Posts Tagged “opinion polls”
Why there isn’t a British Nate Silver
by Stephen Tall on November 8, 2012
A skim-read of Wednesday morning’s headlines might have left folk confused as to who had been declared the victor of the US presidential election: Barack Obama or Nate Silver. For those who don’t know Nate Silver, he’s the analytical guru behind the FiveThirtyEight blog (named after the number of electoral college votes), now housed at [...]
Lords Ashcroft’s Corby poll (and my predictions therefrom…)
by Stephen Tall on October 23, 2012
Today saw the publication by Lord Ashcroft of an opinion poll he’s funded to find out the likely result at the forthcoming parliamentary by-election in Corby: ‘Labour take 22-point lead in Corby’. I tweeted my insta-verdict: it suggests Labour will (…)
LDVideo: Understanding how opinion polls work, Yes Minister-style
by Stephen Tall on August 7, 2011
Are for the re-introduction of national service, or against it? In this clip Yes Minister explains how you can hold both views simultaneously…
(Also available on YouTube here.)
Pollwatch – State of the Leaders: Clegg +18%, Brown -27%, Cameron +5% (March 2010)
by Stephen Tall on April 3, 2010
Yesterday, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in March; today it’s the turn of the party leaders.
As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only three polling companies – YouGov, Angus RS and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the three main [...]
Pollwatch – State of the Parties: Lib Dems 19%, Labour 31%, Tories 38% (March 2010)
by Stephen Tall on April 2, 2010
March may have 31 days, but it saw an extraordinary 39 polls conducted. So frenetic has been the activity, we at Lib Dem Voice even published a mid-month report to keep track of their findings. And despite all the hyped-up headlines – both in print and online – of minor fluctuations signifying some grand new [...]
Was 6th October the day it started going awry for the Tories?
by Stephen Tall on March 16, 2010
The opinion polls are up-and-down day-in-day-out at the moment, making it almost impossible to say with any confidence whether we are firmly in hung parliament territory, or whether the most likely result is still a Tory victory at the coming general election. But one thing is beyond doubt: the last six months has seen a [...]
What the pollsters think will happen at the general election
by Stephen Tall on January 24, 2010
Forget data sets, interquartile ranges and margin of error. The Guardian recently reported the collective wisdom of the wet-fingers-in-the-air of the UK’s pollsters, who met this past week “to refine their methods ahead of the election, and ended with off-the-cuff predictions for the final result.”
And here’s what they came up with:
Statisticians from most of Britain’s [...]
