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We're all hosed. I'm hosed. You're hosed. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely hosed.
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Feb 1, 2017 01:12
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Pissflaps posted:I think it's always been obvious that Brexit is bad for everyone. A bad deal is also bad for everyone. And the "No deal is better than a bad deal." is utter crap because "no deal" is the "WTO deal" which is a very very bad deal.
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Feb 1, 2017 14:44
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Namtab posted:I'm more interested in finding out why people support the liberals in 2017. Sheer desperation. jabby posted:19% vs 32%. Council elections are a poor indicator of anything at the national level, comparing the turnouts to say one result is more significant than another is trying pretty desperately hard to make the Lib Dems look good/Labour look bad. I certainly wouldn't characterise it as 'interesting'. You're replying to someone who posts about student politics so I'm sure she finds council politics absolutely thrilling. 19% would be a record turnout for most student elections after all. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 3, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2017 01:54
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https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/827312590359519233 #LibDemFightback #UKIPSurge
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Feb 5, 2017 18:04
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Yes what what you need to understand is that it's all Corbyn's fault.
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Feb 7, 2017 11:59
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Pochoclo posted:I'm sorry but I have a pretty high salary in London and I'd still have to save for like two years to buy a flat lease in Aberdeen, one of the cheapest cities to buy. It's not that the wages are low - it's that houses are incredibly supermega high priced because investors and speculators have driven up the prices. It's the same almost everywhere, I don't see what's controversial about it. Lol what? Aberdeen average sale prices in the last year have been above Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Glasgow. Low wages are a problem for anyone wanting to ever have their own home anywhere and not just where the prices have gone super crazy but let's not pretend it's the same everywhere.
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Feb 7, 2017 15:05
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It'll all change when we have electric driverless taxis that are dirt cheap. edit: ^^^^^^^^ jfc why the hell have you posted that monstrosity.
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Feb 8, 2017 10:54
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The Lords can't go against manifesto commitments. One of which was to stay in the single market. Err.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:40
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TinTower posted:"Now the real fight begins" is as ridiculous as "Here's how Bernie can still win". If somehow Labour had teamed up with the LDs, SNP and some Tory rebels to block A50 it would've been loving carnage. So gently caress off you loving hypocrite Liberals who somehow think accepting the outcome of a referendum is wrong when you wrote a blank cheque to the Tories when you propped up their minority government and gave us all austerity and crippling tuition fees for the next generation. Seriously, gently caress you all.
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Feb 9, 2017 14:13
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TinTower posted:The mental hurdles people are jumping over to excuse Corbyn literally voting for a hard Tory Brexit reminds me of that "irregular verbs" joke in Yes Minister: I respect the government's mandate, you prop up an unpopular government, he is a yellow Tory. The Lib Dems literally propped a Tory government. Labour is literally not. loving hell. Also nice Freudian slip because Lib Dems are Yellow Tories. Corbyn is definitely not a Red Tory. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 16:08
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TinTower posted:Tell me exactly how voting for a Tory bill that is against Labour policy and the wishes of the vast majority of Labour voters and members isn't "propping up a Tory government". It wasn't and never has been Labour policy to ignore the referendum result by voting against Article 50 and neither a majority of remain voters or a majority of Labour voters advocate doing that. It might be Lib Dem policy. Which is why they poll at a stonking great 14% amongst Remain voters in the latest YouGov.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:38
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TinTower posted:Softest Brexit Possible is Labour policy. They voted for Hard Brexit last night. I don't know if you noticed but negotiations haven't even started. Saying Labour voted for hard Brexit because of the A50 bill is just as inaccurate as Kippers claiming the economy is totally fine and Brexit is a total success already.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:42
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TinTower posted:I get 18%. Labour are on 30% with Remain voters. You really need to stop quoting "headline" numbers when don't knows are high. This is why so many people misinterpreted key polls in the US election. 18% of remain voters weighted by likelihood excluding WNV/DK isn't the same as 18% of remain voters and carries a much higher margin of error. Nevertheless the Lib Dem strategy is such a success that more remain voters still want to vote Conservative rather than Lib Dem. Edit: lol you couldn't read the headline chart right even. Con is on 30% and Lab 35%.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:17
