Oh my god, I don’t know if you heard, but apparently there’s a CRISIS going on right now! And, it seems, the best thing to do when there’s a CRISIS going on is to talk constantly about how there’s a CRISIS going on. Oh no, wait, talking about how there’s a CRISIS going on isn’t enough. Instead, we have to SHOUT about the CRISIS that’s going on. Oh, and let’s run around tearing our hair out as well, because that helps. Uh oh, that’s not enough either. What we clearly need to do in order to deal with a CRISIS is to CHANGE EVERYTHING. Yes, let’s all behave like stockbrokers when there’s a market crash and GET RID OF EVERYTHING because there’s a CRISIS going on.

I’d like to see or hear politicians calmly addressing the problems that are approaching as a result of the Brexit vote. It’d also be nice to see or hear more of politicians who aren’t expending large amounts of energy on creating or fighting leadership contests when there are already some significant issues to be dealt with. In that light, here are three reasons each why David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn should remain their respective parties’ leaders.

First up, Dave:

1. He won a general election just over a year ago (admittedly via a rubbish electoral system) and gained the mandate he had, in part, on the basis of promising a referendum on EU membership. So, it’s a bit weird that he’s resigned having done exactly what he said he would.

2. He’s on record saying that he’d stay as the Prime Minister even if the UK voted to leave the EU, and there’s already a public perception that MPs don’t stick to what they say they’ll do.

3. He bears a large part of the responsibility (not all of the responsibility, just part of it; these things are complex) for the UK being in its current situation, and it’d be nice if he’d stick around to deal with the consequences. That seems to me to be part of being a leader.

As for Jezza:

1. He was elected leader of the Labour Party less than a year ago, when it was known that there would be an EU referendum coming, and when it was known that he was not a full-blooded supporter of the EU. Sure, he’s partially responsible for the referendum outcome, but only partially (the campaign was long and rancorous, with competing factions campaigning on the same side, thousands of campaigners, and millions of interactions, so of course there were disagreements, angry emails, and claims that some people weren’t doing enough), and getting rid of him doesn’t change it.

2. Party leaders are elected on the basis of internal party processes (although Labour’s process was open to everyone who didn’t want Corbyn to be leader as well as all those people who did), not the spectre of future general elections. Few people predicted the outcome of the last general election or, indeed, the referendum last week, so I’m not convinced by the ‘we can’t win a general election’ self-fulfilling prophesy. It would be nice to see support for the party leader and a focus on engaging with the public rather than a party turning its focus inwards in the belief that changing the leader is some sort of magic bullet that will make a general election victory suddenly much easier. And incidentally, I’m not convinced that a more centrist Labour leader would be more clearly distinct from the ‘establishment’ that was given a bloody nose last Thursday than is Corbyn.

3. It’s bizarrely contradictory to cite prospective party disunity as a reason for triggering a leadership contest that will certainly create party disunity. Again, this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Parties are broad churches but their members share more with each other than they do with other parties. Crucially, I’m not convinced that even the most centrist Labour MP shares more in common with a Conservative than they do with Corbyn (though maybe I’m wrong on this), and it would be nice to see both sides recognising this rather than focussing on their differences. Or, in other words, to see both sides recognising the unifying purpose of their party, rather than using it as an arena for a never-ending battle between ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Labour.

I’m not a party member, and I never have been, but I can’t say I’m tempted to become one on the evidence of the last few days. To the extent that the country is facing problems, it’d be nice to see elected representatives behaving like calm leaders rather than acting as the angry faces of feuding factions.

The grey man of politics, Sir John Major, was on the Today programme last week railing against the big bag of soundbites that has been opened by the Leave campaign in the run up to the forthcoming referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.[1] He then proceeded to inform the supporters of a British exit from the E.U. that if they’re so concerned with undiluted sovereignty then they can find it in North Korea. Soundbite much?![2] Putting aside the argument that sovereignty and isolationism are not the same thing (and the distinct likelihood that North Korea is influenced by a large, powerful, and economically significant neighbour anyway), let’s just add this to the long list of ridiculous rhetoric that has been spouted by both sides in the debate. Previous entries on that list include Michael Gove’s claim that voting to remain in the E.U. would mean being ‘hostages locked in the back of the car driven head long towards deeper E.U. integration’,[3] George Osborne’s clear-as-mud claim that every family in the U.K. will be £4,300 a year worse off if the country leaves the E.U.,[4] and Nigel Farage’s incomprehensible waggling of a U.K. passport whilst arguing that a major reason for leaving the E.U. is to reduce sex attacks by foreigners.[5] Blimey, it’s even enough to get bureaucrats to emerge from their smoke-filled backrooms and start commenting.

