30-SEP 2023 : LAB 39% / CON 29% / LDM 12% / GRN 7%

[graham]

Oct 17, 2023 18:48:13 GMT jib said:

Oct 17, 2023 17:50:21 GMT neilj said:

For those interested in betting odds ( for what they're worth)

Pretty sure the Tories are in for a hellish result. The Dorries letter indicated a halving of vote share, so c. 8,000 votes on Thursday in Mid Beds on a 30% turnout.

Sure Labour will be looking at a comfortable majority.

I expect turnout to be nearer 50%

[crossbat11]

Oct 17, 2023 19:18:10 GMT hireton said:

A new dimension to the Peter Bone case:

His nickname isn't "Old Boner" for nothing.

By the way, we have a local butcher with the name "Pete the Meat". Do you think the Boner has a business interest in it?

[oldnat]

Oct 17, 2023 19:26:20 GMT Rafwan said:

Oct 17, 2023 12:05:39 GMT leftieliberal said:

@rafwan I don't believe in eugenics or as you expressed it "bad blood". That you alleged that I did is libellous. And I stand by what I said. All you are doing now is to try to minimise the allegation. Your use of phrases like "the criminal genotype" shows me that however much you deny it, your thinking is coloured by eugenics, which does not surprise me.

SO!! Game on! First you traduce my family’s ancestors with the unhinged suggestion that they are somehow responsible for the mindless referendum result last week. Then you insult me by precisely inverting the arguments I make, suggesting they mean the exact opposite! Then you insult me further by shunning my earlier imputed apology. Now you spit on my hand outstretched in friendship and reconciliation, brokered by the helpful interjection of wb61 . 

It is too much and I am dusting down grandad’s single shot pistol again, for our dawn meeting. Or if you prefer duck down pillows, I think I could live with that.

How many ducks will be bald, as a result of this matter of honour concerning a canard?

[crossbat11]

Hey Jude, don't be afraid....

[pjw1961]

Political betting and Opinion Polls Part 2 of 3

In this one I'm going to address the paper johntel linked to. The first thing to say that it is an academic paper and in no way am I going to claim its methodology or conclusions are wrong. I have no doubt they are accurate, within the parameters of what they are saying. But I would question what some of the results may mean.

There are three things mentioned in the paper that I wish to bring out, because I think they are relevant to the discussion we are having on these pages. In addition I want to explore what their conclusion that opinion polls "corrected forecasts exhibit little bias but an unfavourable precision relative to prediction markets" actually means.

Since it is only fair to let anyone who is interested enough to read the full paper to do so, it can be found here:
centaur.reading.ac.uk/77452/1/us2012-polls-probs-bias-precision-v2.pdf
(Btw, apologies for the question marks that appear in some of the quotes below - when I downloaded the PDF it converted all the links in the article to question marks!)

Point 1 - the study is of an American election, specifically the Obama v Romney 2012 Presidential election. This is not inherently a problem, but there is one significant difference between US and UK polling practices. UK pollsters (reputable ones at least) are members of the British Polling Council and are expected to abide by certain standards, one of which is an assumption of unbiased and politically neutral polling - www.britishpollingcouncil.org/objects-and-rules/

This is not the quite the same in the US, although many pollsters will operate in the same manner. However, there are specifically Democrat and Republican leaning pollsters in the US and the authors of the paper have been obliged to allow for this, which has implications for their view of polling. On page 8/9 they say "However, it seems unlikely for many reasons that opinion polls are truly random samples, not least because a number of pollsters may have political leanings and because it seems plausible that herding instincts and other behavioural biases mean that voting intentions may be influenced by a knowledge of the intentions of other voters."

Now we would all agree that a particular sample in one poll may not be truly random, but we have a lot of polling companies and a lot of polls and at least partial knowledge of the methods of each pollster, as well as the margin of error for each poll. Nor do we have to worry about deliberate political bias in this country. The only thing we really need to worry about is the overall accuracy of the polls, which the polling industry itself spends much time thinking about. In short I think the UK polls have some - albeit small - advantages over their US counterparts in terms of reliability.

