Talk:Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election

Polling Aggregate

It has been suggested that the polling aggregation should be removed. I personally feel that this section should stay because it is a useful and succinct way of summarising the data and frankly says a lot more in a lot less space than just listing all the polling in order. Kirky03 (talk) 15:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, so long as it conforms with Wiki’s reliable sources policy, aggregates should be included in their own separate table with a clear note stating what they are. 143.58.161.84 (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Disagree. This isn't polling aggregation - it's original research picking out the most recent poll from each pollster. Polling aggregate tables compile averages from reliable sources (ElectionMaps, Electoral Calculus, etc). By all means, add those. But this is not that. It's simply duplicating the main table of polls! FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 17:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Disagree - it's just repeating the national polling, but with some massaging. It seems completely pointless and useless. What is the definition of "recent" anyway?! At the moment you have Find Out Now with just one entry, with a previous one a few days before. And as said before, this is not real aggregation, nothing is weighted. If you want to show the polling trends for each company, then make tables for each company, or put in sorting in the tables so that users can sort data based on whatever criteria they want. The current extra box is prescriptive and excessive, and there's a risk of presenting less reliable polls as if they are more reliable, because the area, the sample sizes, and the client is also hidden - a GB poll is not the same as a UK poll. A 1,500 sample is not the same as a 11,000 sample, a newspaper client is not the same as the polling form doing it independently. There is already a persistent unresolved risk of polls being presented in a way that seems to try to steer polling towards a favoured outcome, it feels like NPOV. It needs to go. It was not needed before; it's not needed now.

"I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 20:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Original research is strong wording. I will concede that this is not directly picked from one source but it is no more original than the graphical summary and that is not being dragged into debate. It simply takes the most recent polls from each pollster and presents it readily for readers to find and it does that perfectly fine. The only thing original about it is the average at the bottom which is not huge.

For me, this is a quality of life addition that makes the very crowded data seen in other sections easier to find rather than any original research in of itself. Kirky03 (talk) 17:53, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

You also concede that you ajust repeating data that's imeediately below it, but with just removing a small amout of stuff.

But it also doesn't seem to have a consistent objective rule.

For example, if you applied a rule of moving average with a window of 30 days or a month, then that doesn't seem to be being applied, because some of the polls from some of pollsters are omitted.

Setting aside the sample size for a moment, there's also the question about sample areas, because some are GB and some are UK. Some are commissions, some are routine. Are you even collating and comparing the same things?

The graph is also being dragged into the debate, below, because it has one trendline forking into two trendlines for 3 months!

I don't see how removing one or two thigns is a "QoL" benefit, really.

IF you want to simplify it... then simplify it fully.. just put the pollster, the date range, the percentages, and nothing else.

What is the actual point of your table?

Why have you got pollsters from last August and November?! Wasn't it supposed to be the past month of polls? Or are you showing the trend of each pollster? Even if they haven't done a poll in 4 months?!

I can see the point of having the GE in it, but I can't see the point of having Stonehaven, BMG, and WeThink there, when they are over a month old, and you omit the polling from the other pollsters from the same period.

What is the purpose of retaining pols from 3 pollsters that are not the GE and that are over a month old, whilst exluding others that over a month old? What's that all about? "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:23, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Ah yes - this is what I thought we were suggesting adding (similar to the US articles). Anything we add needs to be from reliable sources, no cherrypicking. 143.58.161.84 (talk) 18:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

It looks like there is cherrypicking, which is why is looks like a sort of meta-OR thing, where you make a selective presentation of data, and omit other data because... ? well there's no explanation... "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Agree, as it is easy to see and also a reliable average, as it would make it less accurate if pollsters who public their polliing more often get more weight when working out the average. Gordonlty (talk) 17:33, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

...but it's not a reliable average. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm in favour of it staying, it's used on other articles (Italy for instance) and adds valuable information without taking up too much space. Only removed it because there hadn't been consensus on the talk page yet - and it's more effort for everyone if something keeps getting added and removed by various people because consensus is yet to be reached. Benocalla2 (talk) 19:20, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm happy to have this. I would say we need to have some sort of cut off though - I'd suggest only including polls conducted within the past month. Clyde1998 (talk) 22:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

This is a decent idea Kirky03 (talk) 08:46, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

There is no clear cut off or sampling window at the moment... you could jsut say, 4 weeks, 30 days, 1 month, or present each month at at time, but at the moment it looks non-objective and very selective, with no explanation about what the selection criteria is. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to have one since polls by different companies (or even the same company under different methodologies) aren't directly comparable, and "most recent by each" is therefore a useful piece of summary data hard to pick out of the main tables. However, I don't think an "average" row should be included (and certainly not at spurious 0.1% precision!) and similarly I wouldn't include any arbitrary time cutoff (sort the table by most recent first and people can just stop for themselves when they think "no, that's too old") as those both feel like major OR (poll aggregator sites competing heavily on making the "best" decisions on cutoffs, averaging methods, weightings, etc.) 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:6A44:14A8:64D:1658 (talk) 09:43, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. CR (talk) 10:32, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Might serve to rename the section "Most recent polls by pollster", as well. CR (talk) 10:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that would be clearer 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:6A44:14A8:64D:1658 (talk) 11:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Recent = how long? "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

The summary table at the top is not only unnecessary, but it tries to present all the polls as of equal value by hiding the sample size, the geographical area, and the client, as well as the frequency of each pollster's poll, never mnind the polling methodology.

It's not really doing the claimed "QoL" thing, it's just repeating the information directly below it and presenting it in a biased way - it filters out the information about the poll that would change how the poll is seen.

One graphing technique is to have different sized circles to represent sample size. You see that a lot on charts of this style, such as charts showing the relative sizes of countries' GDP or Population, whilst plotting some other parameters on the x and y axes. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 13:06, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate the "Most recent polls by pollster" section - it is a useful summary for users that removes some of the bias introduced by other presentations (such as the graph) that include all poll results, and thus give more weight to polls by pollsters who publish more polls. This is particularly important because different pollsters have different biases, and there is *no reason to believe the pollsters who publish more frequently are less biased than those who publish more frequently* (indeed, a pollster who uses a 'cheap and nasty' methodology might undercut other pollsters, and thus might get commissioned more often, or be able to afford to bear the costs themselves more frequently).

I also wonder whether, if the new name for the section in the page is considered reasonable, the section in this talk page might be renamed to match - to start with I couldn't work out whether it was talking about the section or the "Graphical Summary". User:Dr Arsenal (talk 12:00, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

That is a reasonable reason, but the trouble is that some polls are being omitted for no clear reason, so the thing you want this table to do, is not happening... or even the opposite might be happening. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

As long as each pollster is listed in this table and we’re not cherrypicking, I’m relaxed either way as to whether the table is included. I personally don’t find it that useful but I don’t object to it being there, provided it is properly kept up to date in realtime. WestminsterWhistleblower (talk) 13:40, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

I don’t think this duplicated section is necessary. I vote to delete it 152.37.116.150 (talk) 19:57, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Weighting of polls distorts the chart/graph of polls

The other issue I think is worth raising (and maybe my maths is conceptually flawed here), is that the sample sizes vary significantly sometimes, and there's no weighting of polls. How can a result of a sample of about 11,000 be of equivalent value as a sample of about 1,500? Polls are often reported as being way out, and this might be a reason why.

Why not weight all polls by size? Say 1% of a poll sample is it's weighting multiplier? Why not then use the weighting to normalise all polls to 1,000 and see what the chart/graph of polls looks like. What do we think?

When you go on an online retailer's review page, and you have for example 500 reviews saying 3/5 and another saying 50 reviews 5/5, you naturally tend to believe the bigger sample more.

You can see this concept explained quite well by 3Brown1Blue (a statitics video channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 16:23, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I do support this (very low-rated pollsters with low sample sizes get the same weight as high-rated pollsters with large sample sizes) but I'm unsure how it would be implemented. The code for the graph just takes the date and percentages, plots it onto a graph and draws LOESS lines using a span DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it might help fix some outliers that are gradually becoming more evident. It helps rate the polling sources a bit too, for credibility.

Lazy websearch:

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2018/01/26/how-different-weighting-methods-work/

Quoting...

seven weighting methods:

• Raking
• Matching
• Propensity weighting
• Matching + Propensity weighting
• Matching + Raking
• Propensity weighting+ Raking
• Matching + Propensity weighting + Raking

https://www.decisionanalyst.com/blog/dataweighting/

Quoting...

