Evidence on the Tory Strategy of Targeting Marginals

Can be found here. In short, it looks to be successful. Longer, the BPIX poll that was released yesterday is being touted as having a large enough sample size to say something about the marginals that the Tories are targeting, and claims the swing in said seats is significantly higher than the national swing.

Note, this poll shows a Tory plurality of only 2% over Labour, whereas over the past several weeks YouGov has settled into a 5% to 6% range, with that one "blip" of 2% last weekend. A uniform swing would produce a C 252 / L 309 / LD 56 distribution -- in all likelihood a Labour minority government. In order to gain a plurality share of the seats, the Tories would have to take 29 additional seats off of Labour (not the Lib Dems, but Labour); to obtain an outright albeit narrow governing majority, they would need 74 seats in addition to what a uniform national swing would predict.

Unfortunately, nothing on this poll appears to be available aside from the superficial information I've discussed above. I'm especially keen to know how, and to what degree, the marginals were oversampled. While an N of 5655 is impressive for a poll of this nature, a purely random sampling would equate into an N of 8.7 for each of the 650 constituencies. Of course, they didn't sample in purely random fashion as some form of stratified sampling was certainly employed, but still, how large can the N be for the 75 or so odd marginals that the Tories are targeting?

Read more...

Michael Foot 1913 - 2010

Michael Foot died today. He's best known as leading Labour from 1980 until 1983, and having a hand in writing the "longest suicide note in history", or officially the Labour Party Manifesto for the 1983 elections. Foot was as old Labour as they come, and his election as leader in 1980 prompted the "gang of four" to break off and form the Social Democratic Party, which would eventually merge with the Liberals.

Foot was also born and raised in Plymouth, and a life long supporter of Plymouth Argyle FC, and I believe that he was a director of the club for a while. For his 90th birthday the club formally registered him as a player and issued him with a squad number of 90.

Considering the quality of Argyle's play of late, the running joke is obvious.

Ongoing tributes to Foot can be found at The Guardian here.

Read more...

Just Splendid

Is the UK going to be the next Greece or Iceland? When I moved here in 2003, when times were good economically, I did openly wonder about the sustainability of the British economy. It didn't seem to be based on much more than the City of London, and heaven forbid, should anything happen to the financial services industry . . .

The consequences might be grim. I'm bemused by the stories linking the sudden accelerated decline in the pound to the YouGov poll released Sunday showing only a +2% Tory advantage. Apparently the nebulous markets fear a hung Parliament.

There is a paragraph from the NY Times story that hits wide of the mark, however:

In an echo of the United States’ rush into subprime mortgages with low teaser rates, millions of homeowners in Britain have piled into variable-rate mortgages that are linked to the rock-bottom base rate.

This completely and utterly fails to understand the British property market. There was some "sub prime" stuff going on, yes, but that was not tied to "teaser" rates. Rather, banks would lure in lesser qualified applicants through manipulating two variables, the Loan to Value ratio (Northern Rock was offering mortgages worth 125% of the property value in 2006, for example; one wonders how Northern Rock were one of the first casualties of the credit crunch) and personal income ratios.

Most mortgages held in the UK are "tracker" mortgages, which are tied to the Bank of England rate -- in other words, variable rates. When I bought my house in 2004, the longest fixed mortgage on the market was only for 5 years (there are now 10 year fixed mortgages available), so I took out the five year fixed mortgage (and paid over the odds in order to lock in that security). When a fixed term expires, or when the tracker expires, you are placed on a bank's Standard Variable Rate, which has been quite low considering the BoE is at 0.5%. Hence, six months ago or so, my rate went from 6% to 3.5% overnight. The drinks were on me.

Until this month, when my building society unilaterally raised their SVR 1.5%, so now I'm back up to 5%. When the BoE finally gets around to raising their rate, my mortgage goes up. There's not much I can do about it -- existing fixed mortgages are 1.5 to 2 points above what I'm currently paying. Of course, if this NYT story pans out . . .

I was all in favor of a hung Parliament for the sheer lunacy of it and the joy that it would provide me.

I now find that I'm rapidly losing my enthusiasm.

Read more...

More on British Polling and Margins of Error

I promise that this will not be a daily habit of mine, but the Tory +2% lead poll did generate the predictable breathless excitement on these islands.

YouGov's daily tracker indeed moved back towards +6, as anticipated, at Conservative +7. Additionally, a ComRes poll was released yesterday for The Independent which places the Tory lead at +5 (37/32/19). I want to emphasize that the +2 poll released on Sunday, while at the fringes assuming a true value of +6, is still within the margin of error. It was not an outlier in a pedantic understanding of the word, which is a case three standard deviations removed from the mean.

In other words, the findings reported in the Sunday poll were not "wrong". 95% of samples will yield the true value within the error band of +/- 3%, as this was. This is why we have margins of error in the first place.