Point 2 - the risk of manipulation (deliberate or otherwise) of betting markets.
Polls are prone to error but are highly difficult to manipulate if carried out to professional standards. This is not true of betting markets and the paper contains such an example. The paper looks at three betting markets and notes that one ended up with significantly better odds for Romney than the other two as a result of certain large bets:

"One controversy in 2012 was the allegation that the Intrade prices for Romney and Obama were manipulated in an attempt to aid the Republican candidate, Romney. The impact of such trading can be observed in Figure ??, where Intrade consistently had the lowest price of our three prediction markets for Obama throughout the second half of 2012. Thus, it might be anticipated that Intrade would perform worse than the other markets, and possibly than the polls too."
And
"The 2012 election, and to a lesser extent the 2004 and 2008 elections, also bore witness to a distinct divergence between the two most commonly known prediction markets, Intrade and
Betfair, with Republican presidential candidates tending to be priced more favourably on Intrade than on Betfair. This divergence was noted by ?, who analysed the behaviour of one particular trader who lost around $4m, apparently in manipulating the market price in favour of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. A clear implication of the ? paper is that there was a distinct bias on Intrade relative to Betfair (and also to the Iowa Electronic Markets); investigating the bias forms part of our description of each market"

The paper deals with this by adjusting for it, as it does with polling bias. However, in the more fundamentalist end of market philosophy such manipulation should be self correcting and not affect price and yet it clearly was not - Intrade ended up with different pricing to the other two markets, which runs counter to the notion that markets automatically revert to the 'correct' price (i.e. to the correct odds of victory and defeat in election betting).

Point 3 - The paper acknowledges, correctly, that neither betting markets nor polls are actually predictions of results, before going on the compare their merits as predictions. Betting prices are a balance between punters and bookies trying make money; polls are a snapshot of opinion at a point in time (and so subject to change). The authors concede this before stating - again correctly - that they are used to make forecasts. Of course polling companies themselves have sometimes muddied the waters by getting into the prediction business themselves - notably with MRPs.

Nevertheless I think it is a point brushed over too lightly. Most polling companies would argue that it is only their last few polls before an election that are likely to be close to the final result, and even then they are a risk from late swing as well as the usual sampling errors. Likewise the charts in the paper for betting patterns show clearly that most bets are placed very close to the election when the result is likely becoming obvious - so their accuracy is really a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e.

"The largest single transaction was for $93,796.87, placed at 23:45:51 UTC on election day, 6th November 2012, laying Obama to win. The second largest transaction came less than an hour
earlier and similarly was to lay Obama for sixteen pounds less than the largest trade. Both of these trades were at an average price of 1.24, which implies a probability of that event occurring of about 80%. The largest transaction to back a bet came four days previously on 2nd November at 07:04:29, and was for $88,733.56, backing Obama to win"

So you could argue that both markets and polls are only truly accurate when predicting the obvious! I think fundamentally what I are arguing against is this line of thinking:
"The theory of enlightened voters might suggest that opinion polls during election campaigns will display more variance than prediction markets, because opinion polls reflect
voters who are becoming enlightened, while prediction markets tend to be self-selected samples of those who are already enlightened regarding the likely outcome of the election"

I can see no sources that would enable gamblers to be more enlightened about the result than the voters in a poll who aren't even being asked to predict the outcome but simply how they personally will vote. The source of 'enlightenment' for the punters is the polls themselves. This was the subject of my first post.

Point 4: The paper concludes by saying "In the process of converting vote shares to probability forecasts in order to allow direct comparisons to prediction markets, we correct the polls both for a range of known biases and for unknown biases, and we found that these corrected forecasts exhibit little bias but an unfavourable precision relative to prediction markets."

This sounds like an endorsement of the superiority of markets as predictors, but what do the authors mean by "precision". They define this on page 12: "Precision refers to the spread of forecasts, independent of the true value or outcome. As such, the variance of forecasts is a measure." So what they are saying is that betting markets are more consistent, producing a lower spread of 'predicted' outcomes than opinion polls do. I am happy to concede that this is true. However, the question I would ask as an (amateur) psephologist is whether this is a good thing.