• If possible, always perfectly balance the sample during the sampling and screening process so that you never have to weight any data. This is almost always the best and most defensible solution.
• If you do decide to weight survey data, remember there is a price to pay. Nothing in life is free. The cost of weighting data is reduced accuracy. The sampling variance, standard deviation, and standard error increase.
• Remember that the cost of weighting data is greater (in terms of reduced accuracy) when the sample size is smaller. If you have thousands of respondents, you can weight the data as much as you please and the cost in reduced accuracy is very small. On the other hand, if you have fewer than 100 respondents, the cost in reduced accuracy might be very great. Be especially cautious in weighting data when samples sizes are small.
• In deciding whether and how to weight survey data, it’s a good idea to review the cross-tabs to see which demographic (or other) variables appear to have the greatest impact on the answers. For example, if men and women give very similar answers, weighting the sample by gender will have little effect on the percentages in your tabulations. On the other hand, if different age groups are giving different answers, then weighting by age will change the numbers in your tabulations.
• When data must be weighted, weight by as few variables as possible. As the number of weighting variables goes up, the greater the risk that the weighting of one variable will confuse or interact with the weighting of another variable.
• When data must be weighted, try to minimize the sizes of the weights. A general rule of thumb is never to weight a respondent less than .5 (a 50% weighting) nor more than 2.0 (a 200% weighting).
• Keep in mind that up-weighting data (weight › 1.0) is typically more dangerous than down-weighting data (weight ‹ 1.0). In up-weighting, you have too few respondents and are pretending that those respondents each count for more than one person; and the greater the up-weight, the more those respondents' answers are exaggerated.
• A best practice is to create two sets of cross-tabulations: one set weighted and one set unweighted. Look at these two sets of cross-tabulations side by side, to make sure all the numbers look reasonable.

and...

https://www.appinio.com/en/blog/market-research/weighting-survey-data

I'm not a statistician, so I'm not going to bang on about it, but I think that the polls are not quite on point, for the two reasons I've raised:

1. the sum of all percentages add up to +/- 3% in some cases; and,

2. the weightings are not there, so there's a risk of outliers skewing the data and the chart, such as the recent January 2025 Deltapoll and Opinium polls; and the January 8th Find Out Now poll seems to be missing 3%, so looks like an outlier too.

"I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 17:29, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

This would be clear violation of Wikipedia:No original research.

All polls are reliably sourced, all polls meet clear inclusion criteria, including; weighting all polls to make their sampling representative of GB as a whole, publishing their methodology, sample size, date range and client.

I can understand why some people don’t like the polls, the trends they show, and therefore the resulting graph - I can see why there are some creative ideas to change that. But Wikipedia is not the place for that because…

The above suggestions are not only a bit complex for your average reader, they would make keeping the article up to date very challenging, and… all of this is a clear breach of WP:OR and therefore prohibited on Wikipedia. We must stick with the approach of the last +25years of simply publishing the polls in a standard data table and producing a graph - no creative analysis.

37.156.72.174 (talk) 07:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

"original research" is defined here Wikipedia:No_original_research as:

"original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists"

The rounding (and resulting chart) and the aggregate table both fit the description of Original Research because they are not presenting the granular data in the BPS-accredited published polling reports. To follow your argument, if we want to rely purely on published data such as this for accuracy and veracity, then we should only have the data in the tables in the BPS-accredited published poll documents, with at least as meny dp as in the largest sample, and no rounding and no charts and no "aggregates" that aren't really aggregates at all. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Aggregate_data

so if your largest source is the General Election, of nn,nnn,nnn, then each sample should be nn.nnnnnnnn to capture each integer sample of data, and for the smaller samples, you will have fewer dp by definition. The data at least then will be accurate down to the individual sample, rather than rounded based on an arbitrary dp quantity or the absence of dp at all.

Normalising data is not original research, because you are using the data that is present in the source to adjust for distortions in your chart.

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Normalization_(statistics)

Not doing this is closer to "original research" because we are presenting misleading information in tables and charts by implying that a sample of 1,500 is of equal value to a sample of 11,000.

If you wanted to exempt the General election, and use the largest sample size as the reference point for how many dp to to capture total granularity down to the individual sample in the source, then you need 5 dp in this case, because your largest sample is of size nn,nnn

Generally, the samples are of size n,nnn, so in most cases 3 dp is enough.

That will eliminate rounding errors, and correct the current NOR problem. of skewed data by pretending that small samples are of equal weight to large samples. Obviously the GE is the largest sample of all, and the MRP poll of 11,000 is the largest poll sample, and both are more representative than a sample of 1,500, for reasons that are self-evident.

If we continue as is, then you could have scenarios where there polls of samples of <1,000, a few hundred (and this has happened before), that are treated the same as larger samples, and this undermines the stated objective to present accurate and credible data.

"I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 10:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

1. The “rounding” etc is not done by anyone on Wikipedia. It is done by the pollsters themselves who produce a ‘headline poll’ which then gets used by the client media outlet. That is patently not a violation of wiki policy.

2.The graph produced is patently not original research because it is simply every single data point (which is every single GB weighted poll) plotted on a graph. It is nothing more than an unadulterated visual representation of all the data points.

If however we were to do things like put arrows showing key political events on the graph e.g. budget, grooming scandal etc etc to try explain/contextualise movements, then that would be original research. 143.58.249.12 (talk) 11:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

"So there's a risk of outliers skewing the data and the chart" - something to note here is that the "outliers" aren't necessarily wrong. At the 2024 general election, the eventual GB result for Labour was 34.7%. Every single poll conducted within a year of the election placed Labour above that point, often significantly. Had there been a single polling company placing Labour on 34% rather than in the 36-41% range, then they would have been a massive outlier and all the same arguments about them affecting the graph and the averages would have applied. They would also have been - with the benefit of hindsight - right!

"by pretending that small samples are of equal weight to large samples". The sampling error on an otherwise perfect 1000 person poll is +/-3%. On an otherwise perfect 10,000 person poll the error is +/-1%. But either way, the polling companies quote (somewhat optimistically at times) +/-4% on their headline figures, because the random variation of the sample size is not one of the larger contributors. So for example at the 2024 election, picking a company which did both to try to minimise other methodological differences, Survation's final conventional poll was about 4% off the real result on a sample size of 1679 (+/-2.4%). Survation's final MRP, though, was about 7% off the real result on a sample size of 34,558 (+/-0.53%). The errors in polling *not* due to the sample size tend to massively overwhelm the basic random sampling error.

Any attempt to predict in advance of an actual election which tests them which polls are more likely to be accurate is not only Original Research, it's also really likely to be wrong. Wikipedia should therefore just be providing the raw dataset in a convenient format to allow readers to make their own choice of wrong prediction. (there is I think a reasonable argument on that basis for not plotting averages on the graph either and just showing the points) 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:F0E5:84E5:A9DE:EEF1 (talk) 11:37, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

That is true that outliers are not necessarily wrong, but when you have two diverging trends within one series, it looks like you have to choose between having a wider band of possibilities, or determining whether some data is as "truthy" as others.

For example, is having:

• 5 polls from one pollster in a row, of 1,500 size with similar outcomes within the space of 10 days in parallel with
• 2 polls from two pollsters in a row, of 2,500 size with divergent ouctomes within the space of the same 10 days

going to bias the trend in favour of the more frequent small polls?

If it did, then there might be an incentive for someone with money and an agenda to fund lots of small polls with leading questions or a visually leading presentation, to generate a particular trend. Some people suspect this of happening, and particularly when actual vote results diverge significantly from polling, as has happened in living memory, more than once.

It's not clear where your comment about "any attempt to predict..." comes from, but I think given the history of polls failing, it's not completely unreasonable to ask a few questions and try and open up the machine to see how it works.

From the trend line on the graph at the moment, it looks like the red line diverges into two trends from about Oct/Noc 2024.

Does that mean that there are two trends? Or that the is a wider range of variation for the red trendline than for the other ones?

If you've ever looked at meterological forecast charts for waves and weather at sea, in general they tell you that the preduction becomes very unreliable after 3 days, and they display it with a widening error band, so that you can see there is less confidence in the trend line as you move further into the future, and they generally don't bother displaying it beyond 10 days ahead.

So, my question is about trying to open up for discussion and explanation (not just for me, but everyone) what is happening there.

Let's try and remember that this is not a pissing match about who knows best, it's about explaining and presenting why you think its best in a similar way that at uni, an economics PhD might do a show and tell of something they know about to a group of engineering PhDs, knowing that they might not be familiar with all his terms and processes, but that they are capable of understanding them if they are explained clearly without reaching for verbal flourishes. I am too stupid for all that, and most of the audience are too. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:10, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I am a statistician. What Macdaddy is quoting is about weighting individual responses within a survey. That is already done within each poll. The question raised in this Talk subsection is about weighting different polls when producing an average of polls, which is a different question. The only weighting that I think would meet WP:CALC and not be WP:OR is to weight by the square root of the sample sizes, as that's basic statistical theory. The maths exists to do that for a LOESS curve, but whether it's practical to do that here, I doubt. Bondegezou (talk) 11:44, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Agree it’s impractical but I would like to point out that even to “weight by the square root of the sample sizes” would involve original research, as you’d be making a calculation not made by reliable sources - I say that with no disrespect at all to Bondegezou).

The only approach Wiki policy compliant approach re graphs is to plot all the data points published by reliable sources (as is currently done).

