Euro Elections – The Results
So, (almost) all the results are in. If you want to see national tallies then hie thee over to the BBC. As at the time of writing it’s almost complete, just waiting for some of the Scottish islands to count.
Firstly, a big thank you to the people who gave me lots of money on Betfair. You were too kind – I shall enjoy the winnings.
Secondly, let’s see how I did against the polling firms. The table below shows you each of the firm’s predictions, together with mine, and then the absolute difference between the predictions and the results.
| Predictor | Con | Lab | LD | UKIP | Greens | Abs Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual Result | 23.94 | 25.40 | 6.87 | 27.50 | 7.87 | |
| Peter | 22.1 | 26.4 | 7.8 | 29.9 | 7.0 | 7.04 |
| ICM | 26 | 29 | 8 | 30 | 6 | 10.16 |
| ComRes | 20 | 27 | 7 | 25 | 6 | 13.04 |
| Survation | 23 | 27 | 9 | 33 | 4 | 13.04 |
| YouGov | 22 | 26 | 9 | 27 | 10 | 7.3 |
| Opinium | 21 | 25 | 6 | 32 | 6 | 10.58 |
So, I shaved it over everyone except YouGov. However, most of us had one party at the top of the ballot called “An Independence From Europe” which got 1.5% of the vote. These were most likely people who thought they were voting for UKIP (lesson #1 in electioneering – some of the Electorate are stupid). If you take those votes and add them into the UKIP total you get the following table.
| Predictor | Con | Lab | LD | UKIP | Greens | Abs Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual Result | 23.94 | 25.40 | 6.87 | 28.99 | 7.87 | |
| Peter | 22.1 | 26.4 | 7.8 | 29.9 | 7.0 | 5.55 |
| ICM | 26 | 29 | 8 | 30 | 6 | 11.65 |
| ComRes | 20 | 27 | 7 | 25 | 6 | 11.55 |
| Survation | 23 | 27 | 9 | 33 | 4 | 11.55 |
| YouGov | 22 | 26 | 9 | 27 | 10 | 8.79 |
| Opinium | 21 | 25 | 6 | 32 | 6 | 9.09 |
That’s an even more convincing win.
Where did the differences come? I captured a small amount of the decline in the UKIP and Labour support in the last few days up to voting (no, I’m not going to tell you how) but not all of it. The Conservatives also did better than I (and others) expected and fits with recent polling experience that the Tories tend to out perform their opinion poll levels.
Once I’ve finished my Bank Holiday frolics I’ll post a GE2015 forecast based on these results and analysis of historic movement of support up to Westminster polling day.
Well predicted, Peter.