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Chris Curtis Profile picture
Chris Curtis
@chriscurtis94
Proud Milton Keynesian, Labour's Parliamentary candidate for MK North, Award-winning researcher @OpiniumResearch, can't spell, views my own. Join the campaign⤵️
meejahoar (Liz/she/her) 🇺🇦🇪🇺🌈🏳️‍🌈⚧🏳️‍⚧️ Profile picture Rob Pearson 💙#NHS 💛#Ukraine 🇺🇦 #ER🌍 #FBPE🇪🇺 Profile picture Ben Grillet Profile picture 3 subscribed
May 3, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I just can't get on board with these arguments at all, it misses such basic points!

Firstly, the Tory vote share is up on Theresa May's 2019 performance (see below). Sure, Labour is up by a lot more, BUT the Tories don't just face Labour in local elections. Image So the Tories SHOULD be making progress from other places, to offset some of their losses to Labour. This is particularly true of independents, over 1000 of whom won a seat in 2019.
Feb 8, 2023 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Going to do a bit of a thread of this because I think it's a good opportunity to tie together some thoughts I've been having about current polling.

I say this as someone who knows about polling, not as a Labour candidate, but I also won't judge anyone sceptical of my bias. 🧵 Most importantly, the raw sample that @FindoutnowUK provides is undoubtedly one of the best on the market - completely out of the league of what we see from most other online panel samples. I started including it in the mix for the Opinium sample before I stopped being involved.
Jan 17, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Just a reminder that this unworkable, expensive, undemocratic policy was introduced after the dodgiest use of survey data I have EVER seen from a government body.

electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/… The whole argument for this policy is not that personification is a big problem in polling stations (spoiler alert - it isn't) but because there might be a perception that personification is a problem.
Oct 8, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
A thread on focus groups, and one reason why the sentiment towards Labour within them might not have shifted as much as the polls 🧵 Importantly, focus groups shouldn't generally be used to work out "point estimates", that is to say, they shouldn't really be used to work out how favourable the public is overall towards Labour or Starmer. However, given they are...
Oct 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Today's everyday hero is my landlord, who is "willing" to allow me to stay in the flat for a 29% rent increase. This feels like a good time to point out that the Tories are wrong if they think they can ignore the concerns of renters.

Our polling for the @RentersReformCo showed the majority of renters who voted Tory in 2019 had switched away. This was BEFORE their recent poll crash. Image
Aug 8, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
I wrote something a few weeks ago that I was very happy with, however, the Tories decided to bring down Johnson at the same time as me releasing it.

So a fresh thread (with charts and everything) on the importance of working-age voters without degrees 🧵
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… As we all know, nobody takes analysis seriously unless you attach a fun-sounding name, so I have called these WAND voters. I hate it, but this is the world we live in.

It includes anybody without a degree level qualification, under 65, and not living in big cities.
Jul 25, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
On our weekend poll, we asked a series of 10 valence questions about the two leadership contenders and Starmer.

We asked people if they agreed or disagreed about whether each of them had 10 different characteristics. 🧵 The 10 we asked about were:
gets things done
is in touch with ordinary people
has similar views to my own
is a strong leader
is principled
is trustworthy
is competent
is likeable
is compassionate
looks like a Prime Minister in waiting
Jun 9, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In a purely personal capacity, yesterday I tweeted about my time at YouGov, stating that YouGov banned us from publicising a 2017 poll which Jeremy Corbyn because it was too positive about Labour. 1 / 4 While this was not my view at the time, I now accept YouGov's position that in fact the results were pulled because of concerns other members of the team had about the methodology. 2/4
Jun 6, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
With the VONC happening today, here is a quick thread on the polling that Tory MPs should have on their minds as they go in to vote this evening 🧵 1) Despite what you may think, Boris Johnson has never been that popular. For example, he was less popular in the 2019 General election than May was in 2017. He only did well because, by that point, Corbyn was incredibly unpopular.

news.sky.com/story/boris-jo…
May 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Given how many we now have on the record / suspected, I feel like its unlikely we aren't at / very close to the limit now.