We are used on this site to the fact there is variation in polls, both between companies and from poll to poll within them. There are ways to allow for this and sift from the evidence the range of possibilities and also the median likely position. On the whole this is a healthy thing. A greater danger in polling is herding, where a particular position is thought correct and companies make methodological changes to 'fit in' (a notorious example being the late change in method one company - I think it was YouGov - made in 2017 to convert their result from hung parliament to Conservative victory territory because they didn't believe their own polling). So yes, betting markets are more consistent than polls, but I don't necessarily see that as an advantage.

This will be examined in my third post when I look at whether when the polls get results 'wrong' betting markets also do so (which is my working hypothesis, subject to testing). It may be a while before this appears, as I will need to do a lot of digging on the internet for past betting odds.

[neilj]

Mid-Bedfordshire prediction
Seems a fair shout

[alec]

neilj - I'll stick my neck out and say that Lab will win mid beds comfortably.

[crossbat11]

Oct 17, 2023 20:37:33 GMT neilj said:

Mid-Bedfordshire prediction
Seems a fair shout

Just for clarity, what is Flynn's "by election model"?

[neilj]

Oct 17, 2023 20:50:46 GMT crossbat11 said:

Oct 17, 2023 20:37:33 GMT neilj said:

Mid-Bedfordshire prediction
Seems a fair shout

Just for clarity, what is Flynn's "by election model"?

I expect he gets on the blower to pick Crofty's brain

[neilj]

Oct 17, 2023 20:48:22 GMT alec said:

neilj - I'll stick my neck out and say that Lab will win mid beds comfortably.

I really want this to be the case, but not sure at all, but am confident Labour will take Tamworth

[crossbat11]

Oct 17, 2023 20:56:15 GMT neilj said:

Oct 17, 2023 20:50:46 GMT crossbat11 said:

Just for clarity, what is Flynn's "by election model"?

I expect he gets on the blower to pick Crofty's brain

That wouldn't take long.

[peterbell]

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

[crossbat11]

neilj

More seriously does Flynn's psephology carry any great weight in terms of its reliability and credibility?

I ask this genuinely because in the absence of any recent recognised polling in Mid Beds, we seem to be dependent upon betting odds, esoteric "models" and partisan driven released "private" polling.

That's all more voodoo than science and I wonder if the danger is that this starts to get manipulated in late attempts to influence voting.

[leftieliberal]

Oct 17, 2023 19:26:20 GMT Rafwan said:

Oct 17, 2023 12:05:39 GMT leftieliberal said:

@rafwan I don't believe in eugenics or as you expressed it "bad blood". That you alleged that I did is libellous. And I stand by what I said. All you are doing now is to try to minimise the allegation. Your use of phrases like "the criminal genotype" shows me that however much you deny it, your thinking is coloured by eugenics, which does not surprise me.

SO!! Game on! First you traduce my family’s ancestors with the unhinged suggestion that they are somehow responsible for the mindless referendum result last week. Then you insult me by precisely inverting the arguments I make, suggesting they mean the exact opposite! Then you insult me further by shunning my earlier imputed apology. Now you spit on my hand outstretched in friendship and reconciliation, brokered by the helpful interjection of wb61 . 

It is too much and I am dusting down grandad’s single shot pistol again, for our dawn meeting. Or if you prefer duck down pillows, I think I could live with that.

Goodbye

[oldnat]

Oct 17, 2023 21:18:12 GMT crossbat11 said:

neilj

More seriously does Flynn's psephology carry any great weight in terms of its reliability and credibility?

I ask this genuinely because in the absence of any recent recognised polling in Mid Beds, we seem to be dependent upon betting odds, esoteric "models" and partisan driven released "private" polling.

That's all more voodoo than science and I wonder if the danger is that this starts to get manipulated in late attempts to influence voting.