What we should focus on is not the point estimate itself, but the trend -- and the consistent trend is clearly away from the Tories and towards Labour.

Speaking of which, the +5% Tory lead reflected in The Independent's poll still yields a distribution of seats as Labour 287, Conservative 272, Liberal Democrat 59 -- assuming a uniform national swing.

UPDATE ( 3/3/10): Again as expected, Wednesday's YouGov tracker is rather consistent, at Conservative +5 (C 38 L 33 LD 16). Given the last seven to ten days of polling, this suggests a true value of support around + 6%, and if not precisely 6 (and it isn't) it's slightly below 6%.

Read more...

We May Have a Ballgame Here

Until this is held, due by June 3 (and the smart money is still on May 6 in order to coincide with the annual local elections) I will be paying more of my scant attention to the forthcoming British general election.

The latest YouGov poll, released on Sunday, has the Tory lead at a mere 2%. While Labour supporters should not get too excited, this is consistent with the trend over the past month to six weeks. Since YouGov essentially became a tracker poll on February 17, the Tory lead has been +9, +7, +8, +6, +6, +6, +6, +6, and now +2. If those +6 results reflect the true value of support at C 39, L 33, then this true value rests comfortably within the margin of error of the most recent poll. Hence, this Times column on the volatility of polling is sound advice, aside from his contention that "all polls have a margin of error of 2 points or so plus or minus"; +/- 3% is the norm due to the inefficiencies of diminishing marginal returns. This poll has an N slightly over 1400, which would place the margin of error slightly below 3%; in order to hit 2% the N would have to be around 2500.

I expect the next YouGov poll to move towards the earlier 6% lead, but the trend is clear: Labour are closing the gap for a variety of reasons (save for Gordon Brown, who still trails Cameron in head-to-head approvals). So what does either scenario mean?

If it's Tories +6, at 39 to 33, the Tories would have 293 seats, Labour 280, the Lib Dems 46.
If at +2, at 37 to 35, then it's Labour 316, Tories 256, Lib Dems 48.

Both scenarios assume a uniform national swing, which while not a completely safe assumption, is necessary in order to calculate the distribution of seats. The Tories 'ground game' strategy is to (intelligently) target the marginal constituencies at the expense of running a purely national campaign, and this may yield dividends that would warp the results expected from a uniform swing. However, even here, the Tories would come up well short if the gap is only 2%. In an analysis by Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, the Tories might realize 270 seats to Labour's 300.

What is clear in any of these calculations, be it Tories +2 or +6, due to the vagaries of the British electoral system, neither party would hit the magic 326 necessary for an outright majority. This would result in a minority government and a new election within a year.

Read more...

No War Over Oil (in the Falklands . . . )

The British are searching for oil just off the coast of some small islands far away from anywhere, though I understand that Argentina is relatively near by, thinks the Falklands go by some other name, and are, in fact, theirs. They are bemused that the British are drilling, baby.

International law on the issue is sketchy, which is about as far as international law ever really gets us (please correct me if I'm wrong). However, in terms of self determination, the population of roughly 3100 would probably opt to remain a British protectorate. Hell, sarcasm doesn't work here -- it wouldn't be close. Argentina might get five or six votes. While Argentina claim that the Falklands are an archaic colonial outpost, I'm not sure the definition of colony is consistent with a population who wants to remain British. Under that definition, Alaska could be considered a colony (Hawaii is a much better example, but there's greater humor value in using Alaska).

Of course, there is also that small issue of the 1982 war between the UK and Argentina. 28 years on, neither the Royal Navy nor the RAF really have the capability to match that campaign. It won't get that far, now that Hugo Chavez has weighed in with his own idiosyncratic diplomatic skills . . .

Read more...

British Pub Culture on the Rocks

As several of our august LGM colleagues are attending some high-falutin International Relations junket in New Orleans (as well as one of my colleagues from my department here at Plymouth), I figured I'd lighten the mood a bit with a post on . . . beer. It is Friday, after all.

Before I became an academic, I was an accomplished amateur brewer, two pursuits that ran in parallel until I got my Ph.D. and moved to Europe. I was also a judge and a critic, and had (have -- it's still live) a beer review page on the web that I updated between 1994 and 2003. Indeed, my first two "peer reviewed" articles were on beer, not political science, and they remain proudly on my cv (if at the very end). OK, those are my bona fides out of the way; suffice it to say I know my way around a pint.

One thing I love about Britain is the pub culture, and this isn't limited to just those pubs that are featured in the annual CAMRA Good Beer Guide, but the culture and concept of the "local", which is not as common in the United States. Here, most pubs are locals -- populated by a core of regulars who are known to all and especially to the staff. There are three pubs in Plymouth where I am always warmly welcomed, and there is a certain comfort in that. Furthermore, at nearly every pub, it's not only accepted, but expected, that if you're standing at the bar, you strike up a conversation with those near you. You're expected to be social; pubs are social spaces. This is less prevalent in the U.S. -- though it does exist most everywhere in the States; I immediately think of the Big Time Brewery in Seattle, where I spent the better part of my graduate career (indeed I listed it in the acknowledgments of my dissertation), and the Tugboat Brewery in Portland, Oregon. But it's the exception, not the norm.

