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Polling: 2017 General Election, Council Elections and Independence


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1 hour ago, virginton said:

Someone's going to have to explain where all those extra list votes for the Greens and Alba and the Galloway clowns are coming from, as the losses from the mainstream parties (and the busted flush Lib Dems) do not match up. Are UKIP's remnant or simply don't know taking the heavy dunt? 

I'm not surprised by that Alba figure: if the SNP constituency vote holds up as polled then that would work out better for the Yes coalition in terms of the Holyrood arithmetic at least. If the SNP don't clean up the constituency seats and lose second votes in the same regions though then it could backfire. The margins are pretty tight between those two outcomes. 

 

Some saying on twitter that Panelbase prompted for 'The Alba Party (led by Alex Salmond). Think only 1009 took part in the poll so how can they get that figures for Alba and All for Unity

Edited by betting competition
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39 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Assuming the error margin is +/- 3% then quite possibly the AFU figure is nonsense

That doesn't explain where the support has come from in this particular poll though. There's a net 4% overall vote share gain for diddy list parties coming from somewhere else that isn't SNP/Tory/Labour/LibDem losses. Alba/Green/Galloway are up 12 while the latter lose 8.

The margin of error is another valid issue though, that is always going to place the Alba figure between irrelevant/handful of seats territory. That's the limitation of this level of polling - when the cut-off for a list seat in a region is around 6%, a nationwide poll with a +/-3% margin error is as useful as a chocolate teapot in predicting the outcome or even relevance for minor parties. 

The Galloway claim isn't even margin of error: as a national level poll, they would get zero seats for 4%. They must be inferring either from a South of Scotland subsection or their own beliefs to get Galloway a seat. Indeed, given the mixed nature of constituency seats, the South of Scotland might require the highest level of support to win a seat on the list. The SNP, Labour and Tories are all likely to stack up votes without dominating the constituencies and decimating their list vote as a result. Then there's Lib Dems and the Greens as well. 

Edited by vikingTON
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13 minutes ago, betting competition said:

Some saying on twitter that Panelbase prompted for 'The Alba Party (led by Alex Salmond). Think only 1009 took part in the poll so how can they get that figures for Alba and All for Unity

That's a standard sized poll for national figures. If they're breaking it down to produce regional list gains then you can file that part in the bin though. 

Scotland needs polls of 1000 voters in the South of Scotland, West, Glasgow etc. each to make an informed decision given our electoral system but we get this back of a fag packet nonsense instead. 

Edited by vikingTON
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That doesn't explain where the support has come from in this particular poll though. There's a net 4% overall vote share gain for diddy list parties coming from somewhere else that isn't SNP/Tory/Labour/LibDem losses. Alba/Green/Galloway are up 12 while the latter lose 8.
The margin of error is another valid issue though, that is always going to place the Alba figure between irrelevant/handful of seats territory. That's the limitation of this level of polling - when the cut-off for a list seat in a region is around 6%, a nationwide poll with a +/-3% margin error is as useful as a chocolate teapot in predicting the outcome or even relevance for minor parties. 
The Galloway claim isn't even margin of error: as a national level poll, they would get zero seats for 4%. They must be inferring either from a South of Scotland subsection or their own beliefs to get Galloway a seat. Indeed, given the mixed nature of constituency seats, the South of Scotland might require the highest level of support to win a seat on the list. The SNP, Labour and Tories are all likely to stack up votes without dominating the constituencies and decimating their list vote as a result. Then there's Lib Dems and the Greens as well. 
Add up the % of the 5 parties (SNP, Green, LD, Tory, SLab) in the 3-5 March poll - it comes to 96% - 4% not accounted for.

The previous poll was the same - 4% unaccounted for - for both it is saying "other parties" - Ballot Box Scotland says it was a flat "other" for everyone bar the 5 main parties.

So others have risen from 4% to 10% - a 6% difference - that gives you an 8% drop from the 4 mainstream parties once you add in the 2% increase in the Greens.


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Really important to note with this poll that it prompted for Alba and AFU, and for Alba it named Alex Salmond (which isn't how it will appear on ballot papers). They didn't prompt for any other minority party. That could easily cause an oversample.

 

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For those wondering how you can have a range of parties on one side of the fence all going up but the independence polling staying the same, remember that polls don't include one of the biggest blocks of the electorate - those who aren't going to vote.

For instance, in the recent Survation poll 65% said they were 10 out of 10 certain to vote, 83% said they were 7 or higher out of 10 likely to vote and only 5% said they would not vote. Pollsters weight their poll results by likelihood to vote, based on previous patterns. But if a new party comes along they could change that balance. Maybe 10/10 Alba voters were previously 5/10 SNP voters - it'll be interesting to see the tables to see if this is a factor.