143.58.232.145 (talk) 12:38, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it's on the edge of WP:OR. We do have WP:CALC for routine calculations. To a statistician, weighting by the square root of sample sizes is kinda routine. (It's the sort of thing I wouldn't bother providing a citation for were I to do it in a research paper: it's just obvious.) I note that we already provide a LOESS curve under a WP:CALC justification, and the maths for a basic LOESS curve is considerably more complicated! But, yeah, I'm not pushing for this. Bondegezou (talk) 14:03, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Though CALC specifically says "Editors should not compare statistics from sources that use different methodologies." which is true of any pair of polls from different companies (and sometimes for pairs of polls from the same company) especially for the headline voting intentions. Consensus seems to be that it's okay to ignore that here, but I do think including the LOESS lines at all misleads more than clarifies. (Doing a quick check on the final polls of 2024, weighting them by sqrt(sample size) gives a polling average which is almost exactly as wrong as the unweighted polling average in terms of difference from the real GB result, so uncontroversial or not it's hardly worth the effort.) 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:EA31:6A6C:6A41:7AFA (talk) 12:07, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Listing every single data point - as presented by reliable sources - is not comparing or contrasting them. It is simply listing them, whether that be in table or graph form. The trend line is not analysis either - it is compliant with CALC and other wiki policies. There is also a +24 year precedent of this approach… I literally cannot believe the arguments I’m reading 🤯 143.58.232.145 (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

You might not be able to "literally" [sic] believe it, but not everyone is as clever as you, so the verbal flourish is obviously needed to remind them of that, and to not bother asking questions or making suggestions, because you obvoiously know best. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 14:13, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't a larger sample size generally increase the credibility of a poll by reducing the margin of error and variability of the estimates?

Sure, credibility also depends on the polling methodology, including: how the sample is selected, the timing of the poll, and whether it accurately represents the target population, and non-response bias. So yeah, a well-conducted poll with a smaller sample size can still be more reliable than a poorly designed one with a larger sample; but generally speaking, Every schoolboy knows that the general public tend to trust polls with larger sample sizes for good reason.

The summary table at the top is not only unnecessary, but it tries to present all the polls as of equal value by hiding the sample size, the geographical area, and the client, as well as the frequency of each pollster's poll. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 13:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. Larger sample size certainly increases the "credibility" in the sense of how much people are likely to believe it's true, but if you compare the final 2024 polls difference from reality with their sample size, there certainly isn't any "bigger is better" in evidence in terms of accuracy of results. BPC polling companies tend to quote a +/-4% likely error regardless of the sample size of the poll (when the pure sampling error would only be 1-3%). The problem isn't that most (or all) of the polls aren't wrong, it's that there's no reliable way to tell which they are in advance. So it's up to the reader to use their own metrics to determine which ones are of most value.

At any rate, this seems more something to link to Poor Historical Performance Of UK Political Polls or something similar than to try to wedge into this article. 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:692:26FF:FE59:D09B (talk) 16:14, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

All of this relies on not following Wiki policies. Obviously, what is produced is imperfect - most approaches will be. However, what we currently have is the best approach possible, within wiki policies. WestminsterWhistleblower (talk) 13:13, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@Macdaddy I don't have an opinion either way on whether we should weight based on sample size. But I noticed that Opinion polling for the 2025 Canadian federal election does weight on sample size. "Trendlines are 30-poll local regressions, with polls weighted by proximity in time and a logarithmic function of sample size." —Profzed! 21:02, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

External links

Hi. I know external links have been used on polling pages for a while now, but they are nevertheless against reference conventions and WP:EL. In particular, there is the risk of link rot and the fact that no archive links can be included. Dajasj (talk) 19:37, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

These confirm with the formatting restrictions. This is why we don’t have a problem with a load of broken links 152.37.80.168 (talk) 21:55, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Which formatting restrictions? Dajasj (talk) 06:03, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I saw the "Dis article is got bare URLs innit bruv" warning at the top of the page. I check this article daily. It's a very useful resource about a very serious subject. It's not helpful to nit-pick about the number of citations when a new poll comes out every few days. James Tweedie (talk) 19:28, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

They are well established as they provide the most reliable data straight from the Pollsters Data Table, making them references or citations does not remove the risk of link rot, this rot applies no matter what it is linked to be it data tables, newspaper or analytical pieces. There is however a way to manage these and in fact Wikipeadia provides a tool to assist, it fires off a bot that checks the link and if broken replaces it with one from the Web Archive ( I think it uses the wayback machine) Pugpa2 (talk) 23:25, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

They are well established as they provide the most reliable data straight from the Pollsters Data Table, making them references or citations does not remove the risk of link rot, this rot applies no matter what it is linked to be it data tables, newspaper or analytical pieces. There is however a way to manage these and in fact Wikipeadia provides a tool to assist, it fires off a bot that checks the link and if broken replaces it with one from the Web Archive ( I think it uses the wayback machine)

If you want to have a look Pugpa2 (talk) 23:26, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

If we carry on with this 2025 approach, we will eventually have heading on for 2000 cites listed in the References section, which seems ridiculous. (The to 2024 article uses opdrts dates 1618 times, so at least that probably if cites were used.)

I think we need to WP:UCS (Use common sense) here. Note WP:Policies and guidelines#Adherence says: Use common sense in interpreting and applying policies and guidelines; rules have occasional exceptions. and that policy lede says Policies and guidelines should be applied using reason and common sense. ... The actual policies and guidelines are behaviors practiced by most editors. Taking an informal sample of the articles in Category:Opinion polling for future elections it seems there is a majority using the ExtLink method, so I think we have the freedom to conclude the ExtLink method is "practiced by most editors" and we should carry on with it.

So I think we need to reconsider this change away from using extlinks. Though I have to concede a counter-point is that Statewide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election does use the cite method, and has 1023 cites in the References section (though 7 with red errors in them, showing it needs more maintenance effort), so maybe us having 2000 odd cites would not be as ridiculous as I first thought. Rwendland (talk) 16:35, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree it is pretty common, that's why I'm trying to change it ;) Because there are so many pages using this style, one would expect WP:EL to mention it as an exception to the rule. If we want to keep it outside the references section, I think it would be desirable to change it on WP:EL.

Anyway, 2000 references is ofc not ideal, but it is the price for referencing everything we do. And there is the convention that we give more information about the source we use (although I admit I just move them to references, but it's a start). In previous years, we did not even give the title. The thing that is most problematic however is the archiving. If you look at the 2024 opinion polling place and then the 2023 table, you already see the {{Webarchive}} being placed and it will probably get worse over time. It is ugly in the table, but wouldn't necessarily be a problem in the reference section.

So if there is consensus to ignore a rule, then let's ignore the rule and write it down somewhere. But I believe it is better to transform it to references, if only for the archiving links. Dajasj (talk) 17:18, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

This appears to have been done without proper consensus and it will likely solve a bigger problem than the one it seeks to solve.

This article will very quickly get impossibly long and start to cause problems at the back end for Wikipedia.

i really can’t stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. Link rot is the least of our worries with these massive data articles. 188.214.9.47 (talk) 14:18, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps we have to split them up then. Large articles should not be a reason to limit proper referencing. Dajasj (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

I have asked for more broader input on Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#Opinion_polling. Dajasj (talk) 14:26, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Preferred Prime Minister - Green & LD

It seems disproportionate to include columns for Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay:

1. They have only been named in 3 polls in July/August 24 and have not been named since.

2. There have been 26 of these polls so far - 3 out of 26, the last being 6months ago!

3. The party’s standing in the polls does not make either leader becoming prime minister even a vague prospect at this stage and there are no reliable sources/commentators discussing this.

4. To have 2 columns for these Green Party shows serious undue weight in these circumstances.

I therefore suggest we replace the 2 columns with an “other” column and name them in a collapsible “show” other.

92.20.135.189 (talk) 11:01, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me. I would also include Ed Davey in others, due to polling numbers, lack of being prompted for and lack of reliable sourced commentary of Davey becoming PM. 188.214.9.43 (talk) 12:13, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I disagree - Ed Davey features in most polls, unlike the Green leaders, so there's little need to change anything. Kirky03 (talk) 12:22, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

He doesn’t - look at the data. There were dashes next to his name in all but 4 polls 188.214.9.43 (talk) 13:12, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

The recent 5th example is a set of 2way run of polls a) they are rare, b) they don’t reflect the reality of the voting system, c) this one recent poll doesn’t change the reality that Ed Davey is not frequently prompted for 188.214.9.43 (talk) 14:20, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Apologies, I got my wires crossed and was looking at Leadership approval. My bad! Kirky03 (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

No worries - agree that Davey should certainly be in Leadership approval (but not “preferred PM”)

Don’t really know what to do about Denyer/Ramsay leadership approval - the preferred PM solution won’t work :/ 188.214.9.43 (talk) 15:38, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorted but it looks like there’s been an edit conflict 188.214.9.43 (talk) 13:11, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Fixed 188.214.9.43 (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I have just undone Chessrat rebranding the "Other" column in the preferred PM table to Ed Davey. It is incorrect to state that he is the only person referenced in the column, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay of the Green Party also feature in this column.

