Despite terror attacks and calls by some to postpone the date, snap elections called by Theresa May will take place on June 8, as scheduled.
A recent poll by Survation shows Labour within one point of winning the election. Is a Labour win possible?
The Independent reports Conservative lead over Labour cut to just one point, new poll finds.
The problem with placing a lot of stock in that headline is it’s just one poll. Let’s look at all the recent polls as depicted by Wikepedia.
Not a single poll ever has put Labour in the lead for the 2017 election.
I give more weight to the most recent polls. The average lead for the Conservatives for polls that finished June 2 or later (above the dashed line) is 6.4.
With Brexit, three of the final six polls had Leave winning. Here is my final poll snapshot from my blog.
Brexit Polls Final Tally
UK Polls Skewed
Nate Silver (anyone remember him?) asks Are The U.K. Polls Skewed?
In April, when U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May called for a “snap” general election for June 8, polls showed her Conservatives with an average lead of 17 percentage points over Labour.1 Such a margin would translate to a giant majority for Conservatives: perhaps as many as 400 of the 650 seats in Parliament. (Conservatives currently control 330 seats; 326 are needed for a majority.) After several unpredictable years in U.K. politics — marked by Conservatives unexpectedly winning a majority in the 2015 general election, the successful Brexit referendum, and David Cameron’s decision to resign as prime minister and Conservative leader — such a result promised to provide May with a mandate as she negotiated the terms of the U.K.’s exit from the EU.
Instead, polls suggest that the Conservative majority is under threat. As we remarked back in April, May’s move was riskier than it seemed because polls in the U.K. have been both highly volatile (shifting abruptly over the course of election campaigns) and fairly inaccurate (often missing the mark on Election Day itself). Conservatives’ lead was wide enough in April that they probably needed multiple things to go wrong to lose their majority. But if there were both a shift toward Labour during the campaign and a pro-Labour polling error on Election Day, it could be at risk.
The first part of May’s nightmare scenario has come to fruition. Recent surveys show Labour zooming up in the polls and Conservatives having declined somewhat (although some of Labour’s gains have also come at the expense of Liberal Democrats and other parties).
The timing of the shift partly coincides with the release of the Conservative party manifesto two weeks ago, which included a proposed change to health care spending that opponents soon labeled as a “dementia tax.” (None of the polls yet reflect any potential effects from an incident on Saturday night at London Bridge, when a van reportedly hit a number of pedestrians.)
May’s Conservatives are now only a normal-sized polling error away from a hung parliament. On average in the U.K., the final polling average has missed the actual Conservative-Labour margin by about 4 percentage points. (This is twice the average error in U.S. presidential elections.) If Labour outperforms its polls by that margin, Conservatives would win the popular vote by only about 3 points — and May would probably have to find a coalition partner to form the next government. If the polls were to miss by any more than that in Labour’s favor, a variety of yet-more-unpleasant scenarios could crop up for May, including some where Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tried to form a government instead.
But there’s a catch — and a potential saving grace for May. Although the polls haven’t been very accurate in the U.K., the errors have usually run in the same direction: Conservatives tend to beat their polls there. (There’s been no comparable phenomenon in the U.S., where polls have erred toward both Democrats and Republicans about equally often in past elections.)
If that’s the good news for May, here’s the bad news: The conventional wisdom is still pretty confident that she’ll win a majority, more so than the polls are. And the conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.
I’m not just being a trollish contrarian here. The conventional wisdom, at least as espoused by (i) betting markets and (ii) mainstream media coverage, has a remarkably poor track record in major elections around the world in recent years. In the U.K. last year, pundits and punters were irrationally confident of a “Remain” victory in the Brexit vote, even though polls showed it only barely ahead of “Leave.” In the U.S., they ignored how much the race had tightened in the final weeks of the campaign and data that showed Trump would likely do better in the Electoral College than the popular vote. In the French presidential election last month, the conventional wisdom was irrationally worried about a Marine Le Pen victory even though she trailed Emmanuel Macron by 20 to 25 percentage points. In fact, it was Macron who beat his polls, winning by 32 points.
These experiences have given rise to what I’ve called the First Rule of Polling Errors, which is that polls almost always miss in the opposite direction of what pundits expect:
Silver’s article is very lengthy. It’s also a good read, especially after some disastrous predictions about Trump’s chances of winning. In this case, he is not quite so confident.
Silver concludes: “Given the poor historical accuracy of U.K. polls, in fact, the true margin of error7 on the Labour-Conservative margin is plus or minus 10 points. That would imply that anything from a 17-point Conservative win to a 3-point Labour win is possible. And even an average polling error would make the difference between May expanding her majority and losing it.”
