Forums Forums National News UK wants to stay in the EU.

At least according to the Independent's latest poll, and by a considerable margin of 10%

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...emain-ten-points-leave-bmg-a8114406.html

Whilst polls at not that accurate, they are not likely to be out by that much, and it is not the only poll to have shown this trend recently although it has shown the biggest lead for remaining.

I think it pretty clear that the British people have spoken, and said "We've changed our minds. We now want to stay in!" Now the implications of leaving are beginning to sink in, and the slow-motion car-crash that is the government's hapless 'negotiations' haven't helped.

I wouldn't oppose another referendum, but I don't see the point. The poll results are clear enough and parliament seems to be realising that it doesn't HAVE to go along with brexit if the terms are not to its liking. It is unlikely that they WILL be any good, and they will decide that brexit IS the worst possible bad deal and stop it.

I'd be quite happy if the honourable members did the job of kicking it into touch without us having to lift a finger.

Everyone can clutch at straw polls.
From the researchers own website



http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/indepe...t-height-of-brexit-negotiation-tensions/

Well, this seems to be a master class at straw clutching.

First, this isn't just one poll. Although it shows the biggest majority for remaining, there have been previous pools showing smaller majorities for staying in.

Second. if there is a movement towards remaining. the most recent post WOULD be the biggest, wouldn't it. That movement is clearly taking place, like it or not, and it appears to be accelerating.

Third, what the poll shows is that committed brexiters and remainers have not changed their views. What has happened is that the don't knows or don't cares during the referendum has had time to reflect and have realised what a crock brexit is and want no part of it.

Finally, if you want another referendum, that's fine by me. But perhaps you would now prefer to ignore the voice of the people because you are afraid the result will not be to your liking?

Polls are a joke these days, ask Cameron and May!

Leave or Remain single choice

Leave the EU (74%, 20 Votes)

Remain in the EU (26%, 7 Votes)

Total Votes: 27 Voting on this poll ends: 20th Dec 2017 10:38am

I don't think they are any more of a joke these days than they have been in the past. Certainly far less of a joke than the Referendum campaign was. But if you think that, is then lets have another referendum. Expensive and time consuming and - as the last one showed - involving lies and propaganda, but if that's what you want...

In fact the polls were pretty accurate in May's case. They clearly reflected the hemorrhaging of support from her as her appallingly bad campaign proceeded and towards the end clearly indicated a hung parliament.

Granny, you are not competent to run a poll. I will ignore it as it is unlikely to be representative.

You do realise the poll comes from the forum software and not Granny?

Of course I do. But that doesn't make it any more competently run. You need to weight the responses according to location, age, employment status etc. etc. to get an accurate result. No way will Granny or the forum software do any of that.

Granny was the one who posted this 'poll' though, not the forum software.

Exactly the sort of factors used to fiddle figures to get the "required" outcome.

Could you explain how those factors could be used to get a more "accurate" result? If any adjustments are used, how do you obtain accurate adjustments?

Well, I would have thought you would be able to work work that out for yourself. Its pretty obvious. Here's an example.

Suppose you have 5,000 people doing a poll and 1,000 of them happen to be retired. You know from other data that only 5% of the population are retired, so using the raw data will give a result heavily skewed to the views of the retired. so you discard the data from a randomly chosen number of these retirees to bring their percentage down from 20% TO 5%.

You can call this fiddling, but it is routinely done, and - not too surprisingly it usually yields a result which matches the actual outcome. Not always, of course. Views can change very rapidly and if the poll is done two days before the election it will not be able to take into account any outcome affecting events which occur in those two days.

I really cannot think why you imagine companies like Opinium and Yougov - whose reputation as honest pollsters is what they are actually selling - would fiddle anything. What do you think they are likely to gain from it?

For those interested. This site gives a free sample size calculator. Thus if you want to be 99% sure a result is accurate to within 3% and you have a population size of 65,000,000 then you'll need to poll 1,849 people, a tiny percentage.

