Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus Model estimates a Tory majority of 46 based on opinion polls from 02 Dec 2019 to 07 Dec 2019, sampling 10,827 people.
Polls Used
I arrive at 10,827 by discarding the Savanta ComRes poll highlighted in yellow.
Baxter did not discard that poll out of bias but rather because there were two overlapping polls by the same pollster and he used the most recent one.
I calculated the averages excluding Opinium because Opinium looks silly in relation to everything else. The net effect is to toss the highest and lowest and keep average the rest. This is a frequently used method to discard outliers.
Multi-Level Regression and Poststratification
Electoral Calculus (EC) uses Multi-Level Regression and Poststratification (MRP) in its calculations.
YouGov is the only other place that does the same.
EC does not conduct polls but it does uses data from questions pollsters ask in its analysis.
New Polling Technology
EC explains further in New Polling Technology
Electoral Calculus has built its own version of the political regression methodology. This is very similar in spirit to the YouGov approach, though some of technical details may be different, since YouGov have not published a detailed technical description. The basic idea is relatively new to political science, but is already well established in the fields of mathematical statistics and technology. Political scientists use the tongue-wrenching name of “multi-level regression and post-stratification”, but the technology companies prefer the more inviting terms of “machine learning” and “big data”. Unassuming mathematicians just call it “regression”. Whatever it is called, it is the same basic thing. Let’s call it regression for now.
The regression works by taking a set of people and polling them to ask not just about their voting intention but also about other facts about themselves. These facts, which are known as “predictors”, can include demographic characteristics such as age, gender, location, and education as well as political characteristics like their votes in previous elections and the political alignment of their constituency. So far, this is just like conventional polling.
But the next stage is different. Now we “regress” people’s voting intention against their predictor variables. In other words, we estimate the statistical relationship between the various predictor variables and someone’s voting intention. For example, we might find that younger people are more likely to vote Labour and Green and that older people are more likely to vote Conservative and UKIP. Or that someone in the East Midlands is more likely to vote Conservative than a similar person in London. These links are usually not surprising, but the important thing is that we can quantify each relationship in numerical terms.
Finally the regression data are applied to everyone in each constituency to estimate the individual probability that a particular person supports each party. This gives an idea of how many people in each constituency support each party, from which we can work out which party is likely to win that seat.
2017 Results – Actual vs YouGov vs Electoral Calculus
I am convinced that Baxter and YouGov are more likely to have things correct than other pollsters. But I also take Survation very seriously as they were also on the mark in 2017.
Electoral Calculus Predict Election
If you plug my “Polls Used” line into the Electoral Calculus Predict Election Calculator it will indeed return the chart I showed at the top.
Electoral Calculus Result Excluding Opinium
Electoral Calculus Survation Model
If you like the MRP model but believe Survation is the most accurate pollster you arrive at a Tory 30 seat majority.
What If?
Assume the ComResDec 2-5 poll with a 6.0% Tory Lead is accurate.
EC still expects a Tory majority, not a hung parliament.
Seat By Seat Projections
Electoral Calculus offers Seat-by-Seat Change Projections.
Labour a Complete Loser
EC currently projects Labour is a complete loser, not winning a single seat from anyone.
YouGov Projections
YouGov has a Seat-by-Seat Model that projects a whopping 359 seats for the Tories. However, that model is hopelessly out of date. All the data is prior to Nov 27.
I have a contact at YouGov and emailed him today asking when this projection will be updated.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Because Britain refused to join the single currency back in ’91, I makes perfect sense why it should leave. It should have happened two decades ago. It boggles the mind why anyone would stay in the EU without signing up to its most important project.
Lots of hubris accompanied the creation of EU, and the Euro. Countries that should have stayed out (Balkans primarily), gained entry. Arbitrary rules were further bent: Italy with perpetual deficits was apparently on the right trajectory, so in she went. Did I mention Greece? Some hapless small countries were left outside the Euro, and now are happy for it. Imperial hubris, and vainglory.
This pins the UK into permanent regulatory capture by the EU. The “good” news, apparently, is that the Conservative Party, by pretending to support Brexit, is back in the saddle – replete with plans to open immigration to people from all over the world.
If you think this deal pins the UK into the EU you are brainwashed
Sink Britannia, then?
What’s wrong with open immigration to people from all over the world? So you prefer white and Europeans only regardless of their skill and education.
You are really Owen Jones and I claim my £5 prize!
Are you one of the three men?
“Three men admit taking part in attack on Guardian columnist Owen Jones” link to theguardian.com
Nope, but whatever it was they did he probably deserved it.
Because the whole world wants to come here, but no one from here wants to go there.
Ergo, there is shit and here isn’t.
All this “free movement” would be great, but only if reciprocal. The boulevards of Beirut would be a great place to live and hangout, but would I get a job? Would I be able to find somewhere to live? Would I get blown up?
Stop the divisive and nonsense mentality of treating every non-white is terrorists and desparate to come to Europe. There are many countries not in EU and without Freedom of movement are more successful than EU.
That makes no sense. Immigration is never reciprocal. All of Europe wanted to go to the US in the 19th century while no one in the US wanted to go to Europe. Had Americans reasoned like you back then the US would be a lot poorer and weaker than they are today.
What you want are immigrants who want to integrate and succeed not those who want to recreate the very society they fled and live off the system.
There were hardly any people in the US in the 19th Century, and nearly all those that were had only arrived there in the previous 100 years so why would they want to go back to Europe?
Now, we could talk about how that immigration event went for the indigenous population of the US, but I guess that doesn’t fit with your “immigrants good” narrative…
Perhaps you should do some research before commenting. There were more than 50 millions people living in the US in 1880. That’s more than any country in western Europe at the time. If as you say “hardly anyone lived in the US” in the 19th century then by comparison Victorian Britain was a deserted wasteland.
