Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection

Christmas Shopping Spree Election E-14
29th Anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's resignation, also Alistair Darling's 66th birthday and Friedrich Engels' 199th

What Goes On? 🔊
© Lou Reed, 1969

The Polling Spree for the Christmas Shopping Spree Election goes on as expected with 36 GB-wide polls conducted so far since Dissolution Day, and more than half of them since nominations closed and the actual candidates in each constituency were known. Now I just anticipate the punditariat telling us on Election Night that 'the Brexit Party definitely hurt Labour', after telling us earlier this month that 'the Brexit Party will hurt the Conservatives most', with the end of the sentence 'but just because they stood down in all Tory seats' buried in the fine print at the bottom just as in Squirrel Killer Jo's deliberately misleading bar charts of voting intentions. What's clear is that the trends of voting intentions are still not good for Labour. The Labour surge started late, after the Conservatives had already squirrelled away the first wave of LibDem defectors, those who misheard PM Jo and thought she said 'neither Corbyn nor Corbyn', or was it what she actually said? Then Labour's vote share rose more slowly than the Conservatives' as the influx of Brexit Party voters repainting themselves from turquoisish blue to real deep blue outnumbered the second wave of LibDem defectors, the Orange-To-Red ones who truly believed PM Jo said 'neither Johnson nor Johnson'. Labour might have found some encouragement in the last ICM and ComRes polls crediting the Conservatives with 'only' a 7% lead, but before that we've had the Tories leading by double digits on a continuous string of 19 polls. Which means for three days. Naw, just kiddin' here, that was six days.

Opinium have now changed their approach, two weeks after YouGov did, and now prompt voters with only the parties that actually stand in their constituency. For the test run they asked the generic question prompting all parties too. They published both sets of results and the one striking difference is that 3% of respondents shift from the Brexit Party to the Conservatives when prompted with only the parties actually standing. So this is the first definite evidence that Nigel Farage could actually win the election for Boris Johnson. Just have to wonder what the price tag will be. Nige has already ruled out a hermine so I guess some not too distant embassy with reasonably little actual work involved would do the trick. By the way one pollster called Kantar really made my day with updates to their methodology (scroll down to the bottom of the page). Aye you read it right they allocate some respondents to any party by imputation, which in Human English means they guessed. So I guess my Tory neighbour will vote Tory, but shouldn't he be imputed to the SNP by the 'nearest neighbour' algorithm? After all I am his fucking nearest neighbour. More seriously and as a statistician I can tell you 'nearest neighbour' is a tricky approach. Getting it right would require something like the Political Compass questionnaire, which is way beyond anything you can ask in a standard voting intentions poll. Or you have to rely on some simplified approach as 'rate yourself on a far-right to far-left scale' and have to deal with a huge number positioning themselves dead center. So Kantar definitely did a lot to restore my faith in the polling class. By the way did I mention already that I do love sarcasm? Sure I did, didn't I?

There is definitely a sense of elation among Labour supporters in the media since Labour clause-fived their Masterplan For The 2020s. Those of you who have watched Ken Loach's The Spirit of '45 will get the point and understand the level of enthusiasm Jeremy Corbyn can generate when he paints himself as both Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan Reincarnate. But Corbyn has a problem though: he has to play both parts himself as he definitely lacks appropriate sidekicks, and don't even think of mentioning McDonnell, Abbott or Thornberry here. Now there is always a silver lining when the Tories call Labour's manifesto 'a return to the 40s' because that's exactly the spirit and CCHQ have at least got one thing right in this campaign. But it's worth reminding you that in most cases, a man trying to change the world fails for one simple and unavoidable reason: everyone else (aye, that's another quote and I think you will never guess where from). Then Labour might find some reasons to be optimistic in the record number of younger people who have registered to vote and also in Johnson's also sub-par ratings, though he still beats Corbyn two-to-one on the Prime Ministerialability scale. In the end it might all boil down to how many 'moderates' would choose Corbyn as the antidote to Johnson vs how many would choose Johnson as the antidote to Corbyn. Tough call here despite Johnson's newfound persona as Marmite-On-The-Doorstep.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 🔊
© Bob Dylan, 1962

