Is there still a use for opinion polls in a Election ?

They should be scrapped full stop. They only exist for the benefit of the media and you could even make a case tht they influence the result. The right wing media went into over-drive when the polls suggested a hung parliament and, hey presto, there's an overall Tory majority on pollibg day. People should vote on the issues, not on what they think might happen based on what the polls say.
 
malg said:
Damocles said:
We'll see.

We don't even know what went so wrong in the polling yet so we don't know if it's a fixable issue or not.
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The guy on 5live said they're going to approach everyone they polled to see how they actually voted - they really are that clever, I suppose you'd need a PhD to come up with that one. They'll make adjustments after that and start again.
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People who work in statistical analysis are some of the finest Mathematicians that Britain produces and it produces a lot of them. They are exceptionally 'clever'.

Prestwich_Blue said:
They should be scrapped full stop. They only exist for the benefit of the media and you could even make a case tht they influence the result. The right wing media went into over-drive when the polls suggested a hung parliament and, hey presto, there's an overall Tory majority on pollibg day. People should vote on the issues, not on what they think might happen based on what the polls say.
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In a FPTP system, tactical voting is a built in necessity.
 
Damocles said:
Prestwich_Blue said:
They should be scrapped full stop. They only exist for the benefit of the media and you could even make a case tht they influence the result. The right wing media went into over-drive when the polls suggested a hung parliament and, hey presto, there's an overall Tory majority on pollibg day. People should vote on the issues, not on what they think might happen based on what the polls say.
Click to expand...

In a FPTP system, tactical voting is a built in necessity.
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I agree but that doesn't need an opinion poll. Bury South, where I live, is a Labour-held seat where Conservatives are the second party. Ideally people should vote on the issues so if I was minded to vote UKIP or Lib Dem (or any other party) becasue I believed in their objectives then I'd do that.

If my primary concern was to avoid a Labour win, then I'd vote Conservative. My problem with polls is that they might frighten people into voting tactically when that wouldn't be their primary motivation normally.

My issue is that people are saying the polls were wrong. If so, they shouldn't be allowed but they might actually have been right. If they were, then they clearly warped the result. Neither outcome is desirable.
 
Paul Lake's Left Knee said:
Has anyone seen Len?? I'm worried about him.... is he still reading the poll of polls?? I have visions of him being like Charlton Heston at the end of planet of the apes
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Still here mate.
Licking wounds at the moment and not engaging in too much political debate.
I should have learnt my lesson in 1992 when I believed the polls then and was subject to copious amounts of piss taking at work.
I am never going to take a blind bit of notice of opinion polls in the future, even single issue ones like the EU referendum.
And yeah I was doing a 'Charlton Heston' at 10pm Thursday night when that exit poll first flashed up.
 
Len Rum said:
Paul Lake's Left Knee said:
Has anyone seen Len?? I'm worried about him.... is he still reading the poll of polls?? I have visions of him being like Charlton Heston at the end of planet of the apes
Click to expand...
Still here mate.
Licking wounds at the moment and not engaging in too much political debate.
I should have learnt my lesson in 1992 when I believed the polls then and was subject to copious amounts of piss taking at work.
I am never going to take a blind bit of notice of opinion polls in the future, even single issue ones like the EU referendum.
And yeah I was doing a 'Charlton Heston' at 10pm Thursday night when that exit poll first flashed up.
Click to expand...

Fair play for replying mate, I was only messing, as Jo Brand said on have i got news for you, basically the British public are a bunch of liars.

Labour have to get their next leader right, get back on message north of the border and try and wrestle it back. A long road but should be doable with the right person in charge.
 
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