This is one of the cultural features that make British pubs appealing. Sadly, they're dying a slow death, which prompted CAMRA to present a report to Parliament discussing the "vital social role of the community pub". According to the British Beer and Pub Association, pubs are closing at 39 per week in the UK. This is down from a high of 52 during the first half of 2009, so at least it's attenuating (pun explicitly intended). However, in March of 2008, the closure rate was only 57 per month.

When on Monday my good friend Tandleman posted this about his local, the Tandle Hill Tavern (north of Manchester) I became concerned. It's not a death sentence, but considering the local climate of the business, and the remoteness of the Tandle Hill, it is cause for concern. I've been to this pub numerous times over the years (indeed if one were to do a google image search on it, there appear to be several of me, including this one: Tandleman himself is on the left, I'm on the right) and it exemplifies all that is good about British pub culture.

Politically, what can be done? It's well known that the smoking ban in England and Wales has hurt business, but that's not going to be rescinded. What can be done is an adjustment to tax policy. Pubs are being hammered by super markets that sell booze as a loss-leader. Why go to your local when you can go to Tesco and get a 12 pack of Stella Artois (nicknamed "wife beater" on these islands) for the cost of three or four pints in the pub? In nearly every annual budget since I moved to the UK, the government has raised the duty on a pint. This can be reversed (although in the current fiscal climate, I can't see how any British government can justify lowering any tax) and greater weight of responsibility accorded to store-bought crap lager.

I'd drink to that. As it's Friday, pushing 5pm, it's time to do my part to keep the culture alive. I'm about to leave my office and make the treacherous 30 second walk to my local here, to join in with several colleagues for a post-work pint.

Or five.

Read more...

The BNP's Big Tent

The British National Party has boldly entered the 20th Century by voting to allow non whites to become, gasp, members of the BNP. Leader (and MEP) Nick Griffin is quoted in The Guardian article as conservatively estimating membership from non-whites to be a "trickle, rather than a flood". Magnanimously, he goes on to observe that "Anyone can be a member of this party. We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British".

Of course, the BNP's definition of fundamentally British might differ from a more mainstream view. I'd go on about it, but it's a) a soft target, and b) they have an FAQ for the more curious or open minded. Suffice it to say that while they claim to not be racist, they wouldn't mind it if everybody who is not white left these islands for good, via a mechanism of "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home", according to their manifesto in advance of the 2005 General Election. I'm OK, even though I'm an American citizen of largely Irish lineage, but if you're third or fourth generation Caribbean, you're out.

So, in essence, you have to agree to kick yourself out of the UK in order to be a member of the BNP.

I propose the following. While Griffin argues that these odd looking newcomers to the party will "be accepted, they'll be welcomed, providing they're there to do the things that we want to do, and providing they accept and agree with our principles, which is that multiculturalism, we believe, has been a failure . . . ", with only 14,000 members, it wouldn't take too many new members to overwhelm and take over the party.

I'm just saying.

It's good to see that membership in the club of respectable fascist right parties in the UK has increased by one. We needed a little competition over there, to keep UKIP honest.

Read more...

The Alternative Vote for the United Kingdom?

Gordon Brown managed to get his proposal for a referendum on the Alternative Vote passed by the House of Commons yesterday.

So, 1) What does this mean? 2) What would it do? 3) Why did he do it?

Short answers: 1) Not very much. 2) AV could marginally alter outcomes, AV would dramatically alter incentives for tactical voting, and AV should increase both the perceived and real legitimacy of both those elected to Parliament and concomitant Government. 3) To make him and Labour more fanciable to the Liberal Democrats considering the increasing possibility of a hung Parliament, and / or to create a wedge issue for the putative governing Conservatives.

What does it mean?

It doesn't mean very much for a several unrelated reasons. It needs to get past the House of Lords, first. Usually, the Lords are meaningless; their power to delay legislation is limited to two parliamentary sessions over one year (and only one month for so-called "money bills"). However, since the delay can not extend the life of a Parliament past its maximum tenure, all the Lords have to do on this is sit quietly and chat about the plight of Portsmouth FC until the next election, expected to be held on May 6th. In other words, the chances of this passing the Lords is close to nil.

Second, the operation of a referendum in the United Kingdom is not exactly comparable to this variant of direct democracy as understood in the United States. Referenda are not binding. Parliament can simply ignore the results. While this could possibly expose the Government to political problems, constitutional or statutory considerations are not relevant. Furthermore, a future Parliament can choose to overturn a decision made by a previous Parliament to accept the results of any given referendum.

