Joe Twyman

Your regular reminder that a significant change in power is not necessarily the same as a significant change in public opinion.

It is tempting to over-analyse the result in Caerphilly, but one thing it does demonstrate is the potential power of tactical voting.
That is something very difficult for polling to take account of at any stage, but particularly more than three years out from a general election.

Often people who are (understandably) not familiar with the intricacies of Islamic female dress use the term 'burqua' when they mean niqaab or hijab - or as a catch all for all Islamic head coverings.

I say this not as any sort of political point, but simply because I think accuracy is important.

I have visited all over Britain, been fortunate to travel all over the world and have worked in a number of countries across the Middle East.

I have never seen anyone wearing a burqua. Not once.

I would also add closing loopholes. Usually these will be tax-related, but not exclusively.

I believe the same could be said about learning to communicate with the media through years of Football Manager.

Apropos of nothing, just a quick reminder on the popularity of policies.....

The full league table of the 16 political figures tested.

And fewer than a third can name Ed Davey.

Fewer than four in ten can name Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Nigel Farage is just behind Keir Starmer. Just under three quarters could name him from his photograph.

Which politicians can the British public actually name? In honour of party conference season Deltapoll has produced a league table of leading political figures - and at the top comes Keir Starmer. More than three quarters could correctly name him.

I agree. One film focussing more on Han, one on Luke and the final one on Leia. But the allure of subverting expectations became too great after the criticism of TFA for being derivative. And from then on it was over correcting the over correction.

An interesting historical counter factual to consider is what would have happened if Tony Blair, while riding high in the polls during his first term, had forced through a national ID card scheme in the late 1990s?

There are figures for “detected” arrivals (ie the massive majority of small boats), but none for undetected. Even if we assume that only half of such arrivals are detected, they would still be less than 10% of the total.
It is, in fact, a non-problem.

We also gave some thought to use of the word ‘majority’ as opposed ‘more than half’. In the end we went with the former because it more closely matches the language used on this subject. In doing that, however, it is reasonable to assume some respondents will not know what it actually means.

Various attempts have been made at estimating the number, but not well and not recently. If you can point to a reliable, verifiable estimate, I would be happy to post it out and would love to use it for future work.
The government does not publish this data - and I am not sure it even has it.

Some (Bluesky exclusive) details on the methodology for this. We wanted to present the ‘true’ figure to respondents but it is VERY difficult to get any kind of decent data on what that 'true' number actually is. Obviously, by its very nature, measuring illegal activity of any kind is really tough.

Yes - and in that respect, very similar to things like spending on international aid. If you think we spend too much, the actual numbers will almost certainly not matter.
And on aid spending we actually have verifiable numbers - something that seems sadly absent when it comes to illegal immigration.

This then, unsurprisingly, correlates closely with the belief that immigration and asylum is an important problem.

Nearly half of British adults believe a majority of immigrants to this country in the last year came here illegally.
Just under a third (32%) believe the majority came here legally and a further one in five (20%) don't know.

This reminds me of shopping in Tesco (maybe Morrisons) in Sheffield in the 1990s and the woman in front of me in the queue buying just KY Jelly and a single dinner plate.
I thought I was being very funny by asking the cashier "I wonder where she's going to put that plate". The cashier disagreed.

I would just like to make it clear that if you do have extensive experience in coding SPSS Syntax - and particularly SPSS Script - over here at Deltapoll, I am always interested in hearing from you.
Even if it's just to cheerfully reminisce.

Just a reminder, in case it was needed, that there is a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between a theoretical new party gaining X% share of the vote in a hypothetical poll and it actually going on to achieve that level of support.
And I say that as the official pollster for Change UK.

RIP Robert Redford.
And if you haven't seen 'Three Days of the Condor', it takes an approach to this question which has held up . . . . . er . . . . less well.

🚨 New working paper alert 🚨
Missing summer — and the Tour de France? Don’t worry, we got you covered. 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️
In this paper, we show that being on the route of Tour de France reduces far-right voting. osf.io/preprints/so...

Is this all because people couldn't Triforce.
(I concede this joke was niche, even back in 2005)

a woman is walking in front of a blue screen that says opportunity ALT: a woman is walking in front of a blue screen that says opportunity

See also Sheffield Rally. It's all relative.

Big fan of Reddit's political analysis in the context of football broadcasting.

BREAKING: No lanyard sponsor for this year's Conservative Party Conference.