Moderator: Peak Moderation
I am not so sure. I don't know what to believe, as already explained.clv101 wrote: ↑19 Jun 2024, 18:01That's nonsense! These polling companies are either overtly trying the manipulate the election or are so deeply buried in 'model land' they've lost all touch with reality.
There is zero chance the Tories will be as low as 53 seats and zero chance Labour will be as high as 516!
We will see!I think these polls need an additional layer of 'expert elicitation', a deep dive into a dozen or so bellwether seats with people who really understand the political landscape in that constituency. I'm not such a person but it's certainly my expectation that, Louth and Horncastle will be Tory, I grew up they, visit regularly, I know the area and people and they aren't about to return Labour - yet this poll paints them red.
Can't wait to find out if I'm right!
Yeah, right.State of the Race: BOMBSHELL poll, Reform SURGE, 15 days to go
Labour 35%
Reform 24%
Conservatives 15%
Liberal Democrats 12%
Greens 8%
SNP 3%
I wonder if you are maybe expecting far far too much of polls to predict the future with any degree of exactness. Divination historically has a very patchy record often dependent on good luck.
The Bookies think you're right....clv101 wrote: ↑19 Jun 2024, 18:01 I think these polls need an additional layer of 'expert elicitation', a deep dive into a dozen or so bellwether seats with people who really understand the political landscape in that constituency. I'm not such a person but it's certainly my expectation that, Louth and Horncastle will be Tory, I grew up they, visit regularly, I know the area and people and they aren't about to return Labour - yet this poll paints them red.
Can't wait to find out if I'm right!
Is that football score predicting octopus still alive?clv101 wrote: ↑19 Jun 2024, 18:01That's nonsense! These polling companies are either overtly trying the manipulate the election or are so deeply buried in 'model land' they've lost all touch with reality.
There is zero chance the Tories will be as low as 53 seats and zero chance Labour will be as high as 516!
I think these polls need an additional layer of 'expert elicitation', a deep dive into a dozen or so bellwether seats with people who really understand the political landscape in that constituency. I'm not such a person but it's certainly my expectation that, Louth and Horncastle will be Tory, I grew up they, visit regularly, I know the area and people and they aren't about to return Labour - yet this poll paints them red.
Can't wait to find out if I'm right!
Indeed...
Reform doesn't have a "natural ceiling". It might do if it was only taking votes from the tories and usually-non-voters, but that clearly isn't the case. They are also taking votes from Labour. Reform's raison d'etre is stopping immigration -- the same reason Leave won the referendum.Mark wrote: ↑20 Jun 2024, 08:21Indeed...
We'll just have to wait and see...
Personally, I think the state of the polls will reduce Labour voting due to complacency, which will let the Tories off the hook in some places...
Reform's vote will turn out, but can't see it topping their natural ceiling in most places (around 15%)
Liberals seem to be running a good campaign and might do better than expected...
That may indeed be part of the plan, for some polling at least.
They have a natural ceiling because Farage is a divisive figure, a significant number of people really dislike him and will *never* vote for any party he's involved with. More so that other parties, voters tend to be strongly pro or anti.
Sure, but that's about the same ultimate ceiling as the existing major parties.
And yet their vote share sharply increased when he got directly involved again. "Right wing populism" is always going to be divisive, regardless of the personalities involved.clv wrote:They have a natural ceiling because Farage is a divisive figure, a significant number of people really dislike him and will *never* vote for any party he's involved with. More so that other parties, voters tend to be strongly pro or anti.
https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/180 ... pH9uXjE7-wLAB: 42% (+2)
CON: 19% (-2)
RFM: 19% (+5)
LDM: 9% (-3)
GRN: 7% (+1)
SNP: 3% (-)
Also:Labour 42% (-1)
Reform 19% (+1)
Conservative 18% (–)
Liberal Democrat 11% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
SNP 3% (–)
Other 1% (–)
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... h-33070784Perhaps the least surprising fact in British politics at the moment is that Conservative candidates and staffers are unhappy. They are dismayed at the timing of the election, by the fact Rishi Sunak seemed to catch Conservative HQ (known as CCHQ) more off-guard than the Labour party, by Sunak’s series of campaign gaffes, and more. The list of grievances is very very long.
But in recent days a new and more urgent concern has been doing the rounds in various Conservative WhatsApp groups – candidates and local campaigns are increasingly asking whether CCHQ is running out of money, with the most crucial two weeks of the campaign still to come.
People fighting in seats formerly considered safe but which are now crucial marginal battlegrounds are saying they are starved of resources, while there is little in the way of either physical billboards or other obvious spending.
The most obvious sign of a campaign starved of funds came earlier in the week, when instead of a slick and polished party political broadcast – one of a small number of TV broadcasts allocated to parties, which are particularly important for the Conservatives given the demographics of TV viewers – the Conservatives released a lightly-edited clip from a television debate. Was that really the best they could do?
This could all just be the rumour mill going into overdrive, and being stoked by a disastrous election campaign: everyone expected an election in 2024, so there was ample time to build up a war chest, while it remains possible the party is saving funds so as to unleash vast amounts of spending in the last few weeks.
But there is evidence to suggest there might be something to the rumours. Crucially, this is the week that postal votes are sent to voters, and research shows most postal voters tend to return their ballots quicky – meaning their votes are locked in.
Around one in five people vote by post, but this is higher among pensioners (the Tory party’s last remaining voting base) and among people in marginal seats. In other words, the last chance to win over a huge and important group of voters is this week.
Online spending data suggests that if the Conservatives are trying to do that, they are being hopelessly outgunned. The most recent figures collected by WhoTargetsMe shows that between the 9th and 15th June, Labour spent £303,315 on Facebook, the social media network most used by older adults. In contrast, the Conservatives spent just £150,165.
On Google, the gap was even more stark: Labour spent £144,137 on Google adverts, while the Conservatives spent just £2,142. Multiple campaign veterans failed to offer an explanation as to why you would spend so little on online adverts at this stage of the election if you could afford to do so. One called the figures “baffling”.
The Conservatives are certainly losing donors in droves: key figures that financed the 2017 and 2019 elections counted themselves out before the campaign was called. On Tuesday, two different billionaires publicly switched their allegiance from Tory to Labour.
Rishi Sunak’s decision to skip the Conservatives’ fundraising ball this week might be less an ill-advised snub to funders as a face-saving measure, because almost no funders would be there.
The evidence isn’t conclusive, but it’s certainly persuasive: can the Tories afford to get their message, whatever it is, out for the rest of the election campaign? And what does it say about their party finances in the next parliament if they can’t?
Multiple sources now saying the tories have run out of money, because all their major donors have abandoned them. And yet Rishi Sunak has a net worth in excess of £650m. He could personally bankroll the rest of the campaign, right up to the spending limit, and not even notice the difference. It really does ram home the extent to which Sunak himself only cares about money, and the extent to which tories go into politics with an agenda of self-enrichment rather than actually trying to make the world a better place. The betting scandal is more of the same.A Tory has admitted the party is running out of cash for its campaign after it aired a low budget election broadcast.
Speaking on The Division Bell podcast, the Mirror’s Political Editor John Stevens told how he couldn’t believe how bad the film aired this week was.
“I was speaking to some people in Labour HQ and they were saying they have been preparing for the fight of their lives this campaign because they just thought the Tories will pull out any trick they can,” he said. “And so far it just doesn't even feel like they're trying anymore.”