That said, referenda are rather rare in the United Kingdom. There has only been one UK-wide referendum, held in 1975 to see whether or not the UK should remain part of the European Community.

Finally, should this Act make it through the Lords (again unlikely, but not theoretically impossible), the referendum is supposed to be held by some point in 2011. In other words, beyond the tenure of the existing Parliament. The next Parliament can simply overturn this decision.

What would AV do?

The Alternative Vote is a form of STV applied to single-member constituencies. Wikipedia has a solid overview of how it works, and Renard Sexton further discusses AV over at fivethirtyeight. Note, both refer to it as "Instant Run-Off", and Sexton erroneously states that IRV is how AV is known "to the rest of the world". It's not; it's known to most of the world, the egghead electoral systems community to which I belong, and the Republic of Ireland where it elects the Irish President, as AV, and it's commonly known as preferential voting in Australia, where it's been used for something like the last 100 years (though in most of the literature on electoral systems that I have consumed, it is referred to as AV when examining the Australian case).

Briefly, instead of only having a single vote in a single-member constituency election, AV allows (but does not normally require) voters to rank order their preferences among the candidates. This severely reduces the incentives to tactically vote in contexts where your first choice candidate or party has a vanishingly small probability of success; in such cases it is rational to opt for the least undesirable of the two leading candidates / parties. If AV were used in the 2000 US Presidential election, Nader voters would have had the ability to rank either Gore or Bush as second choice (I wonder where most would have drifted?) When the votes are counted and no candidate has a clear majority of 50% +1, lesser candidates are eliminated and their votes redistributed to those remaining until a candidate receives a clear majority.

As only about a third of constituencies were won in the 2005 general election, Sexton suggests that this could have a marginal effect on outcomes. It would take a detailed constituency-level analysis of the 2005 results to examine this properly, and even then this would require making assumptions regarding the 2nd choice of voters supporting parties that finished third, fourth, or fifth in the various constituencies. Furthermore, as constituency boundaries and in many cases names have changed for the 2010 election, an additional layer of complexity is added to any such analysis.

However, as AV would virtually eliminate the incentive to vote strategically, the party finishing second in any given constituency should ultimately receive a boost (especially in cases where the Lib Dems finish 1st or 2nd), and the Lib Dems should see both their percentage of the popular vote (as measured by first choice ballots) increase, and even their seat percentage increase.

Finally, regarding legitimacy, as only a third of constituencies elected an MP with an outright majority in 2005, two thirds of sitting MPs in the current parliament were rejected by a majority of their voting constituents. Furthermore, Labour only received a shade over 35% of the popular vote in 2005, which translated into 55% of the seats, the democratic legitimacy of a government that was rejected by 65% of the electorate is open to question. AV solves this, at least superficially.


So, why did Gordon Brown do this?

Brown is no supporter of electoral reform. The Guardian article linked above quotes "Liberal Democrat spokesman David Howarth said Brown had undergone a 'deathbed conversion' on electoral reform." This is accurate. Brown has known for a couple of years that the 2010 election was going to be dodgy at best for Labour, and his best bet at remaining in power, admittedly while being forced to share some of that power with the Liberal Democrats, was to adopt STV or some form of PR at least a year ago in advance of the 2010 election.

Sexton suggests, as does most of the British media, that Brown is doing this to soften up the Liberal Democrats in advance of a hung parliament, hoping that the Lib Dems would support Labour, and not the Tories, in such an outcome. The Lib Dems have long supported electoral reform for obvious rational reasons -- it's got to suck when 23% of the vote returning 9.6% of the seats is one of your best vote / seat ratios in generations.

There is another possible reason: Brown attempted to create a wedge issue between Labour and the Conservatives. Knowing the Tories embrace electoral reform with the same zeal that Thatcher embraced the coal miners (or the Argentinians, or Scottish independence, or society . . . you get the idea) he was hoping that either the Tories would boycott the vote banking on Labour rebels voting the bill down, or come a prospective Tory government, they would reject holding the referendum. The potential payoff in either scenario for Labour is limited.

Barring a hung Parliament following the 2010 election that results in a minority Labour government propped up by the Lib Dems, or an outright coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems (which I suspect is what it would require), electoral reform for the UK is off the table for a while.

But, I quipped in class on both Monday and Tuesday that this wasn't going to pass in the first place, so what do I know? My students are likely contemplating that very issue at present . . .

Read more...

Labour Frets About Gordon Brown . . . Again, and Again, and . . .

Preface: I'm lucky to be writing this, as my internet connectivity at our Oregon Estate (read: two bedroom apartment in a posh suburb) is dodgy. The better half upgraded a few weeks ago, the provider dropped the ball, we've been without since 31 December, and I'm nicking bandwidth on some nearby, highly unreliable, open wifi. Upgraded access is restored here on 11 January, which conveniently is the same day I brave the upgraded security regime to fly back to England for the new term.

