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It would appear as if yougov has changed its presentation of data over the last 6/7 months in that what we have been presenting as Undecided for you gov includes Refused and will not vote, resulting in an apparent increase in Undecideds and possible reducing return for both No and Yes
I would welcome others views as to what (if anything) we might do about this, think the options are
1 Do nothing, continue to display information as produced by YouGov, perhaps include a note as caution. Does that mean we should not include them in any graphs as not directly comparable with other pollsters
2 We remove Refused and Wont vote and leave the data as it is with it not totalling 100%
3 We remove Refused and Will not vote and adjust to ensure total is 100%
Having on previous occasions argued against authors re calculating data, I personally believe that in this particular circumstance we should do so and would purpose we do so for any polls presented in this manner. YouGov poll of 13 to 17th May is recorded as 38/45/10 adjusted to these 3 making 100% it would show as 41/48/11, making it consistent with other pollsters and comparable in graphs
It is now getting close to a year since graphs were last updated and we should be having a discussion about removing them at least for the moment. Had looked at the work previously carried out by RERTwiki and have been unable to get them to work, they apparently require macros that I do not have. We perhaps need at same time to have a discussion about what we want the Graphs to present, polling for Independence is unlike most other political polling in that it does not have specific start and end dates, additionally the comparatively few polls carried out present a challenge as trends. I have carried out a review of polling and present my findings hopefully as a way to inform discussion. In the 10 years since the Independence Referendum there have been 281 polls carried out Since Jan 2015
These tend to come in irregularly
Pollster
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
Grand Total
Norstat/Panelbase
4
5
6
5
6
8
10
6
5
6
61
Survation
6
8
8
5
3
5
8
1
7
4
55
YouGov
7
8
5
3
3
4
4
5
10
6
55
Savanta
3
13
7
4
2
29
Ipsos
1
2
2
1
1
2
4
4
2
2
21
Redfield & Wilton
2
1
10
7
20
FindOutNow
1
1
5
1
8
BMG
1
3
2
1
7
Opinium
5
1
1
7
Lord Ashcroft
1
1
1
3
Stack Data
2
2
TNS
1
1
2
Techne
1
1
2
Hanbury
2
2
Deltapoll
1
1
2
ICM
1
1
Focaldata
1
1
Kantar
1
1
More in Common
1
1
JL Partners
1
1
Grand Total
20
25
25
15
14
23
54
28
47
30
281
Of these 281 polls 241 have been produced by the top 6 contributing pollsters and 171 by the top 3.
We need a small number of graphs but ones that perhaps better reflect the actuality of Indy Polling
I would suggest we look at
1 Graph showing Yes/No/Undecided back to 2014
2 A briefer Graph perhaps covering last 24 months
3 If possible perhaps a graph to compare at least the top 6 contributing pollsters
I have been wondering about these for a while, the sub heading is useful but should we actually consider removing them for the present?
Also note previous topic about graphs which did not seem to come to much, however maybe the basis for discussion and clarification of what editors think the graphs should represent
Been looking at ways to update, however I do not have skills of previous editor and would have to rely on Excel and something like datawrapper,
I think anything that brings us more up to date is good thing. At the moment there's 4 graphs, all of which are out of date. I'd suggest that we rename "All polls since 2014" as "Polls 2014-2024" or something like that, add your "last 24 months" and delete the other two. Grinner (talk) 14:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I could live with that, we can develop other graphs as we need
Three days and no other comments, may I assume this is silent agreement?
I have removed previous graphs and uploaded 2 new ones, I would prefer to use the 'switcher' facility, as previous editor had, but have not yet mastered it, still working on it.
Thank you for updating the graphs, i think its much better to have it as Grinner suggested and have seperate graphs for the more recent polling. Great work Rljutter (talk) 15:05, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For clarification, this would be for the polls using the 2014 question correct?
Whilst the data in the tables is always accurate and displayed correctly, most reporting of polls excludes "Undecided" from their headline figures, do you think we should start to display this data? ie a new column "Excluding Undecided" 50% / 50%
An interesting point given that often in news outlets it is the headline figure that is most prominent, however most of these Undecided are people that have been identified as voting so not a good idea IMHO to exclude them, perhaps rather than a new column perhaps an additional Graph! Made available in the switcher.
There is also the related issue that not all undecided are the same, some pollsters have begun including Refused and will not vote in their undecided (most noticeably Yougov), this tends to reduce both the No and Yes numbers. There was a talk topic about this a few months ago but it never seemed to come to much, despite agreement. I think this might be a more pressing issue. Lets be clear it would be entirely possible to rework the numbers to exclude Refused and Will not vote, producing an approach that is more consistent with other pollsters. However although not a difficult task it would be tedious as every poll table would require to be looked at to ascertain adjusted figure, not hard but long and weary. This is how another polling aggregator deals with this issue https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/Pugpa2 (talk) 05:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In a previous reply to Newmate12 i included a link to the John Curtis website that shows the undecided removed and that headline figure being available, whilst I do not do graphs, i do not believe we would need to look that closely into the, undecided/would not vote split to make our own determinations of figures, and could somehow just display the undecided removed figures in the tables. The graphs could stay the same as being the poll results graphs. Rljutter (talk) 09:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just for a bit of fun did this quick graph of Headline figures, its a fairly simple way of presenting the data
Sorry but now it looks cluttered but a bit to the right, not convinced this is required or really adds anything to the article. Pugpa2 (talk) 10:27, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Following on from a previous talk topic. Yougov have for the last 14 or so months begun counting as undecided those who refused or would not vote, this has the effect of raising the undecided % for YouGov to an average 14.5% (average in 2024 for all polls was 8.5%)
I believe there had been previous agreement to manually 'correct'\this by removing Refused and Would Not vote and then recalculating Yes/No/Undecided to 100%.
While looking at this issue came across a site that appears to have already actioned this anomaly https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
It is a bit of a chore but believe it would be worth doing as it would bring YouGov into line with other pollsters practices and thereby allow better comparison between them.
Using the spreadsheet I generated to do the graphs I am able to identify of the 35 polls completed in 2024, 12 have undecided of 10% or more, 7 YouGov, 3 Redfield, 2 Survation, although yougov has by far the largest variance, to my mind it seems reasonable to check the others as I go.
For example the Yougov poll of 29 Aug/3 Sep had 37% Yes, 47% No 15% Undecided. Undecided had 5% would not Vote and 2% refused
Recalculating would remove these giving 93% total, recalculating 37/93 x100 40% 47/93 x 100=51% 8/93 x 100=9% Pugpa2 (talk) 14:14, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