If not now, I suspect we will reach it after two by election losses. So now we have the more interesting question...would Johnson survive a VONC?
May 27, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Proper lack of a consensus here! FWIW, I have very little confidence in my prediction, but here is what I think is the most likely series of events for the next few weeks (note: most likely is still < 50%)...
May 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Just because this morning's papers are bordering on madness, a rough summary of these results would be:
> Labour rebuilt the so-called "Red Wall"
> Labour made even further advances in parts of the south
> The Lib Dems won lots of disaffected Tory voters The question of whether Labour is "doing enough" is settled. IF these results were replicated in a General Election, Johnson would be out. Starmer would be in, albeit without his own majority.

This shouldn't be a surprise, it's also what national polls are showing!
May 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This isn't really true Labour won the popular vote in loads of target constituencies.
May 6, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
So here is where I think we are, on the (very limited!) data we have got so far.

We know, that just on the vote switching from our poll taken today, Labour gets back to roughly neck-and-neck, i.e. the position they were in in when English seats were last fought in 2018. BUT!!! There will still be some realignment within this. Since 2018 Labour and Tories voter coalition has changed quite substantially (most notably, Leave voters have moved towards Con, Remain voters have moved towards Lab) so we will still be seeing some of this play through tonight.
May 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Over the course of today @OpiniumResearch has polled 2500 people who voted, on behalf of the @The_TUC .

We can’t quite use this data to come up with vote share estimates (as we can’t accurately estimate differential turnout) but here is what the data shows... Just 66% of those who voted Conservative in 2019 backed the Tories today. 12% defected to Labour, while 9% defected to the Lib Dems.

Meanwhile, Labour has held onto 76% of their 2019 voters, losing just 3% to the Tories.
Apr 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Johnson’s messaging on Cost of Living is just really really bad. Obviously it's PMQs so it doesn't matter, but imagine people who are struggling right now hearing the PM bragging about how well everyone is going.
Apr 5, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
On culture wars....

Firstly, there is no such thing as a "culture war issue". These are a whole bunch of things thrown together even though the way voters think about them are completely different.

The only person that bunch them together are politicos. I think the thing that throws people here is political scientists have (rightly) spent the past few years pointing out that voters are more "socially conservative" than political elites...but this isn't just some blanket rule you can use to interpret everything.
Feb 12, 2022 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
With the latest @OpiniumResearch poll out shortly, I thought I would try and do a quick short thread on the changes we are making to our methodology and why we are doing them.

However, it is unlikely to be either short or quick... 🧵 1) We will make sure our polls have enough people in who aren’t paying attention to politics.

Online polling includes too many high political attention people and we will now weight and sample on this.

This is important because those who pay attention don't behave the same.
Feb 11, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The latest @OpiniumResearch poll will be out at 8PM tomorrow, with a whole bunch of under-the-bonnet methodological changes. I will write / tweet a bit more about this tomorrow, but we will release (roughly) what the figures would have been under the old methodology so you can see the impact the last fortnight has had.

However, the changes to the headline figures won't show that.
Dec 27, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Some new polling with @PeterKellner1 in the @guardian measuring the impact of different party leaders on voting intention.

Unprompted – Con 32 Lab 39
Johnson as leader - Con 29 Lab 41
Sunak as leader - Con 34 Lab 37
Truss as leader - Con 27 Lab 43
Gove as leader – Con 23 Lab 41 Some important caveats...
1) People are really bad at working out how they might respond to changes like this
2) We don't know what other impacts a new leader might have (divide/unite the party, change policy direction etc.)
3) Some of these leaders (i.e. Truss) not well known
Nov 17, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I don't know if it was a part of the calculation, but the bit of the HS2 line that has been canceled would have run (and I assume pissed off) an *absolute ton* of "Red Wall" constituencies, while mostly benefitting safe Labour areas. I also don't really understand why nobody has made this quite obvious point yet. You are normally all *obsessed with the so-called Red Wall.