This latest Labour hang wringing over the leadership (and electoral suitability) of Gordon Brown has taken another ham fisted turn, as covered by the New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, et al. (OK, I'm sure The Sun does cover it, but first we get to read about how Cheryl Cole lost her virginity at 15, Rachel Weisz is everybody's favorite MILF, and Patrick Vieira is leaving Inter Milan for greener pastures, presumably Man City, but then it is The Sun).

I'll make this short: this is stupid. Labour's chance to ditch Brown, as I pointed out at the time, was this past June. An Alan Johnson leadership would have helped Labour, but now that Johnson instead opted to assume the cabinet portfolio of doom (i.e. the Home Office), he's in a worse position to help Labour. With Labour slowly regaining traction in the polls over the past two months or so, such that a hung parliament is not out of the question (and third place behind the Lib Dems now seems unlikely), provoking a leadership contest four to five months before an election is lunacy on the scale of Michael Foot's 1983 Labour manifesto. Stating it lightly, this does not help.

The best analysis, as is often the case, can be found at UK Polling Report. Yes, Brown is a clear drag on Labour, while Cameron is the opposite for the Tories. However, the opportunity costs involved in a leadership challenge and then election while the party ought to be busy writing its manifesto and campaigning on it in a unified (for Labour) manner are immense.

Labour had the chance to ditch the Right Honorable Dour Scot in June, and they didn't. It's too late now to do any good.

Read more...

I Always Suspected That Peter Mandelson Was a Wanker

I'll have more to say about this later, but I'm out the door for a Christmas dinner with my partner's family. Merry Christmas, Lord P.

Of course, the British university system never really recovered from the Thatcher slash and burn approach, only just recently recovering a modicum of respectability. Nobody really believed Tony Blair's desire to see 50% of British "school leavers" in university was possible (or even desirable), but this is the same government, right, that now claims this:

Lord Mandelson made his position clear in the Secretary of State’s annual letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. He said: “My predecessor repeatedly made clear the risks of student over-recruitment putting unmanageable pressures on our student support budgets.”

And people wonder why most people no longer believe a word that the Labour government has to say about, well, much of anything.

Read more...

British Party Leaders to Have Three Debates

Because apparently nobody watches the weekly PM's Question Time.

This is a good idea in general, but a bad idea for Gordon Brown and Labour. As his approval ratings are trailing those of his party, and likewise he is trailing David Cameron, I'm not sure how this will help him. Especially as a lot of his negatives are tied to his personality, not his policies.

I expect that if it adds anything to Cameron's chances (growing somewhat after having dipped for a few weeks) it will solidify and reassure the support of those who voted Labour or Lib Dem in 97, 01, and 05. The real winner here could be Nick Clegg, because a) nobody knows who the hell he is at the moment, b) like Cameron, the five people who have heard of Nick Clegg have no idea what the hell he or his party stand for, and c) he will appeal in contrast to Gordon Brown even if he fails to utter a single word all night.

I also anticipate that these debates will be of a vastly superior quality to their American inspirations, both in terms of the type of questions asked as well as the directness of the responses. But I'll miss the Palinesque moments . . .

. . . and I do look forward to the British reaction to their first ever debates, wondering how soon, and how often, some media turd will bemoan yet another Yank import sullying the culture, like Halloween and a currency that one can divide by 100.

Read more...

The Point Being Exactly What, Again?

From Oregon, I've been reading with befuddlement the noises that Gordon Brown might call an early election. Maybe it's jet lag, but it seems to me that the time to have called an early election was July 2007. Rumor has it he's considering 25 March, which is only six weeks in advance of the assumed date (to correspond with local elections in early May) and not all that far in advance of the latest possible date for an election (5 June I believe).

It's obvious that one calls an early "snap" election when it disproportionately advantages your side. For Labour in early (as opposed to mid) 2010, I can only imagine three possible scenarios that would marginally advantage Labour (as opposed to disproportionately advantage). First, they assume that the current, vague trend towards Labour will continue, but hit a ceiling. Second, they assume that things are only going to get progressively worse, and calling an election sooner will at least maintain Labour as the official opposition. Third, they assume that the Tories are not prepared for an election. Or . . . fourth . . . they know that there will be thermonuclear bad news released between 25 March and 6 May. Considering the state of the British economy, the structural problems involved and concomitant threats of the credit agencies to downgrade the rating of the state debt, this scenario is not as far-fetched as it seems.

Of course, when David Cameron hails Simon Cowell and suggests that there is something that politicians can learn from this "incredibly talented" man, perhaps it isn't too soon to call a snap election.

UPDATE: It was the Tories spreading the rumor. This makes more sense.

Read more...

Reading the Tea Leaves

The Observer published the new Ipsos-MORI poll on Sunday on voting intentions for the forthcoming British election, and the media are all aflutter about its implications. Specifically, the Tory lead has shrunk to six points down from over 20 this past summer: 37% Conservative, 31% Labour, 17% Liberal Democrat.

