Polls, nuns and life partners
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you for downloading this programme from BBC Radio 4. I'm Tim Harford. Hello and welcome to More or Less, the programme that looks for the truth behind the numbers in news, in life and, yes, in politics. This week we'll be asking whether the nation really is reading no better than an 11-year-old and we'll return to the mathematics behind both optimal dating and jogging yourself to death. But first… With less than a week to go before polling day, more or less is visiting a key constituency that's been unjustly ignored by the mainstream media.
MUSIC
Yes, Trumptonshire. It's a key marginal constituency, currently held by the Conservatives, boasting traditional Labour-supporting areas near the Cressley Biscuit Factory in Chigley, alongside the staunchly Conservative market town of Trumpton. Loyal listeners may recall that I spent some time as Treasurer of Trumptonshire County Council myself, but I'm not involved in the parliamentary battle. I'm just curious as to who will be elected as Trumptonshire's MP. Time for a quick wing around to take Trumptonshire's political temperature.
Hello, Mrs Minton here.
Oh, hello, this is Tim Harford calling. I'm just phoning to find out who people are going to vote for next week.
Do you do this for a living?
Oh, no, no, I'm not a pollster, I'm a radio presenter. But Trumptonshire is a key marginal and I'm just trying to work out if it's likely to stay Conservative. I hear that you voted Tory last time. That's right. Do you think you'll vote for them again? Oh, I don't know. Oh, well, thank you, Mrs Minton. Yes, goodbye. Let's try another voter. Hello, Clamp here. Oh, hello, Mr Clamp. I'm just ringing round trying to get an idea of how people are going to vote next week.
Oh, I see. Can I ask you who you're going to vote for?
How do national opinion polls translate into predicting seats like Trumptonshire?
No. No luck. Whatever next?
Oh, dear. This isn't very successful. We'll have to try something else. Unfortunately, there aren't many opinion polls that are done on a constituency level. This election, Lord Ashcroft has been spending a lot of money polling individual seats, but for some reason he hasn't paid for one in Trumptonshire. Most polls you hear reported in the news are national polls. They've taken a sample of the whole country and worked out the proportion of votes that will be cast across the country. But that doesn't translate directly into the number of seats because of the first-past-the-post voting system we have in this country. So how do we work out who's going to win in Trumptonshire? You may recall that in the 2010 election, the constituency of Trumptonshire got the following results.
Here are the 2010 shares of the vote in the Trumpingtonshire constituency. The Conservatives on 40%, Labour 34%, the Liberal Democrats 16%, UKIP down at 6%, and the Greens just behind them on 4%.
The way most experts estimate it is by applying national polling data. A simple method is called the uniform swing. Let's look at the Conservatives. In 2010, they got a 36% share of the vote across the whole of the UK. As we record this programme, the opinion polls put the Conservatives on 34% of the national vote. That's a loss of two percentage points, and we can apply that to Trumptonshire. That suggests the Conservative vote share in Trumptonshire might fall from 40% by two points to 38%. Labour got 29% of the national vote in 2010 and opinion polls put them four percentage points up on that at 33%. So if we apply a four percentage point gain in Trumptonshire, Labour would get 38%, exactly the same as the forecast for the Conservatives.
It's clearly a tight battle here in Trumptonshire. Bear in mind too that all these polls come with a margin of error of around 3%. It might be that either the Conservatives or Labour are comfortably ahead and we simply don't know it. So this already looks like a tough seat to call. But is the uniform swing method really a sensible way to predict how Trumptonshire will vote? Among polling aficionados, there's a lively debate as to whether the uniform swing method is still useful. Some analysts rely on it, others are sceptical.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:01
2
How do national opinion polls translate into predicting seats like Trumptonshire?
2:01–12:31
3
What is the 'uniform swing' method and how would it forecast Trumptonshire's result?
12:31–20:51
4
Why might the uniform swing be misleading for local seat predictions?
20:51–23:47