I agree Ed Davey/LDs should be listed in the other tables but not in this one because of the reasons listed above - same with Greens. I hope an edit war does not occur. 143.58.249.57 (talk) 16:56, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The Green Party leaders only feature in the column of the lower half table, which has a different set of leaders (Sunak for the Conservatives). For the lower-half table an "other" column makes sense, but for the upper half Ed Davey is the only leader featured in the "other" column so there's absolutely no reason to use that format. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 17:09, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The only leader in the upper half of the column for now - in any case he only features in 5 polls (one of which does not even reflect the UK system, as it was on a head to head basis).

The reality is that it is only 7 months since the election, the odds of there not being any other polls at all that feature the green leaders in the next 4 years are slim.

Ed Davey having his own column is not reflective of the reliable sources or what the pollsters show. This would be undue weight. Hence consensus for the change made. 143.58.249.57 (talk) 17:17, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Davey is featured in 5 of the 25 polls, Farage is featured in 10 of the 25, and Starmer and the Conservative leader are featured in all 25. So surely any argument about Davey's inclusion could just as feasibly apply to Farage's inclusion.

It's not really undue weight to not collapse polls- all collapsing does is make the information harder for readers to immediately see. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 17:31, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Difference is

1. Dozens of reliable sources commentate on the possibility of Farage becoming PM. That’s not the case for Davey.

2. Farage actually leads in many of these polls. Davey only leads in head to head polls which are not reflective of the system we live in.

Comparing Davey with Farage in terms of polling just doesn’t compare. There’s the top 3, then Davey +10points behind and the greens not far behind him

37.156.72.153 (talk) 21:48, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

@37.156.72.153 But there is no benefit to putting him under Other. It does not improve readability at all. It just makes the article harder to read. Whether Davey will win or not is not particularly relevant. RSs clearly don't think Badenoch will win; they think she won't even last as leader. The key thing is letting the readers easily access the results of the polls (AKA removing the need to click "Show"). —Profzed! 22:38, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

It removes the mass of dashed boxes and prevents readers from having to scroll right to see all the data for most polls - particularly if reading on a mobile phone. 37.156.72.153 (talk) 07:36, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Compared to the four-column version of the infobox (here), collapsing the boxes has no advantage in this way. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 13:22, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

@37.156.72.153 I would like to point out that I am a mobile phone user. I prefer Davey in separate column for readability. —Profzed! 13:48, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Collapsing those columns makes the table far, far less readable for no perceivable benefit CR (talk) 10:21, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Vandalism/Edit Warning

I notice the article has been reverted against consensus. This is vandalism and must be reversed, with the vandals receiving a warning.37.156.72.153 (talk) 07:39, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Vandalism notices issued to Billytanghh and CipherRephic for reverting edits that had been raised on the talk page and made with consensus of most others in discussion. I am tagging them in here so they can read the above points before challenging them and certainly before continuing to edit war. 37.156.72.153 (talk) 09:36, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

@37.156.72.153 Please read WP:BRD before you go around templating people for edit warring after one revert. CR (talk) 10:19, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

@37.156.72.153 This quite a serious allegation. It is also a baseless one. Their edits are clearly WP:GOODFAITH, especially given that there is no consensus in favour of putting Davey in Others. —Profzed! 13:50, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

No consensus, potential brigade

I notice that this proposed removal of columns has been pushed and supported only by four IP-address editors, three of whom have never edited Wikipedia before and the fourth has only had a few edits- Special:Contributions/37.156.72.153, Special:Contributions/188.214.9.43, Special:Contributions/92.20.135.189, Special:Contributions/143.58.249.57- whereas everyone else (me, User:Kirky03, User:Profzed, User:Billytanghh, User:CipherRephic) who have chimed in have all opposed the proposed change. Seems like a clear consensus against to me, so I'll change the article to the way it was originally. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 13:30, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think they're intentionally brigading, I think they're just on a dynamic IP. CR (talk) 14:51, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

actually, at one point 188.etc replies to 92.etc as a seperate user - not sure what that's about. CR (talk) 15:30, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

This looks like a conspiracy theory to me. This might be an appropriate talk page for you both. 143.58.249.51 (talk) 11:28, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Consensus update

More voices now say Davey’s column should stay. Head to head polling has added some justification to this.

However, the Green Party having 2 whole columns when all but three cells in the table are filled with a ‘’’-‘’’ makes no sense. It gives undue weight. Especially when you consider the tiny percentages. :Replacing the 2 columns with an “other” column makes more sense, especially if pollster start including leaders from outside the big 5 e.g. George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn, Tommy Robinson (or whatever is real name is), Alan Sugar or whoever else. This way makes including the odd unusual poll easy - future proofing!143.58.232.141 (talk) 15:55, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. CR (talk) 17:36, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Move All Approval Polling to new Article

Looks clunky and frankly uninformative when its collapsed. would be a better idea to move these to a dedicated approval page like we have had for 2015, 17, 19 and 24 elections. Benocalla2 (talk) 16:08, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. CR (talk) 16:08, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Maybe when there’s enough data to justify a standalone article - we’re not there yet though. I’d hold off until maybe 2026 (depending on how many polls done) 188.214.9.43 (talk) 17:17, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

There's more than enough data to constitute an article as-is. This article was created after only one poll and survived an AfD for its efforts. CR (talk) 17:19, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree, a new article would be consistent with previous Parliaments (other articles). It would also help to address the issue of article sizes. 143.58.249.57 (talk) 17:26, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Agree, we should follow previous practice where polling and leadership polling were separate articles, it is only this current article that's has amalgamated them Pugpa2 (talk) 13:32, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Preferred PM

Why has preferred PM tracker been removed? If removing this - we need to remove PM approval rating as well? NewGuy2024 (talk) 06:54, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

It hasn’t been removed. It has been elevated to having its own section higher up the article. Scroll up 👍🏻 152.37.116.150 (talk) 07:52, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Ok my bad - shouldn’t leadership approval ratings go up there too? Seems logical place to have these alongside each other now NewGuy2024 (talk) 08:28, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

There is a separate discussion above about creating a whole new article for approval polling - this would be consistent with what was done previously 152.37.116.150 (talk) 13:29, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Addition of National poll results to Sub-National polling

I was about to add the recent YouGov polling to the Wales table before realising none were added to the Scotland table either. I understand why this is - the sample size is significantly smaller than the other polling there, but in the case of YouGov, they include the sample size of the headline polls. If there is a consensus for yes then I don't mind filling the backlog, but I'd prefer to ask here before just pressing on ahead. GravyOnToast (talk) 07:59, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

There's a big difference between a "poll of Wales" and a national poll's "Wales subsample" - unless otherwise stated (it sometimes is for MRP-style polling, but often not even then), the subsample doesn't have any of the weighting and sampling that the main poll does. So e.g. the national polls might be sampling and weighting for N% from Wales and M% who voted LD at the last election - but that doesn't mean the national poll has aimed to have the correct percentage of Wales-resident LD-last-time voters specifically. This makes them very unreliable even before the lower sample size (if you compare polls in a series you'll see *much* bigger and likely illusory swings in the subsamples as compared with the headline figures). It's not appropriate to include them in the same table. 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:692:26FF:FE59:D09B (talk) 09:40, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Glad I asked, thank you! GravyOnToast (talk) 12:19, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Re-add SNP column

The SNP column was removed from the polling tables in 2024, and I'd like for it to be re-added. It clogs up the "Others" column when essentially all the polls include the SNP, almost no polls list it under "others" themselves – arguably, excluding it is an OR violation DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 11:50, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Don't think I'd go so far as to call it an OR violation but I think we should probably put the SNP column back, yeah. CR (talk) 12:14, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed- and I'd also add a Plaid Cymru column. There's no struggle for space and it would make the table more readable. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 12:34, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

This has been discussed previously and the consensus reached was not to include them. There's an argument for the SNP being included but the idea was the SNP were not historically included in articles like this and only started to be once their seat total was higher. Since their seat total has now returned to lower levels, they should be treated as before.

And honestly, I agree. The SNP are limited to Scotland and so their support cannot ever be significant on a national scale and so their % support will always be fluctuating around low numbers. It just adds space and makes it harder to read, especially on a phone.

And this goes double for Plaid!