This matters not only because of the electoral system writ large, but the way the constituencies are drawn, weighted (Scotland and Wales still have a built in advantage in population : seats ration, even post-devolution), and how partisan support is distributed. Here at the University of Plymouth we are considered experts in the field of British electoral politics with our Local Government Chronicle Elections Center. Two of my colleagues in the Elections Center have produced a handy media guide that breaks down the redrawn constituency boundaries for the 2010 election, with a matrix that predicts the distribution of seats in the new parliament assuming a uniform national swing. When 37% Conservative is compared to 31% Labour, we end up with a distribution of C 283, L 273, LD 62: a hung parliament.

However, let's not get carried away, yet. I do have a few critical comments about how the poll is being interpreted. Ipsos MORI are a highly respected polling firm, but nowhere in their releases, hence nowhere in the media, do we find any explicit information regarding the margin of error. We do, however, have the N: 1,006. This basically equates to an MoE of 3% assuming a 95% confidence interval. In other words, the "true" value of support for the Tories is between 40% and 34%, Labour 34% and 28%, etc., with 95% certainty. The best case scenario for the Tories with these numbers equates to: C 329, L 227, LD 63. A comfortable majority.

But wait, there's more!

The overall N and the estimates reported by Ipsos MORI do not match. The support estimates are based on a rough likely voter model / filter which the firm terms "certain to vote". This reduces the N to 513, and roughly increases the MoE to 4.5%. Meaning, the true value is somewhere between 41.5% and 32.5% for the Tories, and 35.5% and 26.5% for Labour. When matched against UK Polling Report's poll tracker, the 6 point Tory lead is an outlier -- not an egregious outlier as it is at least consistent with the trend from the past month, but an outlier nonetheless. (Anthony Wells at UKPR also has an informative take in his blog on this poll hitting different issues than I have here.)

Interestingly, the total size of the sample offering a voting intention of any likelihood is 799, and those numbers are 34-34-16. This suggests that Labour's best strategy is to mobilize their base, or those that are unlikely voters but if they were to vote would vote Labour.

Considering the above, I'm not going to comment on Nick Clegg's tactics regarding the Lib Dems role in a potential hung parliament, or his own grasp of what democracy is all about, nor am I going to consider all the possible ramifications and political gymnastics leading to a hung parliament, but then I am also not going to boldly come out and proclaim that a hung parliament ain't gonna happen, cowboy.

I recognize that the media have a news hole to fill, and in terms of electoral politics here in the UK, this is the most interesting story in a while. However, let's wait for a few more polls to see if this one is indicative, or merely an outlier, before we get all excited about the prospects of a hung parliament.

Read more...

With Friends Like These . . .

The Sun (of all papers) manufactures a controversy about . . . Gordon Brown.

The time line is telling. Brown, blind in one eye and of notoriously illegible handwriting (something I can say that I understand), pens a letter to the mother of a fallen soldier expressing sorrow over her son. The illegible scrawl could be interpreted as clumsy, hasty, and riven with sloppy spelling (including, allegedly, her surname). Jacqui Janes, the mother, with the help of The Sun, decry the obviously anti-military inclinations of the PM.

The story leads the news for a day. The PM phones the mum. The mum has a rant.

And it's conveniently on tape.

What is lost in this furor is the more important issue: the British services are under-equipped, and it's entirely possible that more helicopters in the theatre might have increased the probability that her son's life was saved.

Rather, what we have is a typically shrill manufactured tabloid critique of a Prime Minister that The Sun is already on record as not supporting.

But at least Rupert Murdoch regrets his papers' anti-Brown stance, a man he considers his friend.

Read more...

The Tories and Europe: More of "What the Hell"?

I was going to write something about this, but that's too easy: the "drug czar" of the UK gets the sack for very publicly disagreeing with the Government's drug policy, and terms Gordon Brown and the cabinet "irrational luddites". He has a point, but it's too simple to point out the hilarity of a Government, in its waning days, ignoring its chief scientific advisory panel on drugs. Could they be scrounging for votes instead?

Rather, I'm perplexed by this bit of amateur diplomatic tomfoolery. What the hell is Cameron playing at? First, partially through the hack handedness of the otherwise steady William Hague, shadow foreign minister, Tony Blair's chances of being named the new EU President have faded dramatically. While it looks as though it is typical Euro-dithering that has led to the rejection of a Blair candidacy, it doesn't help to have the opposition in your own country (and likely next Government) publicly reject you.

I have to admit, I don't understand this for two reasons. First, why threateningly come out against one of your own citizens for the top job? It smacks of petty politics domestically, and in to the EU the threatening tone of Hague's remarks instantly remind all and sundry of the not-exactly-cooperative approach adopted by earlier Tory administrations. Second, I don't see the value in European leaders wanting a "chairman rather than a chief". A recognizable, public face as the putative leader or figurehead representing the EU will help not only abroad, but within the EU itself. Not noted for its democratic transparency, distrusted by more than just the British, and perceived to be run by faceless Eurocrats in Brussels, such a "president" would help raise the profile of the EU within the EU.