However, if your population size is 1,000, then you'll need to poll 649 people. Well over half. Magic? No simple mathematics.

In my experience people that resort to insults either aren't sure or know they might be wrong.

How about just spreading your knowledge without the insults, more people might believe you!

You know from your above two posts where the fiddles lie, you can uses a much smaller population to "correct" the results of a bigger population. It is also very subjective as to what "corrections" are carried out and what is ignored. Under your regime you would have to do correlation tests on everything to make sure what is independent and what isn't otherwise some "corrections" would be getting counted more than once - or would they, there have been many discussions about that.

Then you have decide what confidence interval you should use, another subjective and/or manipulative choice. In my time and fields the UK preferred 97.5%, the Americans preferred 95% but 90% was used as well, who was right and who was wrong? Of course they are just indications, just as a small poll of 20 people on WikiWirral would be.

So rather than woffle on about your latest reasons for a poll on here not being a valid , in an effort to cover your indiscriminate original reasons i.e. the above in red, you might be interested to know that there are many on Wiki Wirral who are highly qualified, have their own businesses, a wide age range, and people from all walks of life. The truth is every category you listed is filled by Wikiwirral members. Maybe in your little world of arrogance , and 'no one is better than me' attitude , you can rest assured that you are greatly misjudging.

I cannot for the life of me see any motive for pollsters to fiddle their polls. It would quickly destroy their businesses. Nor can I see how it could be done without it showing up. The polling companies publish the raw data as well as the result of these weightings and they can be checked to see that they comply with industry standards. Excluding the odd typo, they invariably do. Go look at pollingreport.co.uk for instance. They usually provide links to all the data. If you want to, you can examine the corrections and see exactly what has been done with the raw data. I have yet to see any evidence at all of 'fiddling'.

DD talks about 'adjusting the population size' but a far as I can see this is more nonsense The population size is fixed by the British People - at around 65,000,000 and doesn't even appear in the calculations and adjustments done by the polling companies except to give an indication of how many people they have to interview in order to get the accuracy they require.

My point is that a poll is a lot more complicated than you or granny seem to realise. It isn't just a matter of counting the pros, counting the cons, and publishing the result. (Which is what the 'poll' here does) Therefore, granny's poll is likely to be pretty well worthless. It is nothing whatever to do with how clever or gifted the people here are. The problem is that they (including me) are a group who like discussing things online which introduces a bias. I suspect we are mostly of retirement age. which introduces more, and if we were a particularly well qualified and clever group as Granny claims, then that in itself would introduce further bias. Also, we all live on the Wirral -
a further source of bias. Certainly, the probability of the people who respond to granny's 'poll' being a representative cross-section of the UK electorate approaches zero.

The main source of bias lies in the questions themselves. It can be tricky to ask a question which doesn't include bias. "Would you prefer to be in the EU rather than out of it?" may well a return very different result from " Would you prefer to be out of the EU or in it?" for instance. If you look at the published information it will invariably show the actual question asked, allowing the reader to decide for himself if there is unconscious bias there.

Finally, it's worth remembering that attempting to trash a properly conducted poll says more about your attitude to the result than I think you would want to reveal. But if yo want to do it, then you will have to go into a lot more detail than vague unsubstantiated accusations. The devil, as always, is in the detail.

I don't remember Granny saying she was doing a poll that would be representative of the UK population?

The only person I've seen trying to trash any poll was you @Ex, I've not refereed to any poll apart from Granny's and a reference to Cameron's and May's proven mistakes on relying upon polls.

National political polls rely on people telling the truth. They have no way of measuring how much of the data is true, not only do people employ tactical voting in elections but they also employ tactical voting in polls. I do both and I know many other people do too.

The last five elections I have voted in I have voted tactically with a large group of other people. Commercial pollsters and organisations I disagree with will never get a straight response from me, why should they? They are benefiting themselves not me.

I don't understand any value of statistically forecasting national election results and putting the results in the public domain unless it is an attempt to corrupt that election. To my mind the process should be illegal on grounds of corruption and democracy.