That said, if the decision is made that the SNP should be included (fair enough for them but I encourage not Plaid) then I should remind people that these changes should be done to the 2024 polls as well as the 2025 polls because so far, they have not. Kirky03 (talk) 23:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s really about us as Wikipedia users deciding unilaterally which of the pollsters results to include and which to bunch in “Others” — the fact is that all of the major pollsters have been including the SNP as a party instead of doing what we’ve been doing and pushing it into “other” so should we not follow that too? DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 07:19, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I am against this change and I think it is a disgrace how stealthily this has been done. You have done this without even 24 hours, you have not sought to re-engage those who were part of the consensus that removed SNP and you have not engaged with their arguments. This is unreasonable. I am even more opposed to this edit than I was because of the way it’s been done. Switch it back. 152.37.120.148 (talk) 07:38, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

To make it worse, you have removed the last discussion on this! It is inappropriate to move the last discussion on this immediately before reopening the discussion. This appears to be evidence of a ting without good faith. This edit must be reversed. 152.37.120.148 (talk) 07:40, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

The previous discussion was automatically archived to reduce the size of the talk page. It's stll available here DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 08:42, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

You seem to have started to let people who previously participated in the discussion know that this discussion is taking place, which is good! But I might suggest that the title "SNP sneakily re-added to UK opinion polling table" maybe doesn't meet the "Notifications must be [...] neutrally worded with a neutral title" part of WP:CANVASS DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 08:53, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

1. The timing of you making the change immediately following the bot is at best highly suspect.

I am merely doing what you should have done. You pulling me up on a technicality about the way I have done told people could be interpreted as a distractional tactic from the main point.

2. Main point is you took the opportunity of the previous consensus discussion being archived to unpick it. You did so without engaging those you knew had opposing views. You then went on to make the change within less than 24-hours. These are all basic facts.

What you have done is wrong and it must be undone. 152.37.120.148 (talk) 09:25, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

1. I made the post because I wanted to make a change. I literally mentioned it in my original post that there had been a previous discussion, and seeing no opposition I was BOLD and made the change
   1. It's not a "technicality", it's a very real policy designed to prevent campaigning (posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner)
2. I did not "opportunity of the previous consensus discussion being archived to unpick it" – that was just a coincidence

DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 10:07, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I'd also contend that, when the SNP won their huge number of 45 seats in 2019, they got about 4% of the total national vote. That isn't a very big number, and their current polling is around 3%. Discriminating based on seat counts or percieved parliamentary relevance isn't particuarly helpful for parties that only stand candidates in one part of the UK. The best way is to just record what the pollsters are actually saying in the table DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 10:21, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

This is arguably a reason not to include them. In 2019, they were the 3rd largest party on 4%, now they are tiny on 3%. The SNP vote share will never vary much due to very firm limitations of them onlt being in Scotland. Including a party of this size is limited in appeal and is not worth the space it takes up on the page in my opinion. The only reason they were included previously was, despite their small vote share, they were a large parliamentary group.

But again - SNP is more subjective but please not PC and also any change needs to be consistent across the 2024 polls as well as the 2025 Kirky03 (talk) 11:00, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I have removed the PC column (literally everything in there was either missing data or 1%, this is not necessary) but have kept the SNP there FOR NOW. Hopefully a clear consensus can be reached soon - as had been done previously - and we can decide what to do with it. It would be useful if people not currently involved in the discussion could voice their opinion. Kirky03 (talk) 12:27, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I have not been on Wiki for a while and have received an email notification about this.

I am very disappointed to see what has happened here and especially how it has been done. Very disappointing.

There has been no substantive change, I cannot see an evidential trigger for this discussion to be re-opened. Therefore all the previous arguments should be featured in this discussion - perhaps it should be unarchived.

It must therefore be assumed that ALL editors that said they were against a standalone SNP column remain against it for the same reasons previously stated.

I note when the previous discussion was archived - and I make no comment about the timing of that and recent edits. However, it seems clear that the archived material should be brought back into this article.

The addition of SNP column needs to reversed - no question about it. WestminsterWhistleblower (talk) 13:05, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

My point is that the article does not lose anything by including the SNP, and its exclusion seems entirely arbitrary. All of the pollsters in 2025 so far have included it but we're just pushing it into "Other" because reasons DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 14:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

There is absolutely no point in hiding some parties behind a "hidden" notice; it achieves nothing other than making the table more inconvenient for people to read. It's not something which is done in other similar articles- see e.g. Opinion polling for the 2025 German federal election, Opinion polling for the next Israeli legislative election, etc. I really can't see what possible benefit there is in this. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:42, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Other nations have different electoral systems such as proportional representation which makes 3rd parties more important. In Germany, a party with as little as 5% vote share could enter into a coalition government - not strictly the case here. So, there are some differences which might justify this being more parsimonious.

Also, I'd like to gently remind you that there was a previously found consensus that the SNP column would be hidden behind an "others" column and it is you who is trying to change the status quo and will need consensus before enacting your changes. Kirky03 (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Kirky03 It's not just PR systems- all opinion polling articles contain columns for all candidates. See Opinion polling for the 2021 Canadian federal election and even Opinion polling for the 2019 United Kingdom general election, which has nine columns with no issues. I would like to note here that you have so far not provided a single argument for your proposal to make the table less readable.

This article has in recent months had a lot of issues with brigading from IP address and new users trying to remove and hide information- there was a similar attempt to hide information in the Preferred PM table not long ago. Instead of referring to the previous "consensus" (which had only a couple of experienced members agreeing and a similar number disagreeing, with little participation in the discussion), maybe you could explain what you think is wrong with the longstanding format used in most other articles? Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 15:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I believe that this whole article has in many ways lost its way, becoming cluttered and not user friendly, for example although called Polling for next UK.... the section with actual polling is only the third section in the article.

As regards whether to include SNP as column, I would suggest we are guided by the pollsters themselves and almost all include SNP as a potential response. This idea of using MP count as an indicator seems rather ill thought out as if applied universally would mean Reform being included in others as SNP currently have more MPs than Reform, which is a nonsense. Furthermore at there peak of 40+ MPs they only polled 4% UK wide as opposed to current 3%. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I am against the re-addition of the SNP and the addition of Plaid. I think it is awful this was done within 24hours of the original discussion being archived. How do we report the above editors who have done this? What’s happened is tantamount to political activism… on Wikipedia! I think it’s really serious. 92.20.135.189 (talk) 17:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

says anonymous IP editor, the discussion happened and consensus prevailed, that's how wiki works, its about providing information for interested readers not hiding it away. I would suggest the simplest way is to rely on the pollsters if the consistently poll for a response to a party then we should ensure it is recorded in the article. Pugpa2 (talk) 18:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

IP's comment is overly dramatic but the spirit is true. The way this played out was original discussion is archived and within 24 hours, someone suggests going against that previous decision and then before much conversation has been allowed to happen, edits the article against the previous consensus. This is not how the wiki should work. Opinions can change but this was incredibly rapid.

I'd also like to mention that, YouGov for example, ask whether people intend to vote for incredibly small parties such as Women's Equality Party so the argument doesn't hold.

I've given up on this debate. I still stand against this change but there's a select group of people starting fires everywhere and I can't be bothered to argue this one even though we have today decided to remove valuable information in order to restrict the width of the table while opting to keep in a PC column which contains a long list of 1s. The fact remains that the way this was done was appalling and frankly, if parties involved had waited for a consensus to be reached before making changes, I don't think there were strong enough voices on either side to warrant changing the status quo. This kind of thing should not happen again. Kirky03 (talk) 21:57, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

As regards which parties to include or not I really don't think that is for us to decide, if pollsters regularly poll for a particular party then we should be capturing that data, please note emphasis on regular and pollsters being in plural. I am sorry but your example from yougov would not meet this criteria as they do not poll that party every time and most pollsters don't at all.

My support for this has nothing to do with the width of the table, but rather consistent, sensible and easily understood principles of who is capture in article, when that might change.

I believe the approach above does, I hope you will accept my input in the spirit it is offered, my only desire is to make this article as good as we can and to do that we need consistent and coherent approach.

There is much to be done to bring this article back to the standard it should be and hope you will continue to feel free to add your contribution. Pugpa2 (talk) 22:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record, it is not your contributions that have been an issue. Kirky03 (talk) 22:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

SNP and PC should not have there own column, their is nothing meaningful to gain by representing them on the table, makes the table less readable overall and we had already established consensus on the 2025 polling page that the inclusion of those parties was not neccesary. I dont see how anything changed since then to warrent reinclusion, especially not for PC. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 08:57, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Good Morning

The recent discussions had established that long standing precedence had the parties sorted as per % of popular vote at last election.

It also established that it really is not for editors to be deciding which parties are or are not included, that is for pollsters to decide by prompting on a regular basis for a response, if they do so then that data should be captured and displayed, others captures those parties that have not been prompted for. A simple robust process. It has nothing to do with number of elected representatives or % polled. A simple robust process that takes editors out of what can clearly be a highly contentious subject which inevitable becomes subjective.

We should stick to this position and avoid more contentious approaches, I would suggest that much of the 'activity' around this article is because we stray into highly contentious areas. Lets keep it simple and straightforward Pugpa2 (talk) 10:20, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

it's of my opinion that the non-inclusion of the SNP and PC where never 'contentious' and such consensus was made in the polling page for the last general election. Wikipedia is not majority rule, and is governed on consensus. There is no consensus for the re-inclusion of either the SNP or PC. This isn't about editors deciding which parties to include, it's a simple fact of 1. PC is not even prompted in a good portion of polls leaving blank values for a vast portion of the table and is unable to mathematical achieve over 2% of the vote, 2. Neither party is represented on the graph and the change in value is negligible 2 - 4% on average for SNP, 1 - 0% for PC.