For now, I will stick with a 6-8 point win for the Tories. The primary risk is the pollsters changed their models because they blew the last election and are now too far skewed the opposite direction (in favor of the Tories).
If the next set of polls after the recent London Bridge attach change dramatically, I will reassess.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The sample size of that survation poll is 1049? Is that even statistically significant?
Recent census numbers put the population of the UK at around 65 million people, not sure 1049 sample size is valid — and that is before one looks at how random their sampling was (only calling people with cell phones, or only in a certain postal area …) there are many many ways to rig polling numbers
The biggest sample size polls (both YouGov it looks like?) show a 4% lead for May … with ~53K people sampled. I don’t know if that sample size is statistically significant — or whether their sampling method is truly random.
Taking both flawed surveys at face value (gulp!) — May’s party is ahead by 4%. 42% versus 38%, and those percentages stayed consistent over a week.
Regardless of all the polls or even the actual election results — the EU isn’t working with or without England. Labour might win the battle and it will still end up losing the war.
The two polls that claim May has a 11-12% lead both have sample sizes that are roughly double the survation poll sample size?
Seems like a lot of the polls are skewing the sample population in their party’s favor
The accuracy of the poll is affected by the size of the sample. The size of the total population is totally irrelevant to the accuracy of the poll, so long as the population is much larger than the sample size. Whether the population of the UK is 65 million or 65 trillion, a sample size of 1049 is equally accurate.
there is a minimum sample size required for the poll to be statistically significant. Polling 4 people out of 65 million would obviously be rubbish.
We didn’t agree on a confidence interval, we aren’t sure of the standard deviation (actually the 65 million total size is even a guess) … so there is no way to calculate the minimum sample size required based on the information given.
Just because some media idiot (who majored in “safe space journalism”) tells you 1049 sample size is OK — does not mean said reporter is competent as a journalist much less as a statistician.
The fact that there are several polls producing such a wide variety of answers suggests the polling is flawed — either the samples are not random, the sample size is too small (aka confidence interval too big to be meaningful), or a combination of both.
The 65 million has nothing to do with the accuracy of the poll. Nothing at all.
There are established processes for calculating the statistical scatter in a measurement, based on the number of persons polled. For a small sample..your four..the scatter is large, but not infinite.
If polls were horses then Hillary and the demos would have rode into the white house and congress. At least no Brit politician is claiming that they should be 50 points ahead. On the other hand Thursday would be a good time for another terrorist attack. That would cinch it for Ms May. Oh, and terrorists, make sure it’s in the heart of London, as close to the Mayor’s office as possible. He needs to deny it is Islam inspired again. Help the man out.
The nasty party have succeeded in portraying themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility yet they’ve doubled the UK national debt in just five years. Their deficits when leading the coalition were the worst ever in modern history and Osborne’s promise to balance the books by 2020 have long been abandoned.
They are quite simply the party of selfishness and greed, dressed as aspiration. The party of corporate welfare, austerity and scape-goating the least fortunate. They are the party of stealth taxes and crippling poverty, the party that has turned the UK into what resembles a third world shit hole in parts of the country, where a recovery from the damage wrought by the vile Thatcher decades ago has yet to happen.
The mainstream media are almost exclusively pro-tory, with the occasional sop to balance which shines the faintest of lights on the nasty party before being quickly turned back to full glare on the opposition.
Whatever happens on June 8 the UK public is almost certainly going to suffer because of the idiocy last June.
You seem to forget that Labour were in power for thirteen years during which time they were sucking up to the City.Tories and Labour are two cheeks on the same backside.
As for the EU, if you want to see some third world shit holes take a look at Greece, Spain and Italy. Still, it rains less there.
“if you want to see some third world shit holes take a look at Greece, Spain and Italy. Still, it rains less there.”
c’mon, those are like 1st and a half world countries. Spend some time in South America and those places look like a Future-land exhibit at Disneyland.
spend some time in Akron Ohio or Palmdale California or St.Louis and much of South America seems like Disneyland
Spend some time in Detroit and you’ll think you’re in 1946 Dresden.
(slight exaggeration)
LOL. I’ve been to Spain. The USA looks like a 3rd world $hithole in comparison.
Same ‘ol left wing claptrap.
How interesting, the number of mining communities polled to majority vote Conservative. Research it.
Blair & Brown were a disaster for the UK. They only had the semblance of competence whilst adhering to Conservative spending plans post 1997 for the first few years.
Remember the note when they left office – sorry no money left.