Would just like to say that at one time I worked for the same company that does polls for Ipsos Mori, doing market research, and attacking the public to fill in questionnairs.

It was a highly paid job for not doing much. Mostly done by mums with children who worked between the hours of 10 am and rushed off at 3pm.

Mostly done near the entrance of Marks and Spencer's which would typify those who were targeted. Alternatively they may have been travelling on the intercity trains, with business men and women and there again, is that really a cross section of the community.

Just an example of how polls are carried out. Not many go knocking on doors anymore to get to the wider population. Of course the questionnaire and target audience is loaded for the purpose of a particular result, because psychologically, that result can have a huge impact on swaying others into the same line of opinion.

Que sera sera.

Quite so. Doing one that DOESN'T represent the whole of the UK population is a waste of time, misleading, and is pretty well meaningless which I why I attacked it.

Nor do properly run polls rely on everyone telling the truth. They rely, rather, on both sides having a roughly equal number of liars; although I cannot imagine what they hope to achieve by doing so. Much easier to tell the truth. If you resent them making money from your opinions and lie because of that, why not join Yougov? They pay you for completing an online poll. Personally, I can't see any reason for not telling the truth.

Interestingly, some product polls include questions which attempt to detect whether the interviewee is lying. Liars need good memories, and conflicting answers will lead to that set of results being rejected.

It has to be said, too, that polls are less reliable when both sides are about equal. If you get 99% for side A and 1% for side B, you are pretty sure of the result. If you get 51% for one side and 49% for the other, the answer is indeterminate.

I welcome the growing gap between remainers and leavers for this reason. It means the findings of the polls are more and more reliable.

We are in agreement about making political polls illegal though. I support that not because the polls are fiddled - the aren't - but because they are generally pretty accurate.

Knowing what the public is thinking promotes politicians who are prepared to do ANYTHING to gain power, changing opinion as the wind blows. I would much prefer to have politicians with their own convictions which one can support or reject as you see fit after listening to their arguments.

Ex "I welcome the growing gap between remainers and leavers for this reason. It means the findings of the polls are more and more reliable."

Problem there ex is your basing your belief that their is a growing gap between remainers and leavers on the polls. Cart and Horse..Horse and cart.

Just because you want a UK poll doesn't mean everybody does, local variations are important, just look at the London/non-London divide you often mention.

You could equally argue that a UK poll without a non-UK EU poll is meaningless as well etc etc

I don't particularly want a poll at all. But if we are expected to accept it as meaningful, then it has to be done properly. A poll only tells you anything useful about the result of an election if it is a representative sample of all those who can vote.

As to arguing that "a UK poll without a non-UK EU poll is meaningless", then you might be able to do so but I doubt if I could. I don't believe it is true at all.

I don't remember Granny stating that her poll was to represent the result of an election (or even a referendum)???

She was asking WikiWirral people on their opinion, it is strange that you try to turn it into something else (a UK election?) then "trash" what you have tried to turn it into.

I have no idea what was going through Granny's mind. My point is that asking a small self-selecting group of mainly senior citizens is an utterly pointless thing to do whatever she imagined might be shown by it.

I haven't trashed properly set up polls. You did that, with accusations of fiddling and god knows what else.

I think there will be a few here who quite rightly would object to being called "senior citizens". I might well have retired a number of years ago but there are quite a number of years until I become a senior citizen, I am in my fifties, there are plenty on WikiWirral that are younger than me.

Read back, I haven't trashed any properly set up polls that were accurate.

Basically you have been arguing against yourself, you misread something or miss-interpret something or make some assumptions then disagree with them instead of disagreeing with what was originally said.

Well, for better or worse, here's the most recent poll I can find which has a lot more useful information than anything that includes only us, whatever you want to call us as a group.

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questio...-at-the-end-of-the-brexit-process/?notes

2004 people were asked their views and you can download all the detailed tables and see their methodology (ICM was the polling company)

The Wiki Poll is meaningless for the very fact that it seems to be set up as a:

Granny v Exoriator



Pathetic. Not voted.