Consensus should be sought for this change which has not occured. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

It is rather difficult to see what has or has not been changed due to concensus or not such has been the state of this article and talk page.

I think this topic is another where we are best to avoid subjective views on matter and base it on available evidence, pollsters always sample for SNP and for that reason alone should be included the idea of having a % or MP count as criteria is a subjective one. As for PC of the 46 polls this year 35 have prompted for them, I think that is regular enough to merit there inclusion. Pugpa2 (talk) 20:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm more sympathetic to maintaining the SNP, though still don't believe theirs much need to represent them on the table. There is absolutely nothing to gain from representing PC, they rarely poll over 0% and a significant portion of polls don't prompt for them. I don't think it's subjective to say a party polling at less than 1% shouldn't be on the table. Most other nations have similiar principles, especially where reporting is done usually as whole numbers unlike other nations like Spain where inclusion of small regional parties are more relevant. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 22:40, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Their is precedence for including SNP and PC, and it appears to have been based solely on the pollsters prompting as stated above 46 polls this year every one prompted for SNP and 35 prompted for PC. Again it is not for us to decide who to include or be sympathetic to it, let the pollsters do their work and respect it, no matter what our personal preferences may or may not be. Pugpa2 (talk) 09:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

ps inclusion is having no impact on width or readability of table Pugpa2 (talk) 10:21, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Graph too smooth?

The graph by @DimensionalFusion: is very good, but I think it has the issue that the trend lines are so smooth that they don't really show actual trends well. Compare with File:UK opinion polling 2010-2015.svg where there is more movement in the trend line over shorter periods of time- in the graph on this page by comparison, it covers a period of 7 months so far but the lines are all extremely smooth and don't really accurately follow the trends. The most recent graph update's addition of detail to the Lib Dem and Green lines is good, but the other parties could perhaps do with more accurate trend lines, e.g. the main increase in Reform vote share was the period from mid-November (averaging around 18%) to mid-January (averaging around 24%), with the rise having been slower since mid-January, but the trend line does not really show this.

Also again like the 2010-2015 graph example, I think it would make more sense if the beginning of the trend lines in July started from the actual election result- having the Conservative line start as low as 20% based on a single poll in the start of July rather than the actual election result, and the Labour line as high as 36% again thanks to the same single poll, is a bit misleading. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 12:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

About the script:

@Chessrat: I believe it was originally created for German federal elections (which use Proportional Representation, making smaller parties much more relevant) so it has the option to use different "span" sizes, which are essentially how smooth the line is (because of the aforementioned Proportional Representation thing, different parties can have different span sizes).

In the most recent update I noticed that despite the Lib Dems getting 16% on two seperate polls (I looked into it – their highest since June 2019), the trend line was essentially the same as it was before – so I changed the Greens' and Lib Dems' span sizes to be 0.8 whilst keeping Labour, Reform, and Conservatives' at a span size 4 as they are bigger parties and changes tend to matter less. So currently I have the span sizes set to 4, 4, 4, 0.8, 0.8

By default the value in the script is 0.05 (which is crazy small), and smaller span values tend to give more credence to outlier polls on the graph, whereas larger values (like the present 4) tend to miss short-term changes.

Anyway, should all parties have the same span size or should it be different? If so, what should the new values be?

About your second point:

The lines do start from the last election result – in the script, the previous election result is counted as a "poll" too which is why Labour's line starts so high: it's about halfway in-between the actual result and the July poll. Incidentally, this could also be fixed by setting a lower span size! DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 13:11, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Realised there was already a discussion. All parties should have same span, so either revert span change or apply it to all parties. I think two polls at 16% hardly counts as a trend so ofc there is almost no change. Perhaps, a middle ground between the new span and old span can be used on all parties. The Lib Dems and Greens now look wobbly despite so far there being little change. (Update as of 13:28) @DimensionalFusion, I see that you decreased the span for the Lib Dems and Greens on the graph. But I believe this is a mistake. I do not see a reason for it. According to documentation, "parties which have fewer polling data" need "a separate higher 'span' should be used". In other words, parties with more polling data should have a lower span than those with more. But Labour, the Conservatives, Reform, Lib Dems and the Greens all have an equal amount of polling data. Every pollster mentions all of them. Which would mean that they should all have the same span. Now, the Greens and Lib Dems both look very wobbly despite consistent polling. —Profzed! 13:22, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I would say all parties should have the same span size for consistency. I do think a more "wobbly" line is preferable for showing small changes over time- see e.g. File:UK opinion polls 2017-2019.svg in which short-term changes can be clearly seen- all previous articles have much less smooth lines like that. What I would be inclined to do is roughly: setting the span for all parties at something like 0.3, and also weight the last general election result to function as the equivalent of 5 polls with that result (because the actual election result is much more important than the two July WeThink polls for long-term trends). It's possible that that would lead to too much of a focus on outliers but I think it's at least worth trying.

Regarding @Profzed's comment that there is "little change" in Lib Dem/Green polling... the Lib Dems were polling around 13% in October, dropped to 12% by December, and have nowadays been having more and more poll results around 14%. I think this is a meaningful change that should be reflected in the trend lines. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 13:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Also, note that small changes for the big parties are still quite meaningful- one of Lab/Con/Ref being a few percent above the rest would likely have quite a meaningful change to an actual election result if an election were held. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 13:53, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

In seperate polls in just Feb so far, Reform UK has been anywhere from 29% to 24%. Also in Feb, the Cons have varied from 25% to 18% – if the Lib Dems or the Greens were increasing by 7 points in the same month they'd be on about 19% and 15% respectively. My point is that small changes matter but within big parties they matter less DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 14:06, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat There isn't really a difference between 12% and 13%, whilst YouGov have always polled Lib Dems at 14% with the exception of the latest poll. (I think there was only something like one non-YouGov poll at 14%.) I do agree though it was probably too straight previously but I feel like it is too wobbly now. Do you know which span was used in the 2017-2019 graph? Because it appears less wobbly there. If not, we could ping the creator. (And if it is was 0.3, maybe I'm just being weird.) —Profzed! 16:01, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't know, but as far as I can tell from the documentation on the gitlab page, span values should be different depending on the length of time covered by the graph- i.e. the longer that the period is, the lower the span value should be. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:16, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat I see. That'd make sense, given the additional polling data. —Profzed! 16:17, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Appearances can be deceiving! The 2017–2019 and the 2015–2017 graphs only feel like that because of the shorter timespans – both were only 2 years whereas 2010–2015 and 2019–2024 were both 5. This graph assumes 5 years whilst it's being updated – when the election is called, the graph will thin down DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:17, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree - span should be consistent. There is already too much assumption being put into this (whichever span is chosen is completely arbitrary) and then altering span based on how popular a party is just adds more to that.

However, (partaking in the arbitrary discussion_ I do think 0.3 is wayyy too granular. My personal opinion is that a middle ground should be sought between the 4 currently given to major parties and the 0.3 proposed for smaller parties. Perhaps 2? This is, broadly, a significant drop from 4 at the moment and will allow little changes to be seen in a way they can't at the moment (7 months on from the election and the trend lines are still effectively quadratic) but would avoid showing small, margin of error differences and can still act as successful trendline.

I also believe the idea of including the 2024 results - and possibly giving them increased weight - is quite strong and something of which I am broadly supportive although I think such a change may need a decent consensus behind it because it changes what the early parts of the graph represents, taking it from showing opinion polling over time to opinion over time (a subtle but real difference). Kirky03 (talk) 16:16, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I've updated the graph to use a span of 0.3 to see what it looks like DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:18, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@DimensionalFusion Looking at it, I think 0.3 is defintely a no-go. —Profzed! 16:23, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Kirky03 Since 4 was the previous span and 0.3 was @Chessrat's suggested span, what would you think about 2.15 as a middle ground? —Profzed! 16:21, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Profzed: I've now updated the graph to use a span size of 1, which is a nice round number to decide on lower or higher DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:29, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@DimensionalFusion That is definitely a lot better. I think I'd go slightly higher, but it'd be interesting to see everyone else's opinions as well. —Profzed! 16:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the versions with 0.3 and 1, my feeling is that 0.3 is probably slightly too wiggly, but 1 is far too smooth and misleading. Reform mostly stayed static in the polls from August til the end of November and has been mostly static for the last month, and the three biggest parties have all had minimal movement in the last month. The 1 version of the graph fails to show any of this and just shows a steady rise for Reform and steady fall for Labour over the last seven months, which isn't accurate. I would probably go for something like 0.5 or 0.6- 1 is way too high in my opinion. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 17:01, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat Actually, that is a very good point. —Profzed! 17:32, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Alrighty @Profzed: @Chessrat: so I'll update the current graph to use a span of 0.5 and use 0.5 for all parties in future graph updates. If it needs to be upped to something like 0.6 then we can discuss that later! DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 20:10, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thank you for doing the work on this! Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 20:18, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

👍 —Profzed! 20:54, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I might raise this point as well - should similar changes not be made to the Scotland graph?

