The past few weeks has seen much about MRP polls in the various strands of MSM and social meejah. Now, an article in the Grauniad, has kind of given the seal of approval to this new way of interpreting polling data. I have a sneaking suspicion that the real appeal of such polls to our left leaning friends (and me) is that they show the Tories suffering catastrophic losses and are detailed down to the seat level.
There has been much glee in naming Minsters who are liable to suffer a Portillo moment. I am very much in favour of the Tories being obliterated and all their “top” people getting the old heave-ho. I have extracted the following blurb from one of the websites using this new type of polling. There are claims that MRP accuracy is improving but as far as I can see there have been precious few actual test runs with real elections. Even my own beloved MP, Claire Coutinho (formerly a SpAd for Nobsore), is only hanging on by the skin of her gnashers. At 38 years old with no sign of a partner or children, is our Claire a muncher of rugs ? On the other hand, one of the safest seats looks to be the infamous self-promoter Kemi Badenoch. I am surprised she has not tried to claim responsibility for the sun coming up in the morning, give her time I suppose.
But what is MRP? The acronym stands for ‘multi-level regression and post-stratification’. It is a form of modelling which allows you to use a national sample to work out accurate estimates of support for parties or candidates in small geographic areas.
MRP has its origins in trying to rescue insight from high volume, low quality data. But in the world of political polling it’s about predicting winners in individual seats.
The key to the model is the understanding that although the specific combination of different factors which impact how we vote (our gender, age, past voting record, occupation, whether we live in a marginal constituency and so on) may not be shared with many other people, each individual factor is shared by many.
We once again fall into the category of being better informed but none the wiser.
Nevertheless I say yet again that the worse the news for the Tories the happier I am. This must be the defining message for the next GE. These polls are also showing the SNP down to 20 odd seats and I feel that must also be much closer to the truth. Humza Useless is making few friends north of the border. You would have to be a die-hard nationalist, or an effnik, to support a man more obsessed with Palestine and Gaza than Scottish independence. The SNP seems to be trading on its name alone.
I fear I may be turning into Adolf or Uncle Joe by only wanting to believe what aligns with my own prejudices but to use that famous acronym DILLIGAF.
There were only two constituency polls I could find this week. One was Blackpool South where Scott Benton has resigned as an MP but a by election has yet to be scheduled (brown trousers in Number 10). He was predicted to lose by 18%. The other was the perhaps fortunate Julian Smith representing Skipton & Ripon who is predicted to hold on with a 9% advantage. Never fear, the hindu dwarf is doing really well at eroding what little support they still have.
Only two images this week. The first is the number of seats prediction. The Survation and Nowcast polls are using this new fangled MRP method so the Tories, SNP and LibDems get far fewer seats than the other polls.
The second one is the percentages. The MRP polls produce number of seats rather than percentages so these are just the normal type of poll. The Blue Wall (really the opposite of the Red Wall) version by Redfield & Wilton is showing the Tory constituencies likely to fall unexpectedly to Labour and it does not make good reading to the blue side.
I would also like to claim a mention in dispatches. A while back I noticed that many of the insults about flag shagger were coming from X/Twatter users who themselves had flags. Usually these were the EU, paddy, Palestinian and Ukraine flags objecting to Union flags or St George’s cross. I took the trouble to insult these idiots back calling them flag shaggers. To my joy I notice there are far fewer flags around these days. I cannot claim it was all me but I think a few like minded people have put the flags to rest. There is still the odd EU one but I feel that I, and a few others, have performed a public service.
© well_chuffed 2024