So why do the politicians insist on talking like this? Well, it’s all part of ‘project fear’, which is something that both sides like to claim the other lot are engaged in. And both sides are right. The referendum debate has, to a large extent, become a game of one-upmanship in which the campaigns compete to promote the most lasting fear in the electorate. And, from their perspective, it probably makes sense to do so. Both sides have political advisers, campaign managers, and strategists who are aware that the fight probably isn’t over the roughly 40% of voters on each side who’ve already made up their minds.[6] Rather, it’s over the 20% in the middle, of which approximately three quarters say they don’t yet know which way they’ll vote. That 15% or so of the electorate probably contains plenty of people who we might call cautious, or even conservative (emphasis on the small ‘c’). They don’t want to decide which way to vote until they feel comfortable that they’ve got enough information, or at least a good reason for their decision. This means that if one side can successfully populate the public narrative with more reasons why things will be worse if the other side wins then they may well be home and dry. This, I think, is what happened in the Scottish independence referendum; the ‘no’ side made a more convincing (and louder) case that the economic risk of breaking up the U.K. was too great. Thus, those who waited until late in the campaign to decide their vote were more likely to oppose Scottish independence.

And how did the ‘no’ side manage to make their case more convincing? Well, in part, they got more ‘respectable’ voices to make it. Lots of economists, business leaders, and consultants releasing reports about, and estimates of, the potential costs to the Scottish economy of breaking away from the U.K., which is a trend that’s being replicated in the current referendum campaign. This will, I think, benefit the Remain campaign. Not only do they have more famous and more establishment politicians on their side, but they also seem to have more economists and business leaders too. And the thing about those cautious, or conservative, voters I mentioned is that they are the people who are most likely to be swayed by economists and business leaders, or ‘respectable’ voices. So, as we approach the referendum on the 23^rd of June, I think we’ll see more of those undecided voters coming out in favour of remaining. They might take it right down to the wire, but I suspect they’ll swing it for staying in. This is the first, and most important, advantage that the Remain campaign has. On top of that, they also benefit from having government resources[7] and, I suspect, more money on their side, and they seem united in comparison the competing Leave campaigns.

So, is it all doom and gloom for the Leave campaign? No, I don’t think so. To my mind, they’ve got four things in their favour, which are, from least to most important: protest votes, committed supporters, media narratives, and demographics. The first of those is the counterpoint to the observation that the Remain campaign’s establishment status will sway cautious voters. On the flip side, it might inspire a backlash, though I suspect that the overall effect of looking ‘respectable’ will benefit Remain. Second up, the committed supporters extend from campaigners to voters; people who are opposed to E.U. membership seem to be more passionate than those who support it. This makes them more likely to turn up to vote and, potentially, to convert others to the cause. Still, in the same way that being ‘establishment’ may alienate some from the Remain campaign, being too passionate may alienate others (and, perhaps, particularly those cautious voters I keep going on about) from the Leave campaign. Third, on the press narratives front, many years of anti-E.U. articles in a lot of the major daily newspapers is part of what led to a referendum in the first place. Still, the press is often self-interested when it comes to public opinion and, if it looks like Leave isn’t a sure bet then they might hedge their bets. So, if the first three points don’t definitely favour Leave then it comes down to demographics, which is the big plus for them. It’s well known that opposition to E.U. membership is stronger amongst older people and men, and that those people are more likely to vote (or at least claim that they will). However, assuming that the polling companies have addressed the problems that underpinned last year’s general election polling miss, their results suggest that the two sides are pretty much neck and neck. This is even after weighting to account for demographics.

If even the benefit of having older (male) supporters doesn’t bear fruit for Leave then it comes down to those cautious undecided voters, who are the main targets of the ongoing rhetoric of fear on both sides. It’s sad that it’s come to that because, I think, having referendums on significant issues (especially constitutional matters) is a positive principle. It’d be great to figure out a way to engage in a less destructive discourse around such votes, but I still think that it’s good to have a discourse that will feed into a popular decision. It’s not the only way to do make such a decision, but it’s one, and it’s appropriate for some occasions. So, the two campaigns will keep banging their rhetorical drums. Remain’s drum is a bit bigger and more impressive but Leave’s drum is being beaten more frantically. We’ll have to wait and see what the outcome of the contest will be but, on balance, I think that the advantages of the Remain campaign will outweigh those of the Leave campaign. Indeed, if the trends of the last five years are anything to go by, the U.K. will still be part of the E.U. on the 24^th of June, and for some years to come.