People immigrate because the socio-economic conditions are better than in their own country. If conditions in the US had deteriorated they would have emigrated back to Europe in a heartbeat. The fact that they “had only arrived there in the previous 100 years” is uterly irrelevant.
We don’t have to allow the entrance of migrants from unassimilable backgrounds who are here for the cash. Between 1924 and 1964 the US had a national origins immigration system, allowing only immigrants from Europe.
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with African and Asian immigration: they are not European (Europeans like Poles are closely related to us and can assimilate) and form communities within the community who then push group interests forever. They build alternative societies within our country. They vote to reduce our rights to free speech and other forms of freedom. They bring in an endless stream of relatives to sit on benefits. They make it impossible to discuss crime honestly, as the virtue-signallers prefer to pretend they don’t commit crimes. Ask the Tibetans why they object to Chinese migration into Tibet. Ask the Aborigines and Maoris if they would have preferred to have kept control of their own territories. Do you lock your front door? If so, why? I mean, other people who aren’t members of your family are members of the human race – so why can’t they invade your family home?
I think that’s utter nonsense. You’ve just put everyone into groups and assumed everyone within those groups are the same. It’s ridiculous.
Mass immigration is what fuels minority identity politics. You can lie about if you want, but the way it works Scoot is that if you have 5 Somalis in a city of 10m, they will be forced to adapt. If you have 500,000, they will replicate their society and refuse to adapt. The level of migration we have cannot lead to anything other than people being put into groups — but it is the minorities who are doing this group sorting. There are whole areas of the country now where English people can’t live, where English girls are raped with the approval of ethnic-minority policemen, and where the vote is entirely skewed by the ethnic configuration of the town. If you don’t want “ethnic minorities in groups or separate communities”, then we should never have allowed mass migration in the first place. Migration from outside the EU is a huge drain on the taxpayer – check out Migration Watch’s briefing paper on this.
All rapes are abhorrent, and all crooked policemen should face justice, regardless of their background. We’ve always had crime. “English people” comprise an enormous variety of backgrounds and history.
Once we leave the EU we will have control over our immigration policy and can choose on what basis to apply it. We can allow it to rise or attempt to reduce it, as we see fit. We quite rightly won’t be saying X number from a particular country or ethnic background will be permitted entry. Any suggestion we should I repeat is ridiculous.
Scoot, you are simply an incredibly deceitful man. While there has always been some crime, the level of crime in the English population is much lower. And the point – which you pretend not to get – is that English crime is not facilitated by the police on political grounds, whereas ethnic crime, including mass rape of over 10,000 underaged girls was facilitated. Indeed, in some towns you would have been arrested for pointing out it was happening! What is ridiculous is to allow more multiculti immigrants in. The number of migrants from Africa and Asia should be zero, or negative as we encourage an outflow. You will be virtue-signalling still when we are on the verge of civil war.
You probably have a reasonable point in regard to “ethnic earners”, but 10 million people have come to the UK in the last 20 years. That’s almost 15% of the population of the UK in 1997.
If free movement is so good, why haven’t 10 million people left the UK. Because no-one here wants to live in India, Pakistan, Croatia, Turkey, Somalia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Ukraine, Egypt, Afghanistan etc…Why? Because they are mostly shitty countries run by puppets of vested interests and thus have no real working society that is safe and relatively prosperous. You might as well go and live in a shed on some wasteland, it would actually be safer.
Cudos to those who integrate and work and want to take part. But mostly they don’t want to, and just want to live the lives they lived in their home country, but without being invaded and bombed.
The word is emigrate, immigration is incoming and emigration is outgoing.
So, all those immigrants in to the US supplanted the existing population and called it their own. Nothing to say about that sort of immigration, no?
We are on the cusp of a real shift. In the US the Republicans mathematically cannot win any presidential election beyond 2028 ever again – as once Texas goes Democrat, it will simply be a waste of money holding elections. The same dynamic is playing out all over the West, but we are not as advanced in the process as the US. We will live to see numerous Western countries taken over by immigrants, while the virtue-signallers claim it isn’t happening. In Sweden, the migrants are about 10% of the population – but 30% of the childbearing cohorts between 18 and 30. Can you guess how that will turn out? The virtue-signallers are not telling the truth. We can bomb the Islamic State in Syria. What do we do when the Islamic State is in government in Paris and Brussels? All the while, the Conservatives say “let’s carry on with the endless chain migration; let’s carry on with the bogus refugee racket; and just say we have an Australian points system, geared to bring people in from Africa and Asia – what could go wrong?” Civil war all over Europe is what could go wrong. We need fake nationalist parties like the Conservatives (and their facilitators like Mish here) to get out of the way and make way for real anti-globalist parties.
Perhaps Opinium not the Outlier I thought
Latest Survation Poll is quite something
14% Tory Lead
13.6% actually, rounded up many places
Even as a lifetime Labour and remain voter, I will be voting Conservative this time. It’s a simple decision for me..why would I vote a party which will create more uncertainties, referendums and massive debts.
Lifetime Labour for me too, but there’s not a peg big enough to put over my nose so I can vote Tory. It will be a first time Brexit vote for me.
The Sunday press rumours included discussion of Corbyn standing down post-failure with McDonald stepping up as an “interim” leader. That would surely be the end of Labour as any sort of relevant political entity.
Then McDonald will campaign UK to become next Cuba. Of course with the rubbish weather.
We’re all Cuba now. Just pick your era.
The political so called spectrum in all Western once-weres, now span the range from Batista’s Cuba, to Fidel’s. Thems are the choices left to pick from, while we’re waiting to be rescued by The Caliph.