Opinion Poll weightings.

From Political Betting Feb 26th

Guest slot from flockers on yougov

What is it about their weightings?

For good reason, all polling firms apply weightings to their raw data in order to derive the final figures. There is little value in seeking to predict the responses of the electorate from the responses of a sample if that sample is not representative of the electorate as a whole; a poll taken in the Birkenhead working men’s club would have very little predictive value.

Looking at the YouGov data, I was immediately struck (see table above) by the resilience of the unweighted Conservative vote share and of the unweighted Conservative lead over Labour.

Read the whole item at Political Betting.


Mike Smithson is ...

... on holiday ... at the moment and this guest slot submitted by Flockers echoes quite a lot of comments that we are getting whenever YouGov polls are published - which is now five times a week. When I return next week I’m hoping that the firm’s Peter Kellner will take part in an online Q&A session - no doubt this will form part of the conversation. I should emphasise that these are the personal views of Flockers - Mike Smithson

The Q & A will be interesting to read.

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