[1] I originally wrote this post for a foreign-language blog but, alas, they couldn’t get a translator so I’m sticking it up here now instead.

[2] And my repeating it here undermines any claim I might make to disapprove of soundbite politics.

[3] Putting aside the second part of the sentence, it’s the choice of language in the first half of the sentence that one might consider to be a bit over the top.

[4] As I understand it, the claim was predicated on a predicted decrease in the future growth of the U.K. economy if the country leaves the E.U. and, I must say, I’m baffled by why anyone would take a long term economic projection with anything less than a big pinch of salt. There were lots of assumptions involved in making that claim, and we don’t know if they’ll hold in reality.

[5] Incomprehensible because I’m not sure that the juxtaposition of waving a U.K. passport around whilst talking about sexual assault gave the intended impression. Also, and much more importantly, evidence suggests that most sexual crimes are committed by people known to the victims.

[6] Though shouting their respective messages probably won’t undermine the support they’ve built up so far.

[7] Hence the Government’s booklet in support of the U.K. remaining in the E.U. which did seem somewhat unfair to me.

Based just on the campaign materials that we’ve received from the two leading candidates, Sadiq Khan deserves to beat Zac Goldsmith in today’s election for London Mayor.[1] Now this isn’t to say that the slick newspaper pull-out-style flyer that we received from Mr. Khan’s campaign is particularly good. The centre page is roughly 70% picture, and what text there is goes big on emphasising the candidate’s background or restating the problems (which I credit voters with already being aware of). Fair enough on the background stuff, you might say; it’s OK for Mr. Khan to differentiate himself from his main rival on the basis of their backgrounds. And you’d be right. On the basis of background alone I’d much prefer the next Mayor of London to be a ‘council estate boy’ whose father was a bus driver than a man who once saw a bus as a child.[2] But there’s also the small matter of policy and, if you glanced at the material, you’d be forgiven for coming away knowing only that Mr. Khan is a ‘council estate boy’ whose father was a bus driver. Did you hear that? Apparently he’s a ‘council estate boy’ whose father was a bus driver. So, in my judgement the balance isn’t quite right but there’s just about enough content in there, if you look beyond the generic language, to get a sense of the candidate’s policy priorities and orientations. Thus, if you don’t have the time or inclination to check out his website, as most people may well not, the materials at least give you a sense of Sadiq Khan’s plans if elected.[3]

Zac Goldsmith’s materials are a different beast altogether. Our flat has received one letter and one mailshot from Mr. Goldsmith’s campaign,[4] and the format of the former means that there’s plenty of text to work with here. There are three main problems that I can see:

1. Attack campaigning. Even before the recent controversy over the Prime Minister’s claim that Sadiq Khan had questions to answer about who he has shared platforms with in the past, the letter we received went big on negative campaigning. Apparently, a ‘dangerous four-year Khan-Corbyn experiment will put London’s future at risk.’ This claim that Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan are two peas in a pod is an inaccurate oversimplification that ignores the diversity of opinion in the Labour Party, and reinforces the unhelpful idea that political parties are monolithic entities. Sure, Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Khan will share some ideas, but they’ll also differ on others, and his mayoralty would be no more of a dangerous experiment for London than would Mr. Goldsmith’s. Also, this focus on bad-mouthing the other candidate creates the second problem.
2. Absence of policy. Again, people can see his website if they want more policy detail, though I doubt many will get beyond skimming it. In that light, and given how much more text-heavy Goldsmith’s materials are, there’s remarkably little in the way of concrete policy proposals. Indeed, whilst the section of the letter attacking Sadiq Khan is three paragraphs long, the section outlining Mr. Goldsmith’s ‘action plan for Greater London’ is one short paragraph with no specifics. This is complemented on the associated leaflets with four generic two-word phrases that are supposed to give insight into what he would do if elected Mayor. I mean, seriously, ‘More Homes’, ‘Better Transport’, ‘Cleaner Air’, and ‘Safer Streets’? Phew, it’s lucky he clarified those positions, otherwise I never could have differentiated him from all the other candidates who want fewer homes, worse transport, dirtier air, and more dangerous streets. Give me a break.
3. Cynical use of numbers. As someone with a passing interest in the use of numbers in politics, and a bit of a pedantic side, this is the most aggravating of the three problems for me. Mr. Goldsmith has been going really big on the fact that he increased his majority as an MP by almost 19,000 votes between 2010 and 2015. Apparently this ‘is proof he successfully stood up and delivered for his constituents.’ Nonsense. Another large change happened between 2010 and 2015: public opinion turned dramatically against the Liberal Democrats. So, whereas Mr. Goldsmith was challenging a respected incumbent Liberal Democrat MP in 2010, in 2015 he was the incumbent MP and his main opposition was hampered by the fact that voters no longer wanted to support their party.[5] Indeed, looking at the results, we can fairly assume that most of the voters who abandoned the Liberal Democrats in Richmond Park in 2015 went to Labour, the Green Party, and UKIP, who between them gained over 9,000 votes from 2010 to 2015. By contrast, Mr. Goldsmith gained fewer than 5,000 votes. That’s still a decent bump, and Mr. Goldsmith may be a good MP, but his success in 2015 resulted from a changing national political picture more than anything else. I think he knows this, and I think his campaign manager knows this too. Yet, they still chose to spin the numbers hard. I call that cynical campaigning.

