Boards poll vs Election

JBnaglfar

Apologies if there's a thread on this already. If there is, I have not seen it.

While the Boards election simulator was never going to be representative of the electorate as a whole, I am wondering how accurate or how far off-the-mark the results ended up compared to the actual election. Obviously some of the counts are still going on, but we there should be enough information to get a comparison started. So how about it, compare the two in each constituency?

To get started, the Boards poll results matched with the election in my own constituency - Roscommon/South Leitrim - with 2 FG, and Independent Luke Ming Flanagan elected. Ming's support was higher on Boards, but he was the first to take a seat in the constituency.

littlesthobo

It was fairly accurate in Clare. The only difference being Dooley (FF) getting in at the expense of Mulcahy (FG) who lost out despite having more first preferences.

Cat Melodeon

Bang on the money in North Tipp (Lowry, Coonan FG, Kelly Lab) although elected in the wrong order (Lowry topped the poll, Coonan 2nd in, Kelly 3rd).

First time ever no FF TD in North Tipp. \o/

Pauleta

Dun Laoghaire predicted Gilmore, Barrett, Bacik and Boyd-Barrett. Mitchell-O'Connor got in instead of Bacik.

zig

it was way way off as predicted ,of course people argued when it was pointed it out that forum posters do not represent a true population.
Fianna fail 3 seats? We wish.

A Dub in Glasgo

zig wrote: »

it was way way off as predicted ,of course people argued when it was pointed it out that forum posters do not represent a true population.
Fianna fail 3 seats? We wish.

What about in your constituency?

---

In my old constituency of Dublin NW, it got 2 outof the 3 seats correct [Shortall & Ellis] with Lyons replacing Breen in reality.

Boards poll - 1 Labour, 1 Fine Gael, 1 Sinn Fein
Reality - 2 Labour, 1 Sinn Fein

zig

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

What about in your constituency?

---

boards poll,
NOONAN, Michael
O'SULLIVAN, Jan
QUINLIVAN, Maurice
O'DONNELL, Kieran

Not bad but to write off Willie O'dea was madness, thats why the whole thing didnt seem right...

actual:



NOONAN, Michael FG 30.8 O'DEA, Willie FF 16.1 O'DONNELL, Kieran FG 12.5 O'SULLIVAN, Jan LAB 14.7

Slick50

I think in overall terms it gave a far more acurate indication than most of the "established" polls, which chopped and changed from one day to the next, and depending on which one you read.

It was consistant through out, from ten thousand votes up to to twenty odd thousand. I know a couple of guys heavily involved in canvasing, and supposedly in the know, who completely dismissed any notion of FF getting less than 35 seats, right up to the eve of the poll.

Great experiment, and made me some handy cash to boot, thanks Paddy Power.

Congrats to all involved, great job, and made the election that much more interesting, thanks one and all.

johnnyskeleton

One thing that I thought was interesting is that the boards.ie poll put Peter Matthews second in Dublin South. However, paddy power had the other two FG candidates as dead certs and Peter Matthews as the outsider.

In the election he lead the FG vote by the looks of things.

didntgotoplan

In my Constituency Cork North Central, the only difference between the Boards poll was Billy Kelleher FF got a seat in the election instead of John Gilroy Labour.

The other 3 seats were spot on with Jonathon O'Brien SF, Kathleen Lynch Labour and Dara Murphy FG.

holidaysong

It was quite a bit off in my constituency of Dublin South-East. The poll topper Dylan Haskins was nowhere in the actual election. Not as bad for Sommerville but he still wasn't in the mix for a seat.

davetherave

Kildare north.

Actual: Stagg, Murphy, Durkan, Lawlor.
Boards: Stagg, Murphy, Durkan, McGinley.

Was always going to be the first three and either Lawlor or McGinley for the fourth seat though.

jlang

It might be interesting to use the recorded demographic information to adjust the boards results for the profile of the population as a whole. If the impact of the "young" and "male" bias was nullified by increasing the importance of the older and female voters, could the results be made closer to the actual outcome?