Mid Bedfordshire looks like an exciting place!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtrpV22yRM4

[RAF]

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is have only caused relatively minor damage.

Whilst I have no way of knowing the answer to either question, I have heard many interviews over the years given by Mr Regev. Let's just say it would be rare for him to suggest that any attack by the IDF led to any civilian casualties. It's always more likely to have been the result of stray ordinance from the other side.

[jib]

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

Looks and smells like Hamas again. *ucking arseh**s. Killing their own now. Video showing the rocket barrage falling (a misfire) on the hospital below.

[domjg]

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

It's horrific. I was in the interval of my choir rehearsal when I learned of this. Didn't want to sing after that, just sort of mumbled. Handel's Solomon, sardonic lol..

I know the Israelis are masters at quickly squandering international sympathy and support but this just doesn't make sense, the inevitable and understandable unrest in the West Bank has already started. Scholz is in Israel. Biden's on the way.

Could they be covering for a rogue Israeli pilot?
Just seen the latest post from jib suggesting it may in fact have been 'friendly' fire.

[RAF]

Oct 17, 2023 21:35:19 GMT jib said:

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

Looks and smells like Hamas again. *ucking arseh**s. Killing their own now. Video showing the rocket barrage falling (a misfire) on the hospital below.

I think you need to wait a while before jumping to conclusions based on what one side is saying.

[domjg]

Oct 17, 2023 21:46:58 GMT RAF said:

Oct 17, 2023 21:35:19 GMT jib said:

Looks and smells like Hamas again. *ucking arseh**s. Killing their own now. Video showing the rocket barrage falling (a misfire) on the hospital below.

I think you need to wait a while before jumping to conclusions based on what one side is saying.

You too

[Deleted]

Oct 17, 2023 21:45:45 GMT domjg said:

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

It's horrific. I was in the interval of my choir rehearsal when I learned of this. Didn't want to sing after that, just sort of mumbled. Handel's Solomon, sardonic lol..

I know the Israelis are masters at quickly squandering international sympathy and support but this just doesn't make sense, the inevitable and understandable unrest in the West Bank has already started. Scholz is in Israel. Biden's on the way.

Could they be covering for a rogue Israeli pilot?
Just seen the latest post from jib suggesting it may in fact have been 'friendly' fire.

Problem is the damage is already done. In these situations it’s not who did what, but what can be proved versus what is believed by enough people anyway.

The basic and obvious fact is that Israel have taken an enormous risk with their original position of initially clearly being victims worthy of huge sympathy by responding as they have done.

[pjw1961]

Oct 17, 2023 20:48:22 GMT alec said:

neilj - I'll stick my neck out and say that Lab will win mid beds comfortably.

I went for a Labour win a few days ago so I'll stick with it, although I am far from confident. 

But, I think all this speculation without any evidence backs up what I'm saying about betting. If we had all put bets on based on our (random) gut feelings it would have an evidential value of diddly squat IMO. Just guess work. 

[jimjam]

PJW, thanks for you second installment.

Re: " A greater danger in polling is herding, where a particular position is thought correct and companies make methodological changes to 'fit in' (a notorious example being the late change in method one company - I think it was YouGov - made in 2017 to convert their result from hung parliament to Conservative victory territory because they didn't believe their own polling"

The one I recall is Survations last poll before the 2015 GE showing a Tory lead around 6 % but they did not publish as they thought it must be wrong.

In 2017 they did publish a small Labour lead, being lampooned by CBs favourite presenter, only to be proved very close to the actual result.


IIRC, YG did 2 polls in 2017 for 2 different clients close to GE day with diverging results. Their clients may have kept quiet about the narrower lead one but I am pretty sure YG showed on their own website or other public platforms.

[domjg]

Oct 17, 2023 21:55:58 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Oct 17, 2023 21:45:45 GMT domjg said:

It's horrific. I was in the interval of my choir rehearsal when I learned of this. Didn't want to sing after that, just sort of mumbled. Handel's Solomon, sardonic lol..