Also, don't underestimate how many people jump the indy fence. Some Alba supporters were probably previously Tory, that party can likely reach parts of the electorate the SNP and Greens can't.

And on top of that there's the usual caveats about polling for new parties being extremely hard to get right, because you don't know their demographics until after the election. 

So big pinches of salt for all the polls until 6 May.

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Oh, and it's hard to say whether people lie about their likelihood to vote, or pollsters oversample people who are likely to vote (which seems obvious), but one or both must be true because polls always indicate much higher turnout than ever ends up being the case.

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1 hour ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Add up the % of the 5 parties (SNP, Green, LD, Tory, SLab) in the 3-5 March poll - it comes to 96% - 4% not accounted for.

The previous poll was the same - 4% unaccounted for - for both it is saying "other parties" - Ballot Box Scotland says it was a flat "other" for everyone bar the 5 main parties.

So others have risen from 4% to 10% - a 6% difference - that gives you an 8% drop from the 4 mainstream parties once you add in the 2% increase in the Greens.

Their poll assumes that there is now literally 0% support for any other option that isn't the four mainstream parties or three list-based options including Galloway's nutters. Perhaps they excluded the 'other' option, which would account for that miraculous alignment of every respondent towards one of their accepted responses.

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4 hours ago, GordonS said:

Really important to note with this poll that it prompted for Alba and AFU, and for Alba it named Alex Salmond (which isn't how it will appear on ballot papers). They didn't prompt for any other minority party. That could easily cause an oversample.

 

It'll still give us a guide, the 3% poll prompted as well, how else would folk know who they were when they're not splattered all over the TV etc. 

I actually think that prompting for Salmond will underplay the Alba numbers as some folk won't want to admit voting for Salmond. 

Edited by ayrmad
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Their poll assumes that there is now literally 0% support for any other option that isn't the four mainstream parties or three list-based options including Galloway's nutters. Perhaps they excluded the 'other' option, which would account for that miraculous alignment of every respondent towards one of their accepted responses.
That's what it looks like.
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1 hour ago, ayrmad said:

It'll still give us a guide, the 3% poll prompted as well, how else would folk know who they were when they're not splattered all over the TV etc. 

I actually think that prompting for Salmond will underplay the Alba numbers as some folk won't want to admit voting for Salmond. 

They were splattered all over the news and online, so I don't really buy that, and I don't buy "shy Salmondists" any more than I bought "shy Tories". 

1 hour ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:
5 hours ago, virginton said:
Their poll assumes that there is now literally 0% support for any other option that isn't the four mainstream parties or three list-based options including Galloway's nutters. Perhaps they excluded the 'other' option, which would account for that miraculous alignment of every respondent towards one of their accepted responses.

That's what it looks like.

Won't really be able to say until we see the tables.

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Interesting things about the poll for me are that Alba being in the game in d'Hondt terms doesn't appear to be damaging the Greens and AFU are also close enough to the threshold to be a factor moving forward. To say that's bad news for the three traditional Westminster parties would be an understatement.

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8 hours ago, virginton said:

I'm not surprised by that Alba figure: if the SNP constituency vote holds up as polled then that would work out better for the Yes coalition in terms of the Holyrood arithmetic at least. If the SNP don't clean up the constituency seats and lose second votes in the same regions though then it could backfire. The margins are pretty tight between those two outcomes. 

 

2 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Interesting things about the poll for me are that Alba being in the game in d'Hondt terms doesn't appear to be damaging the Greens and AFU are also close enough to the threshold to be a factor moving forward. To say that's bad news for the three traditional Westminster parties would be an understatement.

These were more or less my two observations.

The other was that the seat projections should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. 

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9 minutes ago, GordonS said:

They were splattered all over the news and online, so I don't really buy that, and I don't buy "shy Salmondists" any more than I bought "shy Tories". 

I've hardly heard them mentioned after the 1st day compared to the established parties and I'm interested in politics.

Who knows whether there will be a shy Salmond element, I think there's a fair chance you don't, we might see one way or the other after the election. 

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21 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

I've hardly heard them mentioned after the 1st day compared to the established parties and I'm interested in politics.

Who knows whether there will be a shy Salmond element, I think there's a fair chance you don't, we might see one way or the other after the election. 

If Twitter is anything to go by, Salmond's supporters are far from shy. Also, the polls suggest most folk have heard of Alba - their 'don't knows' are pretty low. For example:

Screenshot 2021-04-03 at 22.42.09.png

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