Assumes other biases in the boards poll can be either modelled or ignored - (education, access to internet, etc).

It would be cool to publish the ballots as a dump of raw data, preferences, with demographics and constituencies. 20,000+ raw ballots with preferences should give plenty of raw data for experiments, without surrendering the anonymity of the process. (Aside: the full ballots were made available from 2002's actual e-voting - included preferences for each voter but no indication of identity or original "polling station"/"box"/machine. As I remember it was after shuffling, so the result would be repeatable).

takun

jlang wrote: »

If the impact of the "young" and "male" bias was nullified by increasing the importance of the older and female voters, could the results be made closer to the actual outcome?
.

Doubt that would work. I'm one of that exotic species and giving additional weight to my vote would not have redressed any balance.

I'm guessing that the 'older female tech-savvy internet aware boards user' demographic is a pretty niche one, on which there is not a lot of reliable data when it comes to voting patterns.

mikemac

Got 3/3 in Tipp North but then that was an incredibly predictable election.
No shocks at all and just about everyone had the same prediction

Min

boards.ie vote predicted:
FF: McGuinness J
FG: Hogan P, Phelan J P
Lab: Phelan A
SF: Cassin J

Thankfully no SF, it wan another FGer instead - Pat Deering.

johngalway

Miles out for Galway West (though it's having a full recount).

Boards predicted (seats)

1. Nolan (Lab)
2. Naughton (FG)
3. Ó Clochartaigh (SF)
4. Connolly (Ind)
5. Ó Brolcháin (GP)

Below is a mix of the first two who had been elected, and my prediction of who will fill the final three seats:

1. Ó Cuív (FF)
2. Nolan (Lab)
3. Grealish (Ind)
4. Kyne (FG)
5. Walsh (FG)

Edited to add the unofficial (at the moment) prediction from the count centre:

1. Ó Cuív (FF)
2. Nolan (Lab)
3. Walsh (FG)
4. Kyne (FG)
5. Grealish (Ind)

K-9

Think it got 5 out of the 6 in Donegal right, missed the 1 FF'er but that was obviously due to the FF vote not being represented.

Bistoman

I think that Overall it was way off, It gave the Greens up to 3 seats, They Got feck all, It said Dylan Haskell would Get one of the first seats, He hardly rated( I think he got less than 2000 votes)
If the electorate was just users of Facebook it would be Spot on, But sadly it never took into account of the Older voter and Luddite.

K-9

Bistoman wrote: »

I think that Overall it was way off, It gave the Greens up to 3 seats, They Got feck all, It said Dylan Haskell would Get one of the first seats, He hardly rated( I think he got less than 2000 votes)
If the electorate was just users of Facebook it would be Spot on, But sadly it never took into account of the Older voter and Luddite.

Underestimated FF and FG which would have older and more conservative voters.

Over estimated the Independents in a big way, Labour and SF less so.

antoobrien

Apologies if this is the wrong place, but there's a bit of a flaw in the system used for the poll, you can vote in more than 1 constituency (which explains to my why NOB was in the in GW - he's hated in Galway)

johngalway

antoobrien wrote: »

(which explains to my why NOB was in the in GW - he's hated in Galway)

True!

MazG

Taken at a constituency level, the boards poll wasn't too far off in many areas. But in the majority of cases, where it was inaccurate, it was a FFer who got in instead of an independant/SF/Labour etc candidate. So at a national level, when the results are amalgamated, the poll was seriously underestimating the FF seat count

ghostdancer

have looked at a few constituencies, and it's pretty inaccurate overall.

sure, the makeup of seats is pretty accurate, but vote % wise it's miles out.

everyone knew FG and Lab would get seats in most constituencies, so the boards poll echo-ing almost every other poll in saying this isn't remotely surprising.

the boards poll massively underestimated FF from what i can see, over-estimated Inds and Labour too.

seamus

Interesting to note that even RTÉ's exit poll underestimated the FF vote by around 10% (i.e. they said it would be 15% when it was 17.4% in reality) when you'd expect it to be very close to accurate.

