.5% (-2.3)
Leave 41.0% (-0.7)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 41.9% (-1.4)
Leave 42.7% (-1.3)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 49.0% (-3.3)
Leave 39.2% (-0.1)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on seven polls - three from ICM, three from YouGov and one from TNS. The telephone average is based on five polls - one from ICM, one from YouGov, one from ORB, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
Friday, May 20, 2016
How might an SNP-Labour pact work in advance of the next UK general election?
The furious reaction of Dunc "don't call me Dunc" Hothersall is probably sufficient to tell you that Keiran Pedley may be on to something in suggesting that, because Labour's only hope of regaining power at UK level depends on a deal with the SNP, it would be better to conclude that deal in advance of a general election and then sell it to the English people. Nothing's inevitable, of course, as the bogus claims of "absolute certainty" about the result of this month's Holyrood election proves. I can just about imagine a scenario in which Labour might return to being competitive in Scotland by 2020 - it would depend on the constitutional issue fading from people's minds, and on Jeremy Corbyn being replaced by a charismatic leader who looks set to sweep the hated Tories from office. In those circumstances, the Scottish electorate's priorities might change. But the overwhelming likelihood is that one of three things will happen -
1) Corbyn will remain leader.
2) Corbyn will be replaced by someone of like mind, such as John McDonnell (who admittedly is more charismatic, but is still regarded as unelectable in England).
3) Corbyn will be replaced by a bland, uninspiring identikit centrist politician in the mould of Ed Miliband or Andy Burnham.
If that's the case, Pedley is surely right in saying that the game's a bogey for Labour in Scotland. But what intrigues me - and what Pedley doesn't address - is the electoral consequences of any deal. If we're talking about a formal pre-election Labour-SNP pact to keep the Tories out, how could the two parties justify putting up candidates against each other? Labour in particular would find it very difficult to pitch for votes in seats that are already held by the SNP - which is virtually every seat in Scotland. Logic would therefore seem to dictate that they should practically sit out the election north of the border.
Ironically, that would probably benefit only the Tories. The former Labour heartlands are highly likely to vote SNP anyway, and the absence of Labour candidates would simply lead to bigger majorities in seats that were never in doubt. But in heavily No-voting areas like the Borders and the rural north-east, the SNP could arguably do with Labour opposition to help split the unionist vote and keep the Tories out.
If an anti-Tory pact isn't going to prove counterproductive, the details are going to need some careful thought.
Crikey! ComRes confounds us with another cracking EU contradiction
This week has been the perfect example of what drives me crazy about people's irrational responses to individual opinion polls. We've had seven EU referendum polls since Monday, and this is what they've shown -
* Five reported a Remain lead.
* Two reported a Leave lead.
* Four reported a swing to Remain.
* Three reported a swing to Leave.
As you can see, the overall picture is as clear as mud, and yet there have been big movements on the currency and betting markets, all apparently attributable to just one of those seven polls - the Ipsos-Mori telephone poll showing the Remain lead surging from ten points to eighteen. Now, to be fair, it's arguable that the trend shown by Ipsos-Mori is more important than the modest progress made by Leave in some of the other polls. If there isn't a dramatic indyref-style convergence between telephone and online polling as we approach referendum day, I would imagine the Leave campaign will be hoping to get to mid-June with a clear lead in online polls, and a deficit of no more than a few points in telephone polls. An eighteen-point lead for Remain in a new telephone poll obviously makes the latter aim seem less likely to be realised, so from that point of view Remain are probably happiest with the new batch of numbers. But there's still no excuse for completely discounting the more Leave-friendly part of the story.
One thing is for sure - online polling this week has entirely failed to corroborate the Ipsos-Mori trend. The ICM and TNS online polls both showed Leave in the lead and a small pro-Leave swing - which perhaps can be explained by normal sampling variation, but certainly can't be easily reconciled with a supposedly massive surge for Remain. The only other online poll was from YouGov, and showed the Remain lead increasing from 2% to 4% - but half of that small increase was an illusion caused by a methodological tweak. Essentially, the state of play was unchanged, which again contradicts Ipsos-Mori.
Even the other telephone polls have provided only limited backing for the Ipsos-Mori narrative. In line with YouGov, the ICM telephone poll on Monday showed a statistically insignificant increase in the Remain lead. The ORB phone poll did show a bigger increase, but as I've noted many times, the trend reported by ORB phone polling has from the start looked suspect, because it's been completely out of line with other data. The latest piece of the jigsaw arrived in the form of a new ComRes phone poll last night, which showed a slight improvement for Leave. That, I would suggest, tips the balance and makes it more likely than not that the Remain surge in the Ipsos-Mori poll was at least somewhat exaggerated.
ComRes have started using their turnout-adjusted model for their headline numbers, which makes a comparison with their previous poll more complicated. Here are two different sets of like-for-like comparisons -
Old methodology :
Remain 51% (n/c)
Leave 41% (+1)
New methodology :
Remain 52% (-1)
Leave 41% (+3)
The swing to Leave on both counts is small and isn't necessarily genuine, but it's unlikely the reported movement would be in that direction if Ipsos-Mori were correct about the Remain lead almost doubling.