Even if the long-term trend is still unfavourable, Labour have gained a few votes over the last week. My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones, conducted between 21 and 26 November by six different pollsters (YouGov, Survation, Deltapoll, Kantar, ComRes and ICM). Super-sample size is 9,342 with a theoretical 1.01% margin of error. Now we have the Tories leading by 9.5% GB-wide, which is better than a week ago but still uncomfortably high from Labour's point of view. We have the same situation in England where the Tories lead by 11.5%, which again is better than a week ago but still delivers a sizeable majority of seats. The Brexit Party vote is still slowly melting away while the LibDems are slightly lower than on last week's rolling average. Which in fact means they're losing ground to Labour in the battleground areas where it really matters.

As always there are some paradoxes and counter-intuitive factors in recent polls. The day-to-day plot of current vs 2017 polling looks actually better for Labour than the rolling average would make you think. Labour have caught up with their 2017 voting intentions at the same point in the campaign while the Conservatives are slightly below and the LibDems slightly above. But Labour also have had some weak polling some days earlier so it might just be a random variation. Corbyn's campaigning and the New English Socialism manifesto might go down really well within Labour ranks but we don't have any evidence yet that all this really made a strong impression on the general public. Bear in mind too that the Tory-sponsoring media have much more powerful means to set the tone of the campaign than Labour or the SNP. Negative messages against both are to be expected in droves in the next two weeks and conveniently timed. Like a conservative Rabbi who hasn't been heard of for months and now suddenly has a lot of things to say about Corbyn. Which is kept in the headlines for days while the media conveniently bury the Muslim Council of Britain's calls to thoroughly address islamophobia within the Conservative Party. Asinus always the same asinum fricat.

Polls show the oppositions still face an uphill battle and the current First Minister of England might very well be the chosen one for Number Ten on Friday The Thirteenth. It is nevertheless obvious that both Labour in England and the SNP in Scotland have strong talking points that can be weaponized against the Conservatives. Corbyn now has all the ammunition he needs about Johnson selling out the NHS to Trump's corporate donors and all he has to do is to make it stick for the next two weeks. To get that done he just has to use Johnson's favourite stunt: whatever the question, shift the debate to 'NHS Sell-out' just as Johnson shifts any embarrassing question to 'Get Brexit Done'. And of course there is the never-ending supply of blatant lies from Johnson and his Cabinet Ministers that the opposition can put to good use even if the establishment media try to cover them up. Labour, and also the SNP after Andrew Neill's distasteful bullying of Nicola Sturgeon, have every reason to hold the Tory-enabling media to account for not holding Johnson and his minions to account. Or let social media do it for them, has been known to work and would make it easier to deservedly ridicule Team Blue.

Sign Of The Times 🔊
© Bryan Ferry, 1978

In related news, Deltapoll surveyed three more London constituencies (Chelsea and Fulham, Cities of London and Westminster, Hendon) while Survation polled Great Grimsby in Lincolnshire, a Labour seat since 1945, and predict it will switch to the Conservatives on a surprisingly high margin. Quite clearly here the Brexit Party hurts Labour and helps the Conservatives, something of a pattern in Northern Leave seats. Otherwise no big surprise in the London seats: three Tory incumbents, three Tory holds. And the Brexit Party sitting these out only helps marginally as the New Model Blackshirts don't do well in London generally. But there is a LibDem side effect here that turns Hendon from a Con-Lab marginal into a safe Conservative hold. Nothing special to say about Chelsea and Fulham which was an uphill battle for Labour anyway.