Indicates that either people were lying to RTE (ashamed to admit their FF vote?) or that FF's vote was very much a parochial thing - i.e. their vote was contained mainly in individual areas rather than equally spread out across the country.

The poll basically indicates that boards has more Socialists and Nazis than the population at large. Which wouldn't be a huge surprised with a skewed younger demographic.

The middle-of-the-road section, i.e. independents, seems to be very close though interestingly (in seats that is).

SEVERA

only 1 correct prediction in south Kerry out of 3 seats but

Ive

yet to meet a person that can predict us

loldog

Got it wrong in Mayo.

Predicted:

Kenny FG
Mulherin FG
Ring FG
Cowley Lab
Ruane SF

Actual

Kenny FG
Mulherin FG
Ring FG
Calleary FF
O'Mahony FG

The younger, leftist demographic on boards.ie was not so well represented in the actual election.

takun

seamus wrote: »

Indicates that either people were lying to RTE (ashamed to admit their FF vote?) or that FF's vote was very much a parochial thing - i.e. their vote was contained mainly in individual areas rather than equally spread out across the country.

Very, very parochial. Not just an uneven spread across the country, uneven across a county at times also.

When the tally results started coming in for Kilkenny, the first boxes open were from Ballybough St, which would be John McGuinness's home turf, and most of the other early ones were Kilkenny city boxes. He was getting a huge vote - apparently as high as 70-80% in some of the Ballybough St boxes.

Impossible to allow for that sort of massive local vote in a national poll, no matter how large the sample.

kincsem

In Dublin South the boards.ie poll had Eamonn Ryan elected. Olivia Mitchell got it. The poll was right for the other four elected.

ger664

loldog wrote: »

The younger, leftist demographic on boards.ie was not so well represented in the actual election.

Or the older civil war core FF/FG vote was not represented in the boards.ie poll

Did however make me a nice little earner with Lab taking a seat in Clare.

Hank_Jones

Spot on in Dublin North Central.

1. Richard Bruton
2. Aodhan O'Riardain
3. Finian McGrath

chalkitdown

The boards poll has been great, a fantastic barometer I think. It would be good to compare it to Paddypower prices.
It's no surprise to me that the more elucidated went more left than the general electorate.

nesf

Completely wrong in Cork North West (abysmally so). Substantially incorrect in Cork South Central. In both cases, massively overstated SF/Independent vote, overstated Lab vote, understated FG vote and insanely understated FF vote.

DeVore

Two points of information before I respond with my opinion:


1. You could NOT vote in multiple constituencies, it simply recorded your last vote and dismissed previous vote.

2. We actually skewed the data to match the demographics of the 2007 votes (ie: we weighted the 55+ votes and diminished the 25-45 votes in order to get a matching graph of voter-age). It made something approximating 1-2% difference (much to our shock).


What can we learn from this experiment.
1. It was fun and engaged a lot of people in the political system, which was a secondary intention of ours when running it.

2. It is a very very accurate representation of the will of the people who use boards. Those people vary significantly from the populace, not by age (we de-skewed for that) but by some other factor. I submit that the act of being online and being engaged "socially" correlates to a particular political mindset. It possibly even causes it but I have no data to support causation.

3. As much as people may say it was wildly inaccurate, we demonstrated a trend and that was the utter collapse of FF and the rise of the Independents. We were inaccurate about constituencies like Cork but we also nailed Ming and Stephen Donnelly being elected.

4. This was always supposed to be a bit of fun with a serious backbone to it. I think we did a good job of engaging people with their candidates and their constituencies and thats part of what we see as our remit here.