So is there any particular reason why the Ipsos-Mori poll might have led us astray? Anthony Wells noticed a couple of striking things about the poll - that the percentage of Tory voters backing Remain was much higher than in other polls, and that a disproportionate amount of the boost for Remain came from mere 'leaners', ie. people who initially said they didn't know how they'd vote, but who opted for Remain when pressed by a follow-up question to say which way they'd be more inclined to vote. Ipsos-Mori include those people in the headline numbers for a good reason - past history shows it makes the results more accurate. But all the same, this referendum is an (almost) unprecedented event, and there's a good deal of uncertainty about the turnout. It could be that many of the Remain leaners found by Ipsos-Mori don't really care that much about the issue, and will be less likely to vote at all. A whopping 83% of the full sample gave a firm opinion on the main voting intention question, which is obviously much, much higher than the eventual turnout is likely to be - and further calls into question whether the others will ever make it to the polling station, regardless of their apparent inclination to favour Remain. But even if the leaners do vote in decent numbers, their opinions clearly look more susceptible to change.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 47.8% (+2.0)
Leave 41.7% (+0.4)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 43.3% (+0.7)
Leave 44.0% (+0.5)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 52.3% (+3.3)
Leave 39.3% (+0.3)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from ICM, two from YouGov, one from TNS, one from ORB and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on four polls - one from ICM, one from ORB, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
* Five reported a Remain lead.
* Two reported a Leave lead.
* Four reported a swing to Remain.
* Three reported a swing to Leave.
As you can see, the overall picture is as clear as mud, and yet there have been big movements on the currency and betting markets, all apparently attributable to just one of those seven polls - the Ipsos-Mori telephone poll showing the Remain lead surging from ten points to eighteen. Now, to be fair, it's arguable that the trend shown by Ipsos-Mori is more important than the modest progress made by Leave in some of the other polls. If there isn't a dramatic indyref-style convergence between telephone and online polling as we approach referendum day, I would imagine the Leave campaign will be hoping to get to mid-June with a clear lead in online polls, and a deficit of no more than a few points in telephone polls. An eighteen-point lead for Remain in a new telephone poll obviously makes the latter aim seem less likely to be realised, so from that point of view Remain are probably happiest with the new batch of numbers. But there's still no excuse for completely discounting the more Leave-friendly part of the story.
One thing is for sure - online polling this week has entirely failed to corroborate the Ipsos-Mori trend. The ICM and TNS online polls both showed Leave in the lead and a small pro-Leave swing - which perhaps can be explained by normal sampling variation, but certainly can't be easily reconciled with a supposedly massive surge for Remain. The only other online poll was from YouGov, and showed the Remain lead increasing from 2% to 4% - but half of that small increase was an illusion caused by a methodological tweak. Essentially, the state of play was unchanged, which again contradicts Ipsos-Mori.
Even the other telephone polls have provided only limited backing for the Ipsos-Mori narrative. In line with YouGov, the ICM telephone poll on Monday showed a statistically insignificant increase in the Remain lead. The ORB phone poll did show a bigger increase, but as I've noted many times, the trend reported by ORB phone polling has from the start looked suspect, because it's been completely out of line with other data. The latest piece of the jigsaw arrived in the form of a new ComRes phone poll last night, which showed a slight improvement for Leave. That, I would suggest, tips the balance and makes it more likely than not that the Remain surge in the Ipsos-Mori poll was at least somewhat exaggerated.
ComRes have started using their turnout-adjusted model for their headline numbers, which makes a comparison with their previous poll more complicated. Here are two different sets of like-for-like comparisons -
Old methodology :
Remain 51% (n/c)
Leave 41% (+1)
New methodology :
Remain 52% (-1)
Leave 41% (+3)
The swing to Leave on both counts is small and isn't necessarily genuine, but it's unlikely the reported movement would be in that direction if Ipsos-Mori were correct about the Remain lead almost doubling.
So is there any particular reason why the Ipsos-Mori poll might have led us astray? Anthony Wells noticed a couple of striking things about the poll - that the percentage of Tory voters backing Remain was much higher than in other polls, and that a disproportionate amount of the boost for Remain came from mere 'leaners', ie. people who initially said they didn't know how they'd vote, but who opted for Remain when pressed by a follow-up question to say which way they'd be more inclined to vote. Ipsos-Mori include those people in the headline numbers for a good reason - past history shows it makes the results more accurate. But all the same, this referendum is an (almost) unprecedented event, and there's a good deal of uncertainty about the turnout. It could be that many of the Remain leaners found by Ipsos-Mori don't really care that much about the issue, and will be less likely to vote at all. A whopping 83% of the full sample gave a firm opinion on the main voting intention question, which is obviously much, much higher than the eventual turnout is likely to be - and further calls into question whether the others will ever make it to the polling station, regardless of their apparent inclination to favour Remain. But even if the leaners do vote in decent numbers, their opinions clearly look more susceptible to change.
* * *
SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 47.8% (+2.0)
Leave 41.7% (+0.4)
ONLINE AVERAGE :
Remain 43.3% (+0.7)
Leave 44.0% (+0.5)
TELEPHONE AVERAGE :
Remain 52.3% (+3.3)
Leave 39.3% (+0.3)
(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on nine polls - four from ICM, two from YouGov, one from TNS, one from ORB and one from Opinium. The telephone average is based on four polls - one from ICM, one from ORB, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from ComRes.)
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