The good part here comes from the Cities' constituency, Chuka Umunna's chosen landing pad after he realized any Labour candidate would woodchip him in Streatham, and a Tory seat since 1885 when it was just City of London or since 1950 in its present incarnation. Obviously he made some impression, chipping off votes from both Red and Blue, but he still fails to score an upset here and the seat is predicted to stay Blue even with a much reduced majority. Now this was probably meant as a kamikaze run for Chuka as Swinson Central could easily have parachuted him on a more promising seat like Bermondsey and Old Southwark or Richmond Park, both steadily projected as LibDem gains. Or Vince Cable could have anointed him Heir Apparent in Twickenham. Then I guess many at Swinson Central will be happy to see Chuka getting one in the arse, as his unquenchable thirst for self-promotion and positions of power would have made him a liability had he succeeded in gaining a solidly Tory seat. That way he won't take any spotlight off PM Jo and she surely will thank the Cities' voters for that. Subliminally. Jo, you can aim the nukes away from London now. YouGov also polled Wales for their monthly survey on behalf of ITV Cymru and Cardiff University, three weeks after the last one but then they had to fit it into the campaign period. This one is good for Labour in the sense they lose fewer votes than in earlier polls, but it still says they lose four seats there, with many others held only by shaky margins. The irony here is that the LibDems would lose Brecon and Radnorshire, the much publicized 'successful' testbed for Unite Remain, back to the Conservatives. I have already said their by-election gain was built on quicksand and absolutely did not prove what they wanted us to believe it proved and it comes back to bite them in the arse. Sadly Plaid Cymru would lose Ceredigion to the LibDems, but they have a 50-50 chance of gaining Ynys Mon in a close three-way with Labour and the Conservatives.

Then of course the most disturbing shocker of the week was Panelbase's poll of Scotland, which I already mentioned three days ago when assessing the alternate realities that could spell doom for the SNP. Ironically news about this poll was first spread by a tweet from Ruth Davidson. Did we mishear when she said she was not taking that PR job after all? Or does she not trust Jackass Carlaw to handle even good news correctly? Then another Scottish poll was published by Ipsos MORI, with much more satisfying results for the SNP. Below is the weighted average of these two polls and the seat projections from these results, from worst to best possible outcome for the SNP. The Tory vote is quite close to its 2017 level, meaning the SNP's dream of wiping them out probably won't materialize. Then the Labour vote is somewhat higher than could be expected from earlier polls, even if they would still lose all their 2017 gains. There is a strong case to be made that a large number of 18-34yr olds have registered to vote for the first time to support Corbyn's Broadband Socialism. This is certainly the case in England and there is no reason to believe it is not in Scotland. And they are just the kind of voters the SNP need to switch to overturn slim Tory majorities in a handful of seats. The tricky part is that gaining such votes in the Central Belt wouldn't help, it has to be in the North East mostly. Good luck with that especially when Team Jackass is already going after them.

These polls are a warning that an almost 2015ish landslide is not in the making. Yet. And as usual they say that turnout is the key, in case you haven't got the message the first time. So more leafleting and canvassing in the dead of night, like just before supper, and a massive GOTV drive from the SNP. By the way I already told you that I would not tell you 'I told you so' but then I have to tell you that I told you a week ago we had to get ready for a 42% SNP / 28% Tories vote. Now the two new polls say it's 42% / 27% which delivers the same number of seats for the SNP as the Tories on 28%. But mind you, the ever-cautious Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus now has the SNP anywhere between 20 and 46 seats after some seriously thought through tweaking of the basic data. Not that that made me feel any better or any worse either. Interestingly too the Scottish Greens are credited with 1.4% of the votes for 22 candidates, almost a proportional increase on their 2017 result when they got 0.2% for 3 candidates. And which proves they don't make more of an impression now than they did then despite all the gesturing and posturing and backstabbing. Voters know best.