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Fangz posted:Stop pretending you understand what those terms you are using mean. Go on then, "educate" me this'll be a laugh.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:40
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TinTower posted:The polls in the American election were actually relatively accurate in predicting Clinton's popular vote share. Nationally yes but on on a state level no. The distribution of DKs and their demographics goes a long way to predicting the actual result more accurately.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:42
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Fangz posted:For a start, what do you mean by this. Essentially that because a large number of the undecideds (of which there was a lot more than your average US election) in the states that Trump picked up the most last minute support not accounted for in the final headline results were soft R leaners that the potential variation of Trump's performance was higher and skewed towards outperforming the poll number. Fangz posted:Or actually, explain what 'margin of error' means to you. It's how close we expect the actual result to be given a certain likelihood. Fangz posted:Congratulations, this is why you look at the headline figures that make use of voter likelihood models. The headline figures exclude don't knows they don't apply any model to them. My point is that even if the likelihood weights are very accurate on average they still add variance to the model. Excluding don't knows also adds variance and afaik no pollster publishes results trying to model how those voters might break.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:12
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Fangz posted:Incorrect. The undecideds were accounted for, but they were accounted for poorly (they used past elections as precedent, but turns out the past wasn't a great guide). The undecideds introduced additional unexpected variability into the system, but the whole point of variability - especially ones without a lot of precedent - is that you can't use the undecideds to generate better predictions. That's a very strong claim and strange to make. I would wager that past voting behaviour is indicative of which way an undecided might break. Also you could just ask them what way they lean. Any model that used the proportion undecideds to increase the variance of it's estimates even if it didn't move the means would be arguably more accurate than one that didn't. Otherwise you're basically claiming that a poll of 100 people with 0 undecideds has the same variance in its estimate as a poll of 1000 people with 900 undecideds. Fangz posted:Nope. It's an estimate of the inherent variability of the results on repeated sampling subject to assumptions. Voter likelihood methods and demographic reweighting are introduced to *reduce* the contribution of sampling variation to MoE. How is what you're saying any different from saying it is how far our sampled estimate is expected to be from the population parameter a given proportion of the time? It basically sounds like you know some stats and have just memorised some frequentist terminology and don't actually get what I'm saying. Of course likelihood models and weightings are designed to reduce variance - but they don't eliminate it. There's no reason why you couldn't estimate the variation of your weightings based on the statistics of the demographic weight changes when you recalibrate them. You're being overly simplistic by talking about poll results as if they're just a statistical sampling problem as opposed to being a part of a larger probabilistic model which itself has variability and also includes non-determinism in human behaviour. Edit: Maybe the easiest way to explain the general point is this: A binomial distribution does not have the same variance as a beta-binomial distribution. Headline polling figures are a result of a complex hierarchical model and therefore the nature of the variance of its estimates is also complex but not impossible to model . Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 18:31
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Fangz posted:On the general point that polls suck especially in the UK system, I totally agree. But they are pretty much the only data we have at this point, and we need to be very careful about the temptation to throw out data because their conclusions are inconvenient. Also people who ridiculously mishandle the data suck. Maybe the easiest way to explain the general point is this: A binomial distribution does not have the same variance as a beta-binomial distribution. Headline polling figures are a result of a complex hierarchical model and therefore the nature of the variance of its estimates is also complex but not impossible to model. Your position appears to be that these things cannot be understood and therefore we shouldn't bother and just ignore them. And of course a model is more accurate if it has more variance when estimating an uncertain event than a more certain one. This mistake is why so many crappy polling aggregates gave Clinton a 99% chance of winning. Also lol if you're literally one of those "bayesians are idiots" people. Fangz posted:None of this says talking about raw values is better than talking about the headline values. The 2nd page values aren't "raw" they're still demographically weighted. What I'm saying is that you can't interpret the headline results correctly without also looking at the 2nd page results because it gives you lots of information about potential variability in the estimate. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 18:50