This the the Guardian, pro-Labour, disgusting, Labour did it deliberately:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/17/liam-byrne-note-successor
Whoever wins is in for an interesting economic autumn (sorry fall).
The real reason May’s lead has fallen is that house prices are starting to head south. This shows political naivety because Osbourne and Brown would have juiced up the housing markets again with some Help to Buy scheme six months ago.
How do you explain the rise of Corbyn?
(or Sanders, Trump, Le Pen, Melenchon, Tsipras, PODEMOS, AfD, Wilders etc.)
Anwser: people want reform not more of the same.
http://denariifin.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/how-do-you-explain-rise-of-corbyn.html
Yep. People are willing to vote for whoever is not part of the establishment. Their actual policies are a secondary consideration. This is the “Arab Spring” come to first world countries.
“How do you explain the rise of Corbyn?
(or Sanders, Trump, Le Pen, Melenchon, Tsipras, PODEMOS, AfD, Wilders etc.) ”
Millions and millions of blind voters feeling a donkey-elephant hybrid animal to comprehend it?
After having SWAT teams and military police in balaclavas chase Londoners off the streets in their surrender poses, and having 24 hour non-stop hype… I mean “media coverage”… of the attack and heavy handed police response: now Theresa May wants to create international restrictions on the internet?
As if the guerilla warfare types could possibly hope for more publicity than what the UK government has already provided? They commit a crime, they murder innocent people — so the UK government has everyone in London put their hands behind their heads in surrender position while excessively armed police point guns at them. Three lunatics do something stupid — and the entire city of London is assumed guilty.
This in London, the city where CCTV cameras outnumber people by a huge margin, and SWAT teams have replaced unarmed “bobbies” — Theresa May thinks a massive global censorship program would be the next logical expansion of the police state.
Building an even bigger police state just means the terrorists win again. How many decades did the British military spend with Belfast in total military lockdown? It solved nothing, the killings continued (both “sides”) and the heavy handed occupation arguably gave the IRA their greatest recruiting tool possible.
Its like the British government WANTS to make the problem worse
Honestly the right wing media in the UK are out of control, we have had a non-stop barrage of terror orgasmatron and grief hysteria TV for near three weeks now. It’s pathetic, it’s almost like they’re actively trying to traumatise the entire damned country.
Saint Theresa of snoopers charter is lapping it up. The witch has already vowed to strengthen anti-terror laws which clearly don’t work and simply empower more and more snooping police state militarisation, omnipotence and authoritarian encroachment on civil liberties.
This from the nasties who claim ownership of being the party of law and order while slashing police numbers, just like they lay claim to being the party of fiscal responsibility while doubling a 200 year old deficit in 5 years or saying the NHS is safe in their hands while systematically running it into the ground in preparation for a corporate privatisation bonanza. It would be funny if it weren’t so sickeningly tragic.
Perhaps if the western geopolitical warmongers and drone strikers in the US, controlled by the criminal cult, were all rounded up and chained to a wall like rabid dogs, there might be a little more stability in the M.E. and a little less terrorism around the world.
If you think the NHS is economically viable — regardless of which lying politicians are running it — you aren’t playing with a full deck.
England already went bankrupt in the 1970s, you needed an IMF bailout because you were spending beyond your means. Only the discovery of north sea oil (and the royalties thereon) allowed you to keep pretending the NHS was on solid fiscal ground.
Your health system is a fiscal mess — but thanks to your country lying (not your politicians, YOU BRITS), that con artist known as Obama was able to perpetrate fraud on the USA.
You are not a free person. You complain about the baby sitter watching you on CCTV, yet when you get a boo-boo suddenly you think the baby sitter is obligated to fix it for you for “free”.
Try a little consistency. Either sit there with big brother deciding your every thought, or grow a pair and take responsibility for your own health care. Really. You are trying to have it both ways and that is why England is going to lose.
I just don’t want the USA following England down the bankruptcy hole.
Like
There is nothing wrong with a national health service if it’s run properly. Rest assured the tax taken to fund the NHS is more than adequate, the problem is it doesn’t get spent on the NHS in either the quantity or the way it was intended, or spent well when it does. The number of administrative staff with their hands in the NHS till has become utterly ridiculous and the medical moonlighting needs to be stopped.
NHS staff need to refund their tuition and training costs if they don’t stay in the NHS.
The GP service has already been largely privatised which is why hospitals are struggling, because it’s almost impossible to see a GP quickly or out of hours in many locations, that service is now a failure with outsourced private service providers exposed and found to be repeatedly lying to parliament about their data.