Whatever the result- it means nothing.

Similar to your opinion.

Are we bothered ? No !

Interesting that there are 57 students when asked about work status and yet only 38 people "still studying" when it came to qualifications. I can only envisage how those figures could be the other way around unless there are 38 people without any qualifications and are now studying for a formal qualification or the questions were imprecise?

The students are an example of where an extremely small sample of 57 (2.8% of survey base ... out of a UK student population of well over 2 million students) which is not going to be representative of students is then weighted and boosted to 83 (4.1%). How can you use a weighting factor on a group that you know is probably not representative of the group the weighting factor is targetted at? So at least 4.1% of the data they have used is meaningless.

The survey population of 2004 is too small to sub-group and especially when using individual weighting factors for those sub-groups. Over 90% of the results they have produced have far too much uncertainty and could easily be misleading.

Well, at least you have the data to criticise, although I note you do not supply mathematical justification for doing so.

I note also that the poll was commissioned by the SUN, a strong 'leave' supporter, so who actually wanted the fiddling done? The result would surely indicate the opposite of what th client would want to see?

As Poirot would say "But we do not 'ave a moteeeve, 'Astings!"

A further point - sort of relevant - is that nobody ever seems to point out that we have only 600 odd MPs, yet nobody claims this is too small to be representative of the UK. Indeed, Cameron wanted to reduce the number to 500!

My personal belief is that the number of MPs should be about the square root of the population bringing their number to around 8,000. Clearly this would require dramatic changes to the way parliament works - e,g. distributed parliamentary buildings, electronic voting etc. - and would be far too mind-buggering a concept for the Daily Mail and grannies around the country to approve of so it's not going to happen but there are excellent reasons for supporting it. This is not the thread for these, however.

Result = 74% to Leave EU
26% to Remain in EU

Now ex, that result will not convey anything to you as you already dismissed such a trivial matter. However , what it conveys to me is that 20 people on Wikiwirral must view your comments and reasoning as bollocks. Sorry, old chap.

Good one Granny we await The Grinch oops sorry Ex's reply....

Why apologise to me Granny? You are entitled to your views as am I. However you have rather foolishly proved the laughable uselessness of your poll, given that Wirral voted to remain. The actual figures are available here:

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/1...er_the_area__the_bigger_its_Leave_vote_/

Since then, I suspect remainers have grown in number.

I find it very sad that the poorer the area, the keener they are to leave, because these are precisely the ones who will suffer the most from the effects of brexit.

Incidentally, my views on brexit are mine and may or may not be bollocks. I take full responsibility for them, therefore. However the views I expressed on polls and what one needs to do to get them to give an accurate result are those of the mathematicians who developed the methodology not mine. It is the views of those people that you and the other 19 intellectual giants who voted on your 'poll' are trashing not mine.

I would guess that poll allowing for a bit of "weighting" means little has changed since the referendum rather than an imaginary swing to the remainers.

Interesting discussion on a clip i saw on youtube. Question asked what could stop/ derail Brexit and the main response was catastrophic events in our economy (they could be engineered) or possibly war..Both scenarios were considered more likely than a second referendum because no political party would have the audacity to just call another referendum.

Gee thanks for the compliment Ex, never been called an intellectual giant before.

Well, an MP would be courageous now to suggest stopping brexit, but as more and more emerges about the implications and the public view changes, then it may become courageous to stick to brexit no matter what.

MPs are keenly interested in the views of their constituents for obvious reasons. Many will adjust their views to that of their constituents.

A 10% lead by remainers is a change whatever anyone says, and it may grow a lot wider. Personally, if that happens, it will not need a referendum. Parliament can do stop it.

Not at all Casper. I am sure I won't be the last!

I think I'd want to know who was being interviewed, who was doing interviews, and who was being paid.

Personally, I think the biggest threats are a piss-poor deal - which we will certainly get - and the public's reaction to it. It will be parliament who will stop it though, not another bloody referendum.