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Fangz posted:No, my position is that we should use the headline values which represent the polling company's attempt to correct for all sources of error using demographic data and voter intention data which they do not otherwise make generally accessible. Rather than... what, exactly? I'm saying we should use all the information instead of making retarded conclusions from just the headline numbers like TinTower and the commentariat do.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:55
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Fangz posted:The headline figures are the ONLY numbers in those crosstabs that use all the information. They explicitly exclude don't knows and don't even give variance estimates so they're obviously throwing away some information. Meanwhile the rest of the world merrily throw around 95% confidence intervals based on the binomial distribution and sample size pretending they've got a loving clue.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:00
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Fangz posted:The removal of don't knows amounts to trying to model how the don't knows will vote. If you remove them naively that corresponds to an assumption that they will vote along the lines of the rest of the population or don't vote. Indeed, and you could even model that assumption either as a complete exclusion or put a prior distribution on them, or come up with a more sophisticated model based on where the DKs appear in the other crosstabs. I've not for a moment said the headline figures aren't a good estimate of the expected means but people in news articles or internet forums don't present polling results without comment. Understanding whether a conclusion someone draws or assertion they make based on headline polling figures is valid is much more difficult if you don't look at more than just the headline figures - e.g. it's a different story if a headline drop in support for Labour is due to an increase in former supporters becoming DKs or them actively switching to other parties. It should also be much less surprising is a poll the day before an election is 4-5% off the result if there were 20% DKs as opposed to 10% DKs. Everywhere people discussing polls make explicit and implicit assumptions about how significant a 1% or x% gap in a polling result is and the whole point of what I'm arguing is that headline figures are insufficient to make strong claims about that in a lot of cases but that there's an awful lot of information released in the polls that an informed reader can draw a better conclusion with having to have access to the private data the polling firm holds. What I'm saying is that you don't have to go full Nate Silver for people to have a better quality of debate around poll results than Googling for a "margin of error calculator" and naively plugging in a couple of numbers. Whilst I would love to have tons more polling data available in the UK we really don't use what we already have very well and that's because your average politics nerd or journalist has no real grasp of the art or science of statistics and probability. It amazes me constantly how unwilling and hostile people are to debate the nature of variability and uncertainty and how we can reason about and understand it. Edit: Looking at a published YouGov poll again it's interesting that both the weighted/unweighted reported sample size is the same in both the includes and excludes DKs pages. Given that this covers 30% of the 1705 respondents even the naive margin of error calculation would be seriously wrong in that case and there's no way of realising that unless you look beyond the headline figures. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 21:13
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Looke posted:Jeremy Hunt on winter pressures 
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Feb 10, 2017 10:18
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Baron Corbyn posted:I wouldn't expect a UKIP surge. They're a single issue party who've achieved their aim and the Tories are a more seriously regarded party who have taken up hard brexit as an aim. UKIP are the most serially under performing party relative to media hype and expectations. The Independent posted:According to Labour’s own polling, a 15,000-majority could come down to as little as 1,000. A less overtly political source, the bookies, have brought Ukip’s odds down from 20/1 to 2/1. Oh.
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Feb 10, 2017 10:22
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Zalakwe posted:By COP 2016 19 of the 26 Liberal Democrat council by-election gains since Brexit had been in leave areas. They mainly seem to be taking seats off the Conservatives, although not exclusively. I know another party that might like to do that.... Even in "leave" areas you can have a good 30-40% remain voters and those won't be distributed randomly across an area so there's a decent chance you'll get council by-election gains in those places. You have to remember the Lib Dems are coming back from an extremely low watermark and they will have held many of those seat gains at some point in the not distant past. Big "swings" in by-elections are very misleading due to turnout being low, especially in council by-elections. The so called swing vote is much less important than ensuring your base turns out reliably and is supplemented by the tactical voters in these circumstances. The Lib Dems are especially reliant on the tactical voters. Even given the catastrophic results of 2015 (so you might expect mostly die hard supporters left) the LDs polling stats for their 2015 voters consistently show they have the lowest retention and highest undecided rates.
