(not satire)
I love opinion polls* so I make no apologies for this bit of polling geekery – if you don’t like the geeky bits just skip to the conclusion which is actually quite interesting.
YouGov have been doing daily political polling for some years now and like all polling companies they use small samples which are weighted to produce pretty reliable indications of national voter intention.
However, because the samples are relatively small it’s not usually reliable to take information from the small sub-samples which are divided into age, sex, region, even which newspaper you read etc etc.
That being said, over time the samples become more reliable if they show an overall trend.
It’s now probably long enough to say that since the last budget there has been a significant strengthening of support for Labour amongst the over-60s – a group which has been historically pro-Tory for many years.
Labour is now regularly around 10% points clear of the Tories amongst over-60s – something which is very significant as this group are the most reliable voters and have been a bedrock of support for the Tories since time immemorial.
Maybe we should stop referring to the ‘blue-rinse brigade’ and start referring to the ‘red-rinse brigade’ instead?
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*Before anyone makes any comments about polls being manipulated or pointless because they use too small samples – please read this first:
Popular misconceptions about opinion polls
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Other articles by Tom Pride:
Tory Modernisers Vow To Drag Party Into 19th Century
Full-scale codger cull set to get government go-ahead
Controversial urine extraction method given go-ahead by government
Genealogists Confirm David Cameron Is A Bastard
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By the way, if you click on any of these buttons below, you’ll be doing me a big favour by sharing this article with other people. Thanks:
Pride's Purge 
Handy in an aging population.
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There’s nothing to choose between Labour and the Tories now, so it’s as well to toss a coin when it come to voting intentions
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/9572944/Labour-will-be-ruthless-about-cutting-public-spending-says-Ed-Balls.html
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Great find, a link to add to your favourite for sure, if you can’t be bothered with Jon Snow’s number crunching, animated, graphical explanations at 4 a.m. on election night, this is the site to visit….
I suppose the dead elephant in the room, is the VAST number of people who coudn’t give a monkeys cuss or a flying frock, and simply don’t bother, shlepping half way across town to put a cross in the box….
If Simon Cowell started running the election campaign as a side show with X Factor and “Britains got political talent” , who knows what the future holds?
But until then, I’m voting with my feet……..
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I happen to live in an area where a miniscule number of older 60’s vote Tory ,a product of history , trade unionism and memory,where even if you were “successful” you never forgot where you came from ;the” threat” ironically comes from the passage of time ,community diaspora and simply the reduced numbers of elderly people brought up with that view.I remember in my teenage years ,being informed i would vote Tory before I was thirty,well rapidly becoming “elderly” in two Parliaments time this particular person will never vote Tory-Bevan was correct
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