I know the Israelis are masters at quickly squandering international sympathy and support but this just doesn't make sense, the inevitable and understandable unrest in the West Bank has already started. Scholz is in Israel. Biden's on the way.

Could they be covering for a rogue Israeli pilot?
Just seen the latest post from jib suggesting it may in fact have been 'friendly' fire.

Problem is the damage is already done. In these situations it’s not who did what, but what can be proved versus what is believed by enough people anyway.

The basic and obvious fact is that Israel have taken an enormous risk with their original position of initially clearly being victims worthy of huge sympathy by responding as they have done.

As they always do alas and as the US squandered sympathy after 911 in invading Iraq.

I wish they'd all just f'ing stop it. Maybe they can go at each other with thousands of Rafwan's feather pillows.

[Mark]

From the Guardian...

"White House weighing US military response if Hezbollah attacks Israel – report

The US has discussed the possibility of using military force if the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah joins the war by attacking Israeli forces, according to an Axios report.

The report, citing three US officials and an Israeli official, came as Iran warned Israel on Monday that Hezbollah was close to entering the Hamas war."

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/17/israel-hamas-war-live-gaza-city-update-news-today-joe-biden-visit-aid-plan-latest-updates

[lefthanging]

Oct 17, 2023 21:16:59 GMT peterbell said:

Israel (Mark Regev) claiming that the bombing of the hospital is due to a Hamas rocket falling short. IMO, two big questions about this claim.

1) What are the chances of a Hamas rocket falling short and landing on a hospital.
2) Do Hamas have rockets/bombs with the capacity to do the damage seen in the films of the hospital, killing between 500 - 800 Palestinians according to estimates.

I will take some convincing of Regev's claim.

Edit  Jeremy Bowen has just questioned whether any of the Palestinian groups have rockets with the capacity to create the level of damage seen at the hospital.  He says that rockets landing in Achelon where he is, have only caused relatively minor damage.

I don't think the Israeli claim is that Palestinian groups did this accidently - rather I think they'd want to say that this is a false flag operation by Hamas. This seems fairly plausible to me - given that Hamas has form for this kind of thing and it makes no strategic sense whatsoever for Israel to bomb a hospital - but I'll reserve judgment until we have more of the facts.

Whatever the source, what a senseless waste of life.

[mercian]

Oct 17, 2023 12:18:17 GMT steve said:

Brexitanians seem a bit miffed that a far right , nationalist is likely to be replaced by an enthusiastic moderate supporter of the European union.

Almost as if they had an agenda.

youtu.be/Q8pwLu5Rdo8?si=ER3NecJcwZj4bn2t

Well this "Brexitanian" couldn't give a monkey's what they get up to in Poland.

[RAF]

Oct 17, 2023 21:48:03 GMT domjg said:

Oct 17, 2023 21:46:58 GMT RAF said:

I think you need to wait a while before jumping to conclusions based on what one side is saying.

You too

What conclusions have I drawn?

I merely said something which is demonstrably true. That Mr Regev always defends the IDF and denies that it is liable for any mistakes. If you can point me to a time where he has ever said otherwise (especially initially), please let me know.

On this occasion he may be right or he may be wrong. We don't know yet.

[mercian]

Oct 17, 2023 14:01:52 GMT Dave said:

I don't know where to start with Owen Jones. He can't bring himself to criticise Hamas - no, he has to find a way, any way of flipping it to an attack on Britain.

There are a few on here who seem to want to blame Britain or the British Empire for pretty well everything bad that's ever happened in the world. 

[mercian]

Oct 17, 2023 15:40:56 GMT neilj said:

Tory By-Election candidate seems of the usual standard

That looked pretty ok to me. The original chart said that if you can't feed your kids, and either pay for Sky/BT TV, or have a phone contract worth £30+ a month, or pay for nails/lips/eyebrows etc, or don't work then f-- off.

Obviously it's slightly over the top, because there must be a few people with none of those things who are medically unable to work, but if they can summon the energy to make a kid they ought to be able to do some sort of work (IMO).