The US is already bankrupt and on borrowed time. You ought to know that already reading these pages and the profligate orange is not doing, or going to do anything but add to the problems despite the rhetoric and ‘alternative facts’.
The problem with any and all government programs is that the young end up paying for the stupid behaviors of the old.
If you can’t take care of your own body then nobody else should be forced to.
Its weird that this J68R loser claims the NHS has adequate revenue (something that multiple successive UK governments have thoroughly refuted). But then he/she goes on to point out the massive administrative overhead that is endemic to both the US and UK systems… thousands and thousands of very high paid administrators sucking money out of a system that lacks resources even before the pillaging.
Its the same fraud that dominates US hospital systems, UK’s NHS, Obamacare’s “marketplaces” (more fraud), and insurance companies all over the place.
Does this J68R person live under a rock? That’s how governments operate. He tries to have it both ways — he wants bigger and bigger government, but then fantasizes about an efficient government that only exists in his daydreams.
J68R just isn’t glued in to reality, but he votes… and that is the real problem. Without an intelligent electorate to keep an eye on government, democracy doesn’t have checks and balances. And people like J68R, who vote based on a fantasy world instead of reality, cannot provide the voter oversight needed
@J68R — “Rest assured the tax taken to fund the NHS is more than adequate,”
Not according to multiple successive British governments — both major parties. And not when you ask people who can do simple math.
You lack the basic math skills to continue this argument, and your reading comprehension skills simply are not up to the task.
There is no free lunch you misinformed loser, and if you didn’t figure that out in kindergarten than its pointless to try to train you in common sense now.
OK, at least I can console myself I’m not you when counting my stash. Prick.
You lied and claimed NHS was solvent — something even NHS supporters in the British government say is not true.
Calling me a prick doesn’t change the fact that you either lied (you knew you were full of shit), or you were claiming something you hadn’t actually researched — both make you look stupid.
This story is from way back in 2012… before Obama committed his fraud on the USA:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323316804578163371159940186
The point is not whether liberal (and Obama supporter) Branson was doing a good/bad job running NHS facilities — the point is NHS was not financially viable even before Obama conned US taxpayers out of billions for his “free” lunch.
England has been forced to constantly add more and more subsidies to keep the illusion of NHS going — and the problem has been ongoing for decades. Its not a Tory or a Labour failing, its all of them. NHS does not work, and is slowly crowding out other programs and choking the British treasury.
England’s health mess (as a percent of GDP) is about half what the USA wastes — and it still doesn’t work. Its a huge problem. Throwing government bureaucrats at it does not work. Throwing England’s version of Elon Mush at it also didn’t work (Branson is the uber-liberal of England, and an Obama supporter).
England’s NHS is failing just like Obamacare, its just failing a little bit slower.
Mish, it’s highly unlikely that Labour will win outright, and this was not even in question at the beginning of the election. The crucial issue here is if May is able to secure a significant increase in the number of seats the Nasty party holds. If this does not occur, it may hurt her standing within the Nasty party.
She will be replaced if no increase in seats, certainly so if she loses or its close to 50:50 vs Labour plus their allies.
Interesting commentary by Craig Murray (former UK ambassador) re the UK elections.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/06/already-a-victory/
Interesting , in that Murray is peddling propaganda nonsense: ” May’s support is almost entirely from hard Brexiteers who are going to crash the economy to satisfy their racism. ” Tho I agree May’s attack on Corbyn was ill-advised, and I too am all in Cavour of policies that do not harm people .
It’s obvious the redblue team is much better than the bluered team. These folks need to get a clue.
Just look at the UK bookies odds, they who put their
own money on the line usually get it right.
Unless it’s fake news, hard to believe people over in Europe carrying around Trump is right signs.
I guess a significant majority of those who voted for Brexit will vote Conservative, and the other 48% will be split umpteen ways amongst the also rans. I think May will significantly increase her majority and again ‘shock’ the left leaning whining liberal media who seem to be hell bent on cooking up false hopes around a false ‘hung parliament’ scenario. Hopefully in my own constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale, a certain ‘Mr Fishfinger’ will help throw a spanner Into the works of whinging Liberal Tim Farron and James Airey (con) will get the nod as a result. Scotland worries me – they aren’t heading for independence but complete isolation.
Also if you look at the poll tracker, much of the rise of Corbyn seems to have come at the expense of the wobbly wobbly wiberwals and UKIP, rather than a collapse in the Conservative block which has remained reasonably solid. A lot of pundits have an axe to grind and the stories they tell don’t reflect the reality. My gut feeling is a huge Conservative landslide (not just wishful thinking) but we will know soon enough.