Comments on: YouGov – Livingstone apparently undamaged by Dispatches

By: Beware the promise of small polls | News in brief

Beware the promise of small polls | News in brief — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:37:23 +0000

[...] coverage of UK PoliticsAs Anthony points out at UK Polling Report, the latest polling giving Ken Livingstone a slightly stretched lead over Tory rival Boris Johnson, [...]

By: wolf

wolf — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:10:41 +0000

Having read the article in the Independent today it’s remarkable that Labour are predicted to win so many more seats than the Tories with only 30% of the poll.

By: Anthony Wells

Anthony Wells — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:45:22 +0000

Mike – my guess is that, as Mark Senior suggests, the column headings have buggered up. I suspect two of the other columns are actually the male and female figures.

By: Mike Smithson

Mike Smithson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:22:09 +0000

Anthony – Bob Sykes has posted this on Politicalbetting. Any thoughts…?

“If Boris has 42% of men and 41% of women, how come his “All” vote is only 40%?

How does that work?

I see Ken has 42% of women and 45% of men, yet despite there being more women in the poll than men, his average comes out at 44%.”

My immediate reaction was rounding but I cannot make that work.

By: David Boothroyd

David Boothroyd — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 12:11:26 +0000

The version of the poll showing Norris only 2% behind was the one which got all the publicity in 2004, partly because it made the election look wide open, partly because it fitted with the newspaper’s preferences and partly because at the time the national election polls were generally quoting ‘certain to vote’ only in the belief that they were more accurate. So the comparison is very explicable.