Then the Tories did themselves no favors with Cameron's recent stunt in writing a letter to the Czech president which appears to be encouraging the Czech president to delay being the final signatory to the Lisbon treaty until after a Tory election victory in (likely) May of 2010. It's always sound to piss off, say, Sarkozy, Merkel, and José Luiz Rodríguez Zapatero, the latter of whom matters because Spain will hold the rotating EU presidency from January to July of 2010. The Tories will already have the lion share of the anti-EU vote in 2010, so I'm not too sure just what they're playing at.

Read more...

Well, This Doesn't Help Turnout

but at least it will SAVE SAVE SAVE £65 million. Because, when the public debt is at some obscene number, and when the annual deficit is approaching 12% of GDP, £65 million will get the UK back on sound financial footing.

Of course, if they're really concerned with turnout, they just might take a peek at an electoral system that affords a strong ruling majority in Parliament based on 35% of the vote.

I'm just sayin' . . .

UPDATE: well, that didn't last long.

Read more...

Griffin, the BNP, and the BBC Redux

I, and several others, suggested that in the wake of Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC, support for his non-racist British National Party would not appreciably increase. Indeed, Andrew Rawnsley writes a scathing, at times hilarious, piece in "Comment is Free" in today's Observer, in which he admits surprise that Griffin turned out to be "a big, blubbery wuss . . . a nervous, sweaty, shifty, amateurish and confused man, manically grinning when confronted with his back catalogue of repulsive quotes and occasionally venting bursts of incoherent nastiness."

In fact, his own party is critical of his appearance on Question Time for not going far enough, for attempting to portray the Party as modern and moderate, and, worst, for not being prepared: "Maybe some coaching could of been done so that Mr Griffin could of answered any questions articulately."

However, while Rawnsley points out that:

The more people see of the BNP, the more poisonous they will see them to be. I take that view even though they claim – not a boast to take at face value anyway – that they got 3,000 new recruits from a programme watched by an audience of 8 million. So the BNP's "breakthrough moment" won over, on his own figures, less than half of a thousandth of those exposed to its leader.

A YouGov poll conducted for The Times in the aftermath of Question Time has some surprising findings -- surprising if considered without context. It's common for any hyped appearance by political actors to receive a polling bump following said appearance, the most obvious of which is the "convention bounce" that the two nominees for the U.S. Presidential election receive following their convention appearances. The same largely occurs in the UK with the party conferences. I interpret this as no different. Indeed, those who would vote for the BNP if an election were held tomorrow increased from 2% prior to QT to 3% in this poll: neither a large boost, and well within the margin of error for a sample size of around 1300. In other words, meaningless.

More interesting, and likely to scare more people, is that 22% of respondents would "seriously consider" voting for the BNP in an upcoming election. Again, I'm not terribly worried that the UK will suddenly become a fascist state (at least not more of a fascist state, at any rate). We don't know the motivations for these responses, but my strong suspicion is that it has far more to do with the general mood in the UK regarding Parliament and the major parties considering the ongoing MP expenses scandal and a general if perhaps unarticulated disquiet with the electoral system. On the latter, the third Labour government was elected with only a little more than 35% of the vote in 2005, meaning 65% of those who voted voted against Labour and Tony Blair / Gordon Brown. Hence I suspect that this vague support for the BNP is a classic manifestation of protest voting, which will (and has been -- the EUP election as an example) manifest itself to greater degrees in second-order elections: those that don't matter as much if at all.

Again, Rawnsley:

The BNP has two main sources of support. At the core are extreme racists. The greater and softer section comes from disaffected voters who feel ignored and disenfranchised by the conventional parties and to whom the BNP presents itself as a stick with which to beat the political establishment.

Hence, I'm not terribly worried about Griffin's QT appearance dramatically inflating support for the BNP. There were only 3,000 more membership applications filed out of the 8 million viewers, and his own party isn't terribly happy with his performance.

The only people happy with the performance are likely the BBC.

Read more...

Nick Griffin Caused Controversy? For Real?

Nick Griffin, leader of the avowedly non-racist British National Party, appeared on the BBC's Question Time Thursday night. Although currently in the US, I've had it recorded so I look forward to being adequately entertained upon my return.