So, whilst the Sadiq Khan campaign materials that we’ve received are a little lacking in content, they’re still a darn sight better than those we’ve been sent by the Zac Goldsmith campaign. On that basis alone, I’d say that Mr. Khan deserves to beat Mr. Goldsmith today. Oh, and I’d also say thank goodness for the guide to candidates that was sent to households by London Elects. Well done them.

[1] And, barring a major shock, he will.

[2] Thanks to The News Quiz for that observation.

[3] Albeit a vague enough sense that it’ll be difficult for many to recall what he pledged and check whether he’s done it.

[4] Bizarrely, my flatmate, who shall remain nameless, is a member of another political party but received both pieces of campaign material addressed to him. I’m not a member of a political party but haven’t received a jot. Is it something I’ve said?

[5] Crucially, voters had largely turned against the Liberal Democrats because of their association with Mr. Goldsmith’s party in the Coalition Government.

A few months ago I wrote about Prof. Patrick Sturgis’ Cathie Marsh Lecture, which dealt with the topic of the then-forthcoming preliminary findings of the Polling Inquiry. A couple of days later I went to the release of those preliminary findings, at which Prof. Sturgis again featured heavily (being, as he is, the Chair of the Inquiry), and this is my selective summary of the key points as well as some of my own thoughts. I thought I’d publish them now because it’s almost a year since the general election and because we have elections and a referendum (plus, naturally, accompanying polling) approaching. If you’re interested in more detail, then you can read the full Polling Inquiry report here.

The first thing to note from the release of the preliminary findings is that the extent to which the polling companies got their prediction of the general election result wrong was not especially out of line with the normal magnitude of error in estimations of results based on polls. True, the underestimation of the Conservative share of the vote seems to be getting worse over time, which is a matter for the attention of the polling companies, but it was not dramatically worse in 2015 than it had been for other elections. Thus, since the results weren’t especially bad, the problem lay in part with the story that was told. In other words, this wasn’t just a problem of numbers but also one of narrative. If the results had been equally inaccurate but predicted a Conservative victory, then the hot water that the polling companies found themselves in after election day would have been decidedly lukewarm. This is something that the polling companies are aware of but, I presume, they’re also aware that it might appear a bit churlish for them to hark on about the problem being the story rather than their numbers (which had demonstrable problems). Nevertheless, it’s interesting that one of the first points to emerge from the preliminary findings of an inquiry into the error in the 2015 polls is that it wasn’t that unusual.

Error there certainly was, though, so it was worth the Inquiry moving on to consider what might have caused it. The first step was to list the things that they’re pretty confident weren’t major contributing factors, which eliminated postal voting, voter registration, overseas voters, question wording or framing, differential turnout misreporting, and mode of interview. The first three items on that list are no great surprise but the latter three might have been expected to be more of an issue. The amount of academic research on how to word questions in surveys is indicative of how important it can be. However, the Inquiry found no evidence that asking people how they’d vote in different ways made anything more than a modest systematic difference to the results. Of more relevance outside polling and academic circles, the elimination of differential turnout misreporting as an explanation rules out one of the more public arguments made after May the 7th. It seems that all the talk of ‘lazy Labour voters’ (who said they’d turn up on polling day and cast their votes for Ed Miliband’s party, but ended up not doing so) was wide of the mark. Similarly, and finally, the oft-cited issue of whether you survey people by phone or over the internet seems not to have been an issue in 2015.