I think the selected span of 0.5 should not be used here (due to the much lower density of polls) but perhaps a span lower than the current 4 but higher than 0.5?

I'm not convinced either way but it might be worth considering Kirky03 (talk) 23:37, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Probably, but you'd have to find whoever updates that graph and pester them DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 08:44, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi. I am late to the discussion. I suggest the new span, whatever is currently in use at the time of this message, is too small. The wiggles in the lines now shown are just artefacts, they don't represent anything real. The graph is now not smooth enough. Bondegezou (talk) 13:28, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. CR (talk) 13:48, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

You can check the file history of the graph if you'd like – there's lots of options there of different spans. Which one looks best to you DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 14:04, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Bondegezou I think the issue is finding a span without these swiggles but which is not inaccurate. So 1 is definitely too high as @Chessrat pointed out. Maybe @DimensionalFusion could try some spans in between and either come to a conclusion herself or perhaps update the graph several times so we can all discuss them. Since it's now at 0.5, we could test 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8. And assuming the span can be to 2 d.p., we choose an in between value if need be after testing those. —Profzed! 14:17, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I've updated the graph with the latest poll and to use a span of 0.6 DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:20, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@DimensionalFusion, thank you for testing 0.6 out. I had a look and I think it is generally nicer, but it re-introduces the error with Reform increasing during February. Could you test out values between 0.5 and 0.6 and upload the highest one without this issue? Thanks. —Profzed! 16:57, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

At 2 decimal points, we are getting so precise we are at risk of overfit Kirky03 (talk) 17:48, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Kirky03 I suppose. If we stick to 1 d.p., I think we should use 0.5 then. But I still think we could something in between like 0.55 assuming it does not have the aforementioned issue (but maybe we don't go super precise like my previous reply suggested). The parameters can always be changed though; this isn't a prediction model which has to "lock in". —Profzed! 18:22, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't agree- all of the wiggles in the graph all have statistical meaning to them and are backed up by large numbers of polls. They're also similar to what's seen in past graphs, for instance the November 2024 Conservative peak is pretty similar looking to the May 2013 UKIP peak in File:UK opinion polling 2010-2015.svg. I think the current graph is perfect and I don't see a need to change it. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:30, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat I think a bit more smoothing would be nicer. Look at Greens Oct–Jan. And I think the Lib Dems went up a bit too readily as well. It should definitely go up but the amount it went from two polls is quite a lot. Reform dropped a bit Nov, which could probably just be smoothened out since support didn't really drop. So I think a minor increase in span could be good. —Profzed! 14:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what the problem with the Green line is? It's closer to 7% at the start of October when most polls had them on 7%, and slowly goes up as they get more 8%, 9%, and even 10% polls. The Lib Dem line may be very slightly too much but I don't think it's enough to require much of a change. Maybe 0.5 to 0.6 would be okay but I don't think there's a big issue really. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:50, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat 0.6 seems reasonable. It just needs a minor increase. I just thought it might be good to have several values to compare. —Profzed! 14:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I'd be okay with that. I tried installing the software for generating graphs myself but ended up with enough error messages that I gave up! Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 15:01, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the 0.6 version is good. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 23:53, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat I did notice though that Reform is now increasing in February again according to the graph. I was thinking something in between like 0.55 maybe. —Profzed! 07:51, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

I've update the polling graph with the latest poll and changed the span to 0.55 (as well as fixing the legend so I didn't have to manually add it in every time, plus weighting the start data more) DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 10:25, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

@DimensionalFusion Thank you for all your work! —Profzed! 11:10, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks DimensionalFusion for doing all the iterations on this. I think the current 0.55 is OK. I'd personally go for something smoother on the basis of the known confidence intervals in these figures, but not worth arguing over! Bondegezou (talk) 10:51, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Polling lead too clutered

not a fan of the change to polling lead, makes sense on the pollster specific table, but the table of all polls just looks incredibly cluttered and I don't think is neccesary. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 14:36, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@EnglishPoliticalPerson Well, I don't think it looked that cluttered before the SNP was moved from Others to own table. You can see that discussion at #Re-add SNP column. —Profzed! 14:44, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

See MOS:COLOR- Avoid using color as the sole means of conveying information. Always provide an alternative method, such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels. Otherwise, blind users or readers accessing Wikipedia through a printout or device without a color screen will not receive that information. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:44, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

But colour is not the sole means of conveying information in this example, you have text and also the data in the actual row Pugpa2 (talk) 22:23, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I personally like it - a slight bit of clutter that adds quite useful information.

For the 2019-24 Parliament, it was sufficient to be displayed as previous because you would naturally assume the gap is Labour v Conservative but in the current context at the very least, we have had leads over the past few months of Lab over Con, Lab over Ref, Con over Lab, Con over Ref, Ref over Lab and Ref over Con.

That is my reasoning at the very least for supporting this specific change - it adds a little clutter in exchange for a large amount of information. Kirky03 (talk) 15:17, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Kirky03 I would note that this isn't a change. The lead has always been included. —Profzed! 15:22, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Profzed The difference is that the table currently incorporates the lead and the second placed party, making the column a lot wider CR (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@CipherRephic Ah, I see. Comparing last election and this one, the lead is only wider by the tiniest margins. So given the extra information, I think it's worth it. —Profzed! 15:48, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I would agree, lead is cluttered with too much information, would advocate returning to simpler cleaner layout of lead% and party colour.

Om a similar vein not at all convinced that "Most recent Polling by Pollster" adds anything to the article, presenting a table which is a mix of older and newer data and a cluttered lead column, all in all a bit of an eyesore and an uninformative one at that, would suggest just deleting it Pugpa2 (talk) 11:32, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 Agree with the point about the most recent pollster. On a side note, it lists a source but is updated more frequently than said source (which is not an issue if the table correctly sourced the polls, i.e. cited the same sources as the main table, but it is wrong to list an unused source). —Profzed! 17:10, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the lead column is too cluttered. We don't have to say the lead is over (which is the equivalent of specifying who is in second place). I'd drop the lead column entirely from the "Most recent Polling by Pollster" table. The lead doesn't matter; the raw figures are what matters. Bondegezou (talk) 15:46, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree - most polling tables on Wikipedia that have a lead column only have the pp lead and party colour. I understand that this method could make the column more accessible to some users and provides more insight as to which party is second, but users could just read the table to know this information, and this change ultimately just means that there are a few extra bytes for each poll cluttering an article that is inevitably going to be very large. Nicholas13t (talk) 19:22, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nicholas13t I understand that it uses more space/storage, but visually it hardly increases the width. So I don't really see the benefit unless we're scraping the barrel to keep server costs down. —Profzed! 21:17, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

The issue is not about space the actual cell is cluttered Pugpa2 (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Profzed I understand that, although the reason it doesn't make the table wider is because it is already as wide as it can be. for visually impaired users (who some have argued this would make the table more readable for) who use Wikipedia with text scaled larger, the table can easily become less navigable. Even though I think it should just be reduced to the pp lead, I understand why it may be useful to add "(party) +1", but "(party) +1 over (party 2)" is just unnecessary in my opinion. Nicholas13t (talk) 09:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense to me, the argument that putting text in for party thereby improving access to those who use a reader is to my mind a good point. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:16, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I like the lead over format in the current political context of a 3 party system so would argue for its inclusion but if it is causing accessibility issues, and there's no other way (I think I just need to accept I lost the SNP/PC column battle lol), I'm not passionate enough about it to argue against its removal. Kirky03 (talk) 13:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

At this point this topic has been running for a week

We seem to have consensus that the lead column in the main table is too cluttered, I make it 4 in agreement, 1 opposed and 1 who seems ambiguous. A positive suggestion was that we include text ie the Lead party to assist those who use a reader.

I intend to start changing the lead column to only show the lead party (short name) a plus and %, with the box shaded to the appropriate colour Pugpa2 (talk) 13:58, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Tactical voting scenarios

@Chessrat You placed this in sub-national poll results, but this should be under other polling. I was going to move it myself, but this is a bit difficult on mobile. In addition, the ref has the wrong name and you've cited the same ref several times as different refs. I would just move it up to the text bit above the table and cite it once rather than repeat it within the table. —Profzed! 21:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Done Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 21:43, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

👍 —Profzed! 09:40, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps this is another topic for the archives - making space for highly relevant previous discussions 92.20.135.189 (talk) 09:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Archived Consensus Being Overridden

I'm not going to bring out any attacks of "this is fortunate timing" because I believe this is harmless and not something being done deliberately but a lot of things that have reached consensus - or at least been discussed - have been ignored now they are archived. Like I say, I think this is more because they are no longer visible and so people just aren't aware of them but I thought I'd raise them.

The first was the re-adding of the SNP Column in which there was a consensus reached which has now been changed. For this one, we can argue that a new consensus has now been reached but this was an example of old conversations being missed. However, the PC Column was also readded for which I do not believe there was clear reason to override the last consensus - which itself stated that if SNP is added, PC should not.

Secondly, the party titles have been unshortened from the 3-letter format that was agreed.