The In Crowd 🔊
© William Page, 1965

The seat projections this week are somewhat different from what they were two or three weeks ago despite the Conservatives' lead over Labour being back to the same level. Recent Welsh and Scottish polling means that a few seats have switched back from the Conservatives to Labour in Wales and some from the SNP to the Conservatives in Scotland, with some also switching from the LibDems to Labour in England. So Labour again clear the 200-seat hurdle according to my model, which won't make them feel better anyway as this is still a 1983ish result, and the Conservatives here bag a solid 42-seat majority. Other models reach the same conclusion when I feed their 'user prediction' options with the same voting intentions, though with the usual differences in numbers. With all the usual caveats factored in, now we have a Tory majority somewhere between 20 and 80 seats, which might be just what the First Minister of England needs to pass his worse-than-May's Brexit Deal and move on. Interestingly Electoral Calculus' Advanced Thing in now far less favourable to the Tories than uniform swing when it was the other way round until now. So I guess they must have tweaked their algorithms again without telling us. Anoraks will be anoraks.

The various predictor sites have also updated their own predictions, which might differ from what I got using their 'user prediction' option as they do not use the exact same rolling average as me. Which is just one sign of the never-ending debate about the proverbial poll-of-polls. How many polls should be included and how far back should the sample go? Should older polls be simply cast away or should they be incrementally down-weighted? Quite irrelevant for the readers as long as everyone is clear about their methodology but then what would anoraks do with all the time they have on their hands if they did not quibble over minute details?

Anyway nobody sees anything but a Conservative majority in the chicken's entrails right now. Just as nobody foresaw a hung Parliament in 2017 at the same point in the campaign. Which does not mean a hung Parliament can't happen in two weeks but I stick to my view that it is an extremely unlikely outcome. The key seats are in England as always and Tories outnumber Labour 299 seats to 143 Doon Sooth on current polling, with no credible hints that it could change enough anytime soon to overturn the predicted Tory majority. Just bear in mind that Corbyn would need about 280 seats for a Labour minority government to become a plausible option and right now he's 70 seats short of that according to my model. Some major upset would definitely be needed to switch that many seats. This is supported by the detailed results from YouGov's MRP model, which was the only one to predict a hung Parliament in 2017 and now predicts a 68-seat Tory majority. Interestingly YouGov here have the Scottish seats going 43 SNP, 11 Conservatives, 3 LibDems, 2 Labour. Their detailed results are sometimes quite surprising. The Conservatives would lose Stirling and East Renfrewshire to the SNP, but hold Gordon which looked like a more likely SNP gain on other projections. Labour would hold Edinburgh South and Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill when other projections see the latter as the easiest SNP gain. LibDems would not only fail to gain North East Fife but also lose Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross to the SNP. And for PM Jo's fans out there, all seventeen of them, YouGov says she would hold East Swinsonshire on 38% to the SNP's 33%, which is actually a quite mediocre result.

Goin' Down 🔊
© Don Nix, 1969

Under current polling 86 seats would change hands, somewhat similar to 1900 (81 changes) and 1970 (86 changes). But don't read too much into this. The 1900 election was an odd one as seats actually switched back and forth between the Conservatives and Liberals and the overall tally after the elections was pretty much the same as before. Only remarkable event back then is that it is the year when the Labour Party (then known as the Labour Representation Committee) got his first two MPs, Keir Hardie and Richard Bell. Admittedly Hardie had already been elected MP for the Independent Labour Party in 1895 but the ILP does not fully count in Labour's genealogy as it never merged with Labour and survived as a distinct entity until 1975. Then 1970 was one of these elections where the Conservatives defeated Labour and took over as the Government. It's remarkable though as the first time the SNP secured a seat in a general election rather than in a by-election, and unfortunately also the year when Winnie Ewing lost the Hamilton seat she had gained in a 1967 by-election. But let's go back to the present day.