So, if it wasn’t any of the above stuff, what the heck was going on? Well, it seems that the polling companies had too many Labour voters in their samples. This, as Prof. Sturgis was careful to joke, might seem like a rather obvious answer: “Why did you think Labour were going to win the general election?” “Um, because we asked lots of Labour voters.”[1] Of course, there was much data presented that supported this conclusion. In particular, analyses of British Election Study (BES) and British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey data, which resulted from something more akin to random probability sampling, revealed predicted results that were much closer to the actual election outcome. Indeed, when only the keen early respondents in the BES and BSA data (who are more like the (keen) respondents to online quota sample surveys) were analysed, the predicted election result was closer to those proffered by the polling companies. In particular, the polling companies appear to have had too many people at the younger end of the oldest age group in their sample. Because age is positively related to turning out it seems that these ‘younger older’ people meant that the polling companies underestimated how many older people would turn out to vote and thus underestimated the Conservative vote (because older people are more likely than younger people to vote Conservative). Similarly, and at the other end of the age spectrum, the polling companies also appear to have had too many keen younger voters in their samples. This lead to an overestimation of the number of younger people who would turn out to vote and thus an overestimation of the Labour vote (because younger people are more likely than older people to vote Labour).

With the main cause of the polling miss identified the obvious next step is to consider what can be done about it. There are two options: improve the samples (to make them more representative of the population) or improve the weighting (especially but not only in relation to predicting likelihood of turning out). Those options aren’t mutually exclusive and, as an example, YouGov (who I’ve worked for in the past and who have co-funded my PhD research) have made it clear that they will be addressing both of those points. There are, of course, multiple ways to improve samples and weighting and, helpfully, the event hinted at some tentative recommendations. These suggested that although changes to the methodologies used by the polling companies will be needed to improve their samples, it will not be necessary for them to move to random probability sampling (which is appropriate for academic research but not necessarily for fast-turnaround polling). There may also be recommendations relating to the British Polling Council’s regulations on transparency and to the reporting and interpretation of polls. Crucially, it was emphasised that there is no silver bullet; it is only possible to reduce, rather than remove, the risk of future polling misses.

The lack of a quick fix was a nice note to end on and I reckon the polling companies will be working on improving their results via as many (financially viable) routes as are available to them. From my perspective, the emphasis should very much be on improving the samples rather than focusing on improving weighting. This is for both a technical reason and a principled reason. In the former case, weighting of results should only ever be the last step in a process that is designed to make results as representative as possible before then. In other words, weighting should be a means to tweak results rather than to make them significantly more representative. Following this logic, it is fair to argue that the goal should be make the results as accurate as possible as early in the process as possible. This points towards the recruitment of more representative panels of respondents, and not just in terms of demographics (though they are important). This, in turn, leads me to the point of principle: in so far as polls profess to give us an insight into the views off the public, they should be based on samples that represent the public as accurately as possible. In particular, this means that there need to be a lot more people who are less politically engaged in the panels that polling samples are drawn from. Of course polling companies are commercial bodies and do not have unlimited resources, but I think this is something that they should prioritise.

Focussing on recruiting less politically engaged people to polling samples could even bear financial fruit in the future, not only by making polling results less liable to be wide of the mark but also by creating the possibility of asking questions to samples of such people. It’s difficult to recruit less politically engaged people to answer polls but I’m not yet at the stage of thinking it should be given up on. That said, there’s also a risk that asking those people lots of questions about politics could transform them into being more politically engaged. Clearly this is not the purpose of polling companies, and it would place a burden on them to continue recruiting less politically engaged people, but it’s hardly a negative externality. This brings me to the concept of the public good. I think it’s useful to have information about what people in the population think about politics and the government available more than once every five years. Yes, polls can be misused and abused. Yes, politicians can pay too much attention to them. Yes, they can become the focus of too much media coverage (which can risk presenting them as absolute truth).[2] However, I also think that they can provide a complement to other worthwhile expressions of public opinion such as petitions, letter-writing, public meetings, protests, strikes, and direct actions. Crucially, the more that polls provide an outlet for people who are less inclined to do those other things (i.e. less politically engaged people) the more they are a complement to those other means of expression. Thus, to my mind, the prize is not just polls that tell us something about public opinion, but polls that can also offer an outlet to those who might not otherwise say anything.

[1] This puts me in mind of my travels around the U.S. in 2004. I came back convinced that the Kerry-Edwards ticket was a nigh-on guaranteed victory. It was only after George W. Bush won his second term that I realised that my travels around the U.S. had only been to New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Hardly Republican strongholds.

[2] The issue of whether polls are true taps into a wider, and fundamental, academic debate in the social sciences (and, no doubt other fields) about what, if anything, we can know. I obviously do not, and cannot, resolve that debate here but, I’m largely of the opinion that polls tell us something true but are very far from telling us the whole truth. This means we need to be very careful, every time we see a poll, to establish what the something true that it’s telling us is, and be cautious not to generalise beyond that.