While I have a lot of time for United Against Fascism (and I'm also in favor of oxygen, my daughter, beer, baseball, and opposed to domestic violence -- I'm really going out on a limb here), their suggestion that Griffin be banned from the BBC is dead wrong. While abhorrent, the BNP were surprisingly successful (by their standards) in the EU Parliamentary elections (receiving nearly one million votes) as well as a smattering of local elections across England. In a democracy, this matters; furthermore, the remit of the BBC requires it to be politically inclusive given that everybody on the island with a (color) TV will be paying £142.50 this year for the privilege. Indeed, as Sholto Byrnes argues in The Independent, Griffin should have perhaps been given more respect, not less. While his fellow panellists "could have given him all the rope he needed to hang himself", they treated him as a pariah, interrupting and shouting him down. This is the behavior we expect out of the teabagging wingnut brigade in the US, for whom reasoned debate is a foreign concept where one's ideas just might be challenged, but not front-bench representatives of the three leading British political parties.

This is an easy, obvious line to take, but there's little chance that Griffin added to his support. If anything, he would have lost potential supporters who were on the fence. Reviews of both Griffin himself and the rest of the panel are mixed. The Times invited several of their writers to share their observations. According to David Aaronovitch, his demeanor would not exactly remind one of "gravitas":

For much of the programme Nick Griffin’s body language was that of a ten-year-old on his birthday. He was nervous and excited, given to exaggerated nodding and head-shaking.

“Nick”, as everyone called him, did quite well during part of the show, but only when he was silent.

However, it appears that Jack Straw did even worse, which is surprising. By most accounts, Bonnie Greer injected some much needed humor into the event, the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne "was lucid and confident, and spoke cogently, but said little that was distinctive; he didn’t lead; he didn’t take the argument forward", keeping in line with the Lib Dem approach to, well, anything (aside from Vince Cable of course); and it appears that Lady Sayeeda Warsi, a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, won the day. According to Matthew Parris at The Times, she "was cool, she was measured, and spoke with quiet passion. She sounded sincere and avoided fireworks."

If the polls are correct, Lady Warsi is coming soon to a government near you.

The British being, well, British, have to complain. I disagree with the assessment that the BBC erred by making Griffin appear bullied and sympathetic, but I also strongly disagree with some of the lunatic fringe commenting over at the often entertaining Guy Fawkes' Blog. A sampling includes these gems:

"Classic left wing BBC. Which is why I will never buy a TV licence."

"Shame on you all and how do we unplug the BBC>?"

What was it that I said a few months ago about some of the British not appreciating what they have in the BBC? These comments were left by supporters of Griffin (of which there were several who crawled out from under their log to comment, if not eloquently, at least vociferously). Would Griffin's good mate David Duke receive similar exposure on a national network in the United States? For the record, Griffin defended Duke, arguing that Duke was an ex-leader of “a” Ku Klux Klan, one which was “almost totally a non-violent one, incidentally” (clip can be found at the top of this page here), a stance which didn't particularly impress the Chicago born Bonnie Greer, sitting to his left. Predicating your legitimacy on the suggestion that Duke et al. consider you a "sell out" strikes me as a somewhat precarious strategy.

As (presumably) one of the non-indigenous indirectly responsible for ethnically cleansing London by making it a non-British and non-English, or to quote Griffin directly while he was whining about the unfairness of having Question Time in London (where, you know, the studio is and stuff):

"Do it somewhere where there are still significant numbers of English and British people [living], and they haven't been ethnically cleansed from their own country."

He added: "There is not much support for me there [in London], because the place is dominated by ethnic minorities. There is an ethnic minority that supports me: the English. But there's not many of them left."

I feel that this is precisely what the BBC ought to be doing (in addition to East Enders and Strictly Come Dancing, of course). It also resulted in the highest ratings in the 30 year history of Question Time. Furthermore, it offered Griffin a platform to, perhaps unconvincingly for a former holocaust denier, assert that he is not a Nazi.

My favorite line, brought to my attention last night by a good friend who lives just down the street from me in Plymouth, and repeated in most of the coverage I've read, is recounted in this article in The Guardian:

A British Asian man was clapped when he accused Griffin of wanting to hound him out of Britain. "You'd be surprised how many people would have a whip-round to buy you a ticket and your supporters to go to the South Pole. It is a colourless landscape that will suit you fine."

Read more...

Support for the Far Right

I'm off to Canada tomorrow to present a paper on the relationship between asylum seekers and support for far-right parties in English local elections (authored with a Ph.D. student of mine) at a conference. Rather than force you to read this article once it sees the light of day in publication (let alone now in its rather unpolished form), I'll skip to the end: variance in the number of asylum seekers across constituencies has no observable relationship with support for the BNP or UKIP.

However, the punchline: both (legal) immigrants and indigenous non-white population do have a strong relationship with support for far-right parties. But, as I've been saying all along, they're not racist. Or at least they say so. As for their supporters . . .

An interesting aside here will be to further break down differences in support between the BNP and UKIP. UKIP are clearly populist, and their appeal has racist undertones, but they strongly claim to not be racist (unless you're an EU immigrant, which they want to ban) and placing them on the far-right scale is not as easy for political scientists as, say, the explicitly "non-racist" BNP.

Read more...