The balance of gains and losses and the cartography of changes are again not good at all for Labour, though slightly less catastrophic than in earlier projections. They would now avoid embarrassing symbolic losses like Sedgefield, Bolsover and West Bromwich West, but still lose 18 seats in the North and 13 in the Midlands where pressure from the Brexit Party would still be felt and switch many working class Leave voters. There is also an interesting situation on the horizon for the LibDems. Not so long ago my model had them on 50+ and now they don't reach even 30. It would not take much for them to end up with fewer seats after the election than they had on Dissolution Day. Just as happened to the Liberal-SDP Alliance in 1983 despite common wisdom claiming they did well.

Current polling now predicts 70 marginal seats including 45 in England and the two main English parties have just as much to lose if any of the possible alternate outcomes comes true. The 'Con Max' scenario would take Labour back to 1923 instead of back to 1983 and it would definitely take a long long time for them to recover. And 1923 being also the year of Labour's first government under Ramsay MacDonald is probably something they don't want to be reminded of either. But there is a better scenario among the possible options.

Now the interesting part is what could happen if the Conservatives did really less well than predicted and we end up with a hung Parliament like the one in my 'Lab Max' projection. I did the math and an All-Oppositions Alliance would outnumber a Conservative-Irish Unionists Alliance by two seats, 323-321 with Sinn Féin still not showing up. And of course this will never happen as the real alternative would be a Con-Lib Pact on 350 seats and we all know this would be much more likely. Obviously Deputy PM Jo would find herself a shitload of excuses for the ever attractive ministerial cars and expenses. Hopefully we will never have to go through this.

Can't end this without a few personal random thoughts, but I will try to keep them concise and focused. First of all this campaign has reached a new level of obscenity when party leaders were asked if they would push the nuclear button. How this can even be considered a relevant and legitimate question is beyond me. I'm totally with Nicola Sturgeon on this and I am thunderstruck anyone would consider answering that and not telling the host it's the most outrageous question they've ever been asked and they won't even grace it with any kind of answer. You just have to wonder what the answers would be if the question was rephrased like 'would you consider it part of the job to kill some hundred million people in one strike?'. Which is what 'pushing the button' actually is when you don't try to disguise it as 'protecting national interest', which it would not protect anyway as the UK would be instantly vaporized too, something the Trident cultists conveniently fail to remind us. Then it would quite spoil the fun of the campaign, wouldn't it? Much better to see the First Minister of England making an ass of himself over a sheep's ass.

Master of Sheep: Holy fuck, has this moron even seen a live sheep once in his life before?

PR guy: Shut your mouth, Boris, that grin makes you look like Ross Fucking Thomson
Reporter: Stay with us for exclusive broadcast of PM kicked in the balls by angry sheep

Then we still have to endure two weeks of a truly appalling campaign where lies and smear have become the norm. It says a lot about the sorry state of the Once United Kingdom that we have stooped down to the level of American campaigns but of course it comes as no surprise when the leading contestant is a Trump cultist who would sell any of the children he does not remember having fathered if that opened the door to Number Ten. And there is massive irony in the Conservatives pretending to defend 'British values' when the only things they value are their own positions and handing their corporate donors huge profits stolen from the people in return for their dark money. Then Little England ready to keep this lot in power for five more years is a compelling reason to break up that Precious Union that never was one but just a colonial empire designed to serve English interests and no others. Ceterum autem censeo and you know the rest, don't you?

By the way I hope you liked the Bryan Ferry soundtrack today. I know he actively opposes the ban on fox-hunting and supports the Countryside Alliance but, believe it or not, so does Roger Waters who is otherwise as far from a true blue Conservative as can be. Of course Ferry is one and also opposes Scottish Independence but I'd say his most serious offence is having described David Cameron as 'a bright guy'. But that was ten years ago so I guess he can be forgiven now.

Humans say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
Why? Do they think there's a shortage of bad ones?
(Andromeda, episode Forced Perspective, 2001)

Jeremy's Den

28/11/2019

Westminster Projection - E-14 Update

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