Worcester's blog – polls hopelessly out of date: a myth?

The blogs are at it again, even letter writers to newspapers. A headline in the Standard the other day caught my eye. “Election polling is too uncertain.” It would, wouldn’t it

The Liberal Democrat eruption is not finished yet

Sir Robert Worcester is a Visiting Professor of Government at LSE and an Honorary Fellow. He founded MORI in 1969. The following post first appeared in the Observer on 25 April. When the earth’s plates move, earthquakes and volcanoes follow. This seems to be happening in the wake of the decision to hold, 50 years after their invention in the United States, debates between party leaders

BPC/MRS enquiry into election polling 2015: Ipsos MORI response and perspective

This Forum article considers the unsatisfactory results of pre-election opinion polling in the 2015 British general election and the BPC/MRS enquiry report into polling by Sturgis et al., providing a response from Ipsos MORI and associated researchers at King’s College London and Cranfield Universities Whilst Sturgis et al. (2016) consider how to perfect opinion poll forecasting, why the 2015 prediction was inaccurate when the same methodology returned satisfactory results in 2005 and 2010 at Ipsos MORI is considered here instead We agree with Sturgis et al. that the inaccurate results were not due to late swing or the ‘shy Tory’ problem and with Taylor (2016) that the underlying problem is a response rate bias However, Sturgis et al. critique pollsters in their report for systematically under-representing Conservative voters but the Ipsos MORI final poll had too many Conservatives, too many Labour voters and not enough nonvoters The Sturgis et al. conclusion is convincing that the politically disengaged were under-represented due to quotas and weighting mechanisms designed to correct for response bias Nevertheless, for Ipsos MORI, this explanation does not account for why the polling methodology was inaccurate in 2015 when it had performed accurately in 2005 and 2010 For Ipsos MORI, a more likely explanation is that Labour voters in 2015 became more prone to exaggerate their voting likelihood We offer various postulations on why this might have been so, concluding that to account for the inaccuracy requires a two-fold response, to improve: (i) sample representativeness and (ii) the projection of voting behaviour from the data Unfortunately, the BPC/MRS report offers no blueprint for how to solve the problem of sampling the politically disengaged Whilst Ipsos MORI have redesigned their quotas to take account of education levels, to represent those better with no formal educational qualifications and reduce overrepresentation of graduates, polling in the referendum on EU membership suggests that the problem of drawing a representative sample has been solved but difficulties in how best to allow for turnout persist

The Right Rotation For Your Farm

One rotation gives most grain, another most total feed. Here are principles for choosing the best rotation for you

Polls and the political process: the use of opinion polls by political parties and mass media organizations in European post‐communist societies (1990–95)

Opinion polling occupies a significant role within the political process of most liberal-capitalist societies, where it is used by governments, parties and the mass media alike. This paper examines the extent to which polls are used for the same purposes in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular, for bringing political elites and citizens together. It argues that these political elites are more concerned with using opinion polls for gaining competitive advantage over their rivals and for reaffirming their political power, than for devolving political power to citizens and improving the general processes of democratization

Long-term Observations in Acoustics - the Ocean Acoustic Observatory Federation

The Ocean Acoustic Observatory Federation (OAOF) includes several laboratories and universities: the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) and the Marine Physical Laboratory (MPL) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Pacific Meteorological and Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) of NOAA, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), and the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington (UW/APL)

A test of basin-scale acoustic thermometry using a large-aperture vertical array at 3250-km range in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 1999. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 105 (1999): 3185, doi:10.1121/1.424649.Broadband acoustic signals were transmitted during November 1994 from a 75-Hz source suspended near the depth of the sound-channel axis to a 700-m long vertical receiving array approximately 3250 km distant in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. The early part of the arrival pattern consists of raylike wave fronts that are resolvable, identifiable, and stable. The later part of the arrival pattern does not contain identifiable raylike arrivals, due to scattering from internal-wave-induced sound-speed fluctuations. The observed ray travel times differ from ray predictions based on the sound-speed field constructed using nearly concurrent temperature and salinity measurements by more than a priori variability estimates, suggesting that the equation used to compute sound speed requires refinement. The range-averaged oceansound speed can be determined with an uncertainty of about 0.05 m/s from the observed ray travel times together with the time at which the near-axial acoustic reception ends, used as a surrogate for the group delay of adiabatic mode 1. The change in temperature over six days can be estimated with an uncertainty of about 0.006 °C. The sensitivity of the travel times to ocean variability is concentrated near the ocean surface and at the corresponding conjugate depths, because all of the resolved ray arrivals have upper turning depths within a few hundred meters of the surface.This work was supported largely by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ~DARPA! Grant No. MDA972-93- 1-0003. Additional support was provided at SIO by the Office of Naval Research ~ONR! through Grant No. N00014- 97-1-0258. J. Colosi wishes to acknowledge support from an ONR Young Investigator Award, from the J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund, and from the Penzance Endowed Fund in support of scientific staff at WHOI

The bitter taste of payback: the pathologising effect of TV revengendas

The thirst for vengeance is a timeless subject in popular entertainment. One need only think of Old Testament scripture; Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet; Quentin Tarantino\u27s Kill Bill or the TV series Revenge, and we immediately conjure up images of a protagonist striving to seek justice to avenge a heinous wrong committed against them. These texts, and others like it, speak to that which is ingrained in our human spirit about not only holding others responsible for their actions, but also about retaliation as payback. This article seeks to problematise the way the popular revenge narrative effectively constructs the vendetta as a guilty pleasure through which the audience can vicariously gain satisfaction, while at the same time perpetuates law\u27s rhetoric that personal desires for vengeance are to be repressed and denied. In particular, the article will demonstrate the way such popular revenge narratives contribute to the pathologising of human desire for payback

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early Universe, the dynamics of the supernova bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life and whether protons eventually decay --- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our Universe, its current state and its eventual fate. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) represents an extensively developed plan for a world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions. LBNE is conceived around three central components: (1) a new, high-intensity neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, (2) a near neutrino detector just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, is approximately 1,300 km from the neutrino source at Fermilab -- a distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino charge-parity symmetry violation and mass ordering effects. This ambitious yet cost-effective design incorporates scalability and flexibility and can accommodate a variety of upgrades and contributions. With its exceptional combination of experimental configuration, technical capabilities, and potential for transformative discoveries, LBNE promises to be a vital facility for the field of particle physics worldwide, providing physicists from around the globe with opportunities to collaborate in a twenty to thirty year program of exciting science. In this document we provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess.Comment: Major update of previous version. This is the reference document for LBNE science program and current status. Chapters 1, 3, and 9 provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess. 288 pages, 116 figure