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Feb 10, 2017 11:13
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Zalakwe posted:All of what you've said is fairly standard stuff and I don't disagree, although there are a few in there where the LDs haven't had a sniff previously and even came from a lost deposit position. None of it contradicts my central point though, remain voters are a valuable and very motivated constituency that is winning people elections. Oh definitely, it's basically been the counterweight to the "ugh coalition" effect they suffered in 2015. I think one of the main reasons TM hasn't been gagging for a general election is that the Tories aren't sure that they won't end up losing dozens of seats they gained in 2015 back to the LDs due to angry remain voters. I don't even think that the Tories will gain much from Labour if they can't win over the hardcore 10-15% of UKIP voters. Stoke is definitely going to be an interesting result and will tell us a lot about how the Brexiters are. To be honest I think one possible scenario there is a narrow LD victory (i.e. with under 30%) with the vote split 4 ways between all the parties. But I still think the most likely outcome is UKIP to massively under perform and a narrow Labour hold over the Tories.
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Feb 10, 2017 11:33
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WeAreTheRomans posted:This was the lil oval office who was distantly related to NIcola Sturgeon, it was posted a while back. Well. https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/829978157377847296
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Feb 10, 2017 15:20
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marktheando posted:Nobody gave a gently caress when our last Prime Minister burnt a £50 in front of a tramp, so some nobody burning a £20 was unlikely to make much of a stir. Austerity in action.
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Feb 10, 2017 16:18
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Surely that's a parody account. I mean. Seriously?
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Feb 10, 2017 16:35
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Guavanaut posted:The conservative estimate is when they ask George how much he'll pay for the lot. 
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Feb 10, 2017 19:20
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jabby posted:It's worth considering that these changes are from June last year. It demonstrates pretty well that while Labour have done badly in the last 8 months, UKIP has done much worse and the Tories seem to have taken the majority of their poll boost from them. It's also worth asking ourselves why it is that the narrative is that UKIP (as always) are about to have a SURPRISE VICTORY (at Labour's expense of course) in the upcoming by-elections (c.f. Oldham in 2015) despite not making any progress in the polls, and why the Lib Dems are the REAL OPPOSITION despite still being 12 points below their 2010 performance, but Labour who are 3-4% down are IN CATASTROPHIC MELTDOWN!
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Feb 11, 2017 20:57
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LemonDrizzle posted:He used to be more Farage than Farage - in his youth he was a member of the Monday Club and called for things like hanging Nelson Mandela and "involuntary repatriation" of non-white immigrants. He's since renounced those views. Apparently his change in worldview coincided with his marriage. Apparently his wife was a Labour supporter.
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Feb 12, 2017 15:36
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Pissflaps posted:I don't think I've ever heard of a speaker being criticised for partisan bias before - is that a thing or are we using our imaginations? Well your memory of the New Labour years is selective. quote:On 1 November 2006, during Prime Minister's Questions, Martin caused uproar in the House of Commons by ruling out of order a question from Leader of the Opposition David Cameron in which he challenged Tony Blair over the future leadership of the Labour Party. Martin stated that the purpose of Prime Minister's Questions was for the House to question the Prime Minister on the actions of the government. This caused such dissent amongst MPs that Martin threatened to suspend the session. Cameron then re-worded the question so he asked about Tony Blair's future as Prime Minister rather than leader of the Labour Party, which Martin accepted. Conservative MPs threatened to walk out if a similar event occurred in the future.
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Feb 12, 2017 20:27
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Private Speech posted:Still mourning the happier times back then. Lots of things were better. But let's face it they failed to reform economic policy away from neoliberalism (so has wasted massive sums on PFI and meant that our response to the financial crash was the damp squib of bankers QE which has inflated asset prices for the over 50s and screwed over everyone else, lost Ed M the 2015 GE and meant the coalition implemented austerity) and engaged in an unjustified war which has massively contributed towards the continued instability of the middle east and the refugee crisis. Yeah. But apart from that stuff.