Finally I think it must be said that the HQ guys (specifically Paul Conroy and Conor, but the whole team none the less) did a great job under extremely tight deadlines which changed mid-way! (shakes fist at Cowen).


I said this would be the election of transfers, FF collapse and the rise of Independents. That was based on the data available from this poll so there was gold in them thar hills, you just had to datamine for it #groan

DeV.

Tarabuses

ghostdancer wrote: »

have looked at a few constituencies, and it's pretty inaccurate overall.

sure, the makeup of seats is pretty accurate, but vote % wise it's miles out.

everyone knew FG and Lab would get seats in most constituencies, so the boards poll echo-ing almost every other poll in saying this isn't remotely surprising.

the boards poll massively underestimated FF from what i can see, over-estimated Inds and Labour too.

Without a doubt it was skewed to the left. 48 seats predicted for Labour and 25 for SF whereas it only gave FG 63 and FF just 3.

It was a bit of fun but nothing more.

Slick50

nesf wrote: »

Completely wrong in Cork North West (abysmally so). Substantially incorrect in Cork South Central. In both cases, massively overstated SF/Independent vote, overstated Lab vote, understated FG vote and insanely understated FF vote.

It may have been wrong in Cork, but then what other county re-elected four FF's. I personally find that rather disturbing, what does it take to motivate corkonians to abandon their blind loyalty to FF.

What other poll predicted which actual candidates would be elected?

It did show a huge drubbing for FF, and most FF's that did manage to get re-elected barely scraped in for the last seat, or got there by default as the last candidate standing after eliminations. Nobody in political circles considered that FF would get less than thirtyfive to fourty seats, prior to the exit polls. Only one FF in Dublin, who foresaw that, one of their top men barely got in.

It indicated large gains for SF, independents and labour.

It also indicated that FG would not get an overall majority.

While it was not entirely accurate regarding actual candidates, it was bang on re: trends and overall public sentiment.

cornbb

Pretty far off the mark in Cork SC. The poll put Micheal Martin at 4th seat but he took the first by a good margin. Independent David McCarthy was pegged to take the 3rd seat but he was eliminated relatively earlier (although he did better than most independents). The number of votes was not tiny but it seems like it could have been skewed by, e.g., a vigorous Twitter or FB campaign by a zealous candidate.

Having said that its an impressive achievement and congrats are due to the dev team. For the next election. I found it fun to play around with, it can be used to teach people about PR-STV and I used it to record a draft of my own preferences before heading off to vote

For future elections it would be good to somehow get a larger and/or more representative userbase than boards.ie users, somehow.

meemeep

kincsem wrote: »

In Dublin South the boards.ie poll had Eamonn Ryan elected. Olivia Mitchell got it. The poll was right for the other four elected.

and I'm still sad about that. Whatever you think of the greens Eamonn is a very good representative. Would love to see him as an independent.

The boards vote was good fun. I found myself much more engaged in the whole thing this time. Maybe I would have been anyway, but it was fun.

SerialComplaint

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

One thing that I thought was interesting is that the boards.ie poll put Peter Matthews second in Dublin South. However, paddy power had the other two FG candidates as dead certs and Peter Matthews as the outsider.

In the election he lead the FG vote by the looks of things.

kincsem wrote: »

In Dublin South the boards.ie poll had Eamonn Ryan elected. Olivia Mitchell got it. The poll was right for the other four elected.

Eamon Ryan's vote was overstated on Boards, and Maria Corrigan's vote was understated. Maybe the 'shy Tory' voter syndrome came in to play, with FF getting more when people were voting in private.

REPSOC1916

Got 3/4 right in Dublin Central: 1LAB (Costello) 1FG (Donohue) 1IND (O'Sullivan). However it said Clancy the 2nd labour candidate would get elected. Mary Lou (SF) took the seat instead.

Also completely underestimated the FF vote. Fitzpatrick did better in the result than I though.