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Feb 12, 2017 20:49
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Pissflaps posted:Ok well that's definitely an example of something - though I think if you were to be honest you'd admit you used google rather than your own memory to retrieve it. I'll admit this anecdote wasn't on the tip of my tongue but I could remember well enough there were numerous such situations over the time. Maybe you're right that nobody considered a Scottish Labour Speaker causing a fuss over the Conservative Leader of the Opposition's wording over his criticism over the Labour Prime Minister's internal party woes of the time as partisan. Nowhere near as partisan as a Conservative Speaker making a stand over a controversial foreign leader visiting under a Conservative Prime Minister. That's quite obvious I suppose. jabby posted:My answer would be to stop collecting terrible opinions and then either using them to make important decisions or publishing them as if they have significance. Indeed. We like to get a thousand+ people to answer a yes/no question and weight it carefully demographically to get a reasonably accurate estimate of public opinion. But lets by all means make sweeping judgements on complex motivations and opinions based on half a dozen people in an unscientific group discussion. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Feb 12, 2017 |
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Feb 12, 2017 21:33
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Private Speech posted:Focus groups is just qualitative polling though. It's much easier to assess the quality of a normal poll by a frequent pollster than it is to assess the results of a (select selecting, selectively reported) focus group. I mean, loving hell, how much time have you read about ex-Labour UKIP supporters? According to the latest YouGov poll that accounts for ~4%~ of 2015 Labour voters. Focus groups are deliberately unscientific (in their conduct, or reporting, it doesn't matter) because the people who buy them aren't interested in finding out facts, but pushing a certain agenda.
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Feb 12, 2017 21:45
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Private Speech posted:It's not unscientific in principle, like any polling you can choose an unrepresentative sample, and you do have to work harder to interpret the data, but qualitative polling is widely used in social sciences of all sorts. I don't know why you're posting about qualitative polling because we were talking about political focus groups.
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Feb 12, 2017 23:24
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Private Speech posted:Focus groups is literally one of the few major forms of qualitative research. Or maybe you could read that BJD paper I linked, it's short and non-technical. Admittedly only the second half is about focus groups. You keep thinking I'm criticising the idea of a focus group as legitimate data collection tool in research as opposed to criticising the actual practice of political focus groups and the subsequent coverage they're given.
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Feb 12, 2017 23:43
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Jose posted:a man asking people with no spine to stand up lol Ah yes. The problem with Labour "centrists" is that they haven't been challenging Corbyn's leadership.
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Feb 12, 2017 23:50
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Private Speech posted:In the absence of access to the actual research data we have no way of knowing if the results are reported dishonestly or not. It doesn't matter if we are talking about focus groups or structured interviews or whatever other survey method. I mean, the fact that the results are published on blogs and newspapers is probably a hint they're not actually trying to conduct research of any sort. I haven't seen the Royal Statistical Society investigate Twitter polling so I guess I'll consider that valid too until further notice.
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Feb 13, 2017 00:51
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Private Speech posted:This was a newspaper leak, and we have not seen anything to indicate that the study wasn't done impartially. If there even was one, as by the same logic they could have just made it all up to tarnish, uhh, Rayner was it? No need to run an actual study. Again you seem to be thinking I'm actually saying focus groups are bad a priori or that the data these focus groups produce is devoid of any value, I am not. But studies have a hypothesis they're trying to test. Researchers write up results and get them peer reviewed. Deliberately targeting a sub-demographic you feel is likely to generate some convenient quotes supportive of the narrative you've been trying to push and selectively handing them over to friendly journalists to write attack pieces is not and never will be science. I've certainly never seen anyone writing about a focus group of Lib Dem or Green leaning Labour voters, have you? I wonder why.
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Feb 13, 2017 10:16
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