Thirdly, BPC polls have been added - which I believed we had decided would not be the case.

I'm not attacking anyone with this, I don't think anything malicious has happened here but I'd just like to ask people to be aware of the archived discussions and ask if there's anything that can be done to stop this - maybe extend the archiving period? Kirky03 (talk) 10:54, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Overridden is perhaps not the correct phrase to be using, rather a new consensus is being reached. As far as I can see this is the way with wiki articles and perfectly normal almost expected. It is healthy and perhaps demonstrates that some having seen these changes now believe they are not helpful.

Personally I think this article has deteriorated markedly and has lost its way becoming overly big with many sections that could be argued have little to do with polling for next UK parliament. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I checked the archived discussion, and no consensus was reached on removing non-BPC members. In fact I see more users arguing FOR their inclusion than arguing against them. This may be your personal perspective Kirky, but it is not the "consensus".

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election/Archive_1#BPC_Polls Here is the link. I count:

• 3 contributers argue for keeping non-BPC pollsters
• 2 contributers argue for removing non-BPC pollsters

Depicting this discussion as a "consensus" for removing them is my opinion a misrepresentation of the discussion. FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 11:28, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Furthermore, Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC member, but his polls were all included. So clearly there is inconsistency in applying this "rule". https://www.britishpollingcouncil.org/officers-members/ FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 11:33, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Doesn’t mean they should be included either - it’s a matter standard of quality and that results and tables are open for peer to peer review - non BPC members do not do this and shouldn’t be treated the same as companies who do NewGuy2024 (talk) 13:31, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Had not seen that discussion, IMHO this is a fairly standard requirement across most UK Polling articles, that they have to be members of BPC any that are not should be removed.

Having looked at the previous discussion, by my count it was 3 -2 for only BPC members and the 2 were IP addresses! My vote would be BPC only, that makes it 4 editors(with accounts) for BPC only and 2 (ip addresses) against that. That sounds like consensus.

I would be happy to go back through and remove any non bpc entries Pugpa2 (talk) 11:43, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Overridden is almost certainly not the right phrase and I tried for a while to find better wording but it was the best I could think of.

The issue isn’t people challenging previous decisions and a new consensus being reached but people just leaping straight into a new decision without properly challenging the previous one.

Take the headers for example which had previously been discussed and decided to be 3 letter names, which was then undone over the last few days without any discussion. Kirky03 (talk) 13:25, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree that is very poor practice and again flys in the face of good practice.

I think something that maybe contributing to this is the ridiculous short time before talk topics are archived, at present it is 21 days which seems an extraordinary short time, I would have thought 6 months might be more appropriate and reduce the same topic reappearing so soon Pugpa2 (talk) 13:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think there's any malice, it is just out of sight, out of mind. We can't keep debating the same topics every month. What sort of auto archive period is standard for most pages? Kirky03 (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

This is getting even worse now as certain parties are engaging in editing warring as I attempt to revert to consensus. I'm stopping trying for the time being because I don't want to engage in edit warring but people need to stop forcing through these changes. Kirky03 (talk) 22:02, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I am absolutely disgusted, we have editors that seem to think they’re above the rules and that their views and way of thinking is the only possible legitimate route - there’s a word for that but I’ll not use it here!

Obviously the consensus arrived at last year should be restored, Wiki should not fall victim to political activism and games like what we have seen unfold on this page.

SNP and plaid should be in the others column - if they’re not, there’s no point in having another’s column.

Please can someone unarchive the original discussion where all the points for and against were properly outlined? The discussion above is extremely one sided and the tactics are militant. 92.20.135.189 (talk) 09:28, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh dear, I have already looked at the previous discussion the implementation of which has had unforeseen consequences not the least of which editors making decisions about who is recorded, in which order and doing on site analysis. The consensus was far from clear cut, any who consensus can change and appears to have done so

Re including or not SNP PC that should happen in the appropriate talk section Pugpa2 (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

BPC only polls included

Assume nothing has changed in approach with including just BPC members - including others, where peer to peer reviews doesn’t take place, should not be included here - too many caveats would surely be needed and a slippery slope to eventually including Twitter polls…. This assume is longstanding agreement NewGuy2024 (talk) 12:08, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

" This assume is longstanding agreement" is not an argument. There has only been one discussion on this on *this* page, and the outcome was 3-2 in favour of keeping non-BPC polls. This is your personal opinion, and that's fine, but you can't call this a consensus or a long standing rule without providing any evidence. That's not persuasive. FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 12:11, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Where is the evidence of this discussion? Can see no mention of this - this was brought up several months ago and the agreed consensus then, was to keep, as always been - BPC only polling - otherwise the polls displayed loose their credibility if they’re lumped alongside non BPC polls - happy to be corrected here but logically makes no sense at all NewGuy2024 (talk) 12:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed on inspection I don’t think I can see any other non-BPC polls being included - so again this argument falls down here NewGuy2024 (talk) 12:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@NewGuy2024 Talk:Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election/Archive_1#BPC_Polls. This is a discussion you participated in, and the consensus was not in fact "BPC only polling". CR (how's my driving? call 0865 88318) 12:32, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

"this was brought up several months ago and the agreed consensus then, was to keep, as always been - BPC only polling". It literally was not the "consensus", as Cipher said. You must be confusing this with another article. FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 12:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

It has been longstanding practice across most UK polling articles to only include BPC members, I can not see the rationale why this article should be different.

Looking at archived talk (auto archiving after 21 days?) previous consensus seemed to be 3-2 to ignore this precedence, however 2 of those 3 were IP addresses that appear to only have ever posted on that specific talk. A sensible view might be to provide more weight to active editors who actually sign up to wiki.

Having said that the concensus seems to have changed, I for one think it should only be BPC members nothing else and no exceptions. Pugpa2 (talk) 13:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Again no evidence where and how this was agreed - afraid the reliability of this page is no longer of the highest quality and will be pointing my students and other academia away from here if this the route is now gone down - afraid it now feels like it’s been taken over by partisan players and happy with “polls”, no matter what the quality, as long as it gives the result they want - real shame! NewGuy2024 (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

It certainly has dropped significantly in quality, like you it feels as if a partisan element have played a large part in creating this situation.

However I am not ready yet to give up on it although fear I may just get shouted down largely by IP addresses, but I'll give it a go Pugpa2 (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

BPC only makes sense.

There needs to be a clear, distinct method for deciding which polls are high quality (e.g. BPC) and which are not (e.g. Twitter polls). There is, obviously, plenty of grey area in the middle but there's no easy rule for determining that grey area other than "vibes" which isn't good enough.

BPC is a sufficient, easy method for drawing a clear-cut line in the sand that only includes high quality polls and doesn't rely on "vibes" Kirky03 (talk) 13:29, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Precisely - being a BPC member ensures a level of quality and standard that is open and transparent for peer to peer review…. Non members do not have that obligation and shouldn’t be treated alongside the same as those that do…. NewGuy2024 (talk) 13:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed back to longstanding notion that only BPC members? Seems to be consensus amongst regular participants NewGuy2024 (talk) 13:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Again no evidence where and how this was agreed - afraid the reliability of this page is no longer of the highest quality and will be pointing my students and other academia away from here if this the route is now gone down - afraid it now feels like it’s been taken over by partisan players and happy with “polls”, no matter what the quality, as long as it gives the result they want - real shame! NewGuy2024 (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Can't believe Im having to write this here but freshwater strategies polls should not be included until we have tables from them. There are not tables. There are obviously reasons to include non-BPC members on the page, but if there are no tables for the poll it should not be included. And I feel the need to stress - stop adding it without consensus. You need to justify its' inclusion, not the other way round. It should not be on the page unless consensus has been reached. I will continually remove those polls until it is reached. This is vandalising, please stop. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benocalla2 (talk • contribs) 13:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Well said - sure it wasn’t done in malice but still result is indeed vandalism of what should be a table of robust and consistent polls NewGuy2024 (talk) 14:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:GOODFAITH. Please do not accuse editors who take a different position to you of vandalism. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 20:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree, well said

This article is in need of some serious attention, it has drifted (being generous) into shambles and inconsistency Pugpa2 (talk) 14:24, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Freshwater Strategies polls data tables can be found at here for 4-6 Jan tables and here for 31 Jan - 2 Feb tables . Tables for their latest poll are not yet available. Given how there was previously a consensus (albeit tenuous) for including non-BPC polls, and how many non-BPC or otherwise unreliable polls have been included in the articles for previous General Elections (including Lord Ashcroft, Labour Together, and Number Cruncher Politics for the 2024 election alone), I personally think they should be included if they can be cited accurately, with a note denoting that they are not a BPC member. Nicholas13t (talk) 11:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Furthermore - and to preface I understand this article won't need this section for a while - but this conversation leaves out poll/ seat aggregators, who are almost never BPC members, and the only BPC member that made aggregations alongside its MRP polls in the 2024 election was Electoral Calculus, whose aggregation was incidentally also the least accurate. Moreover, I feel that we also should address the issue of how exclusive this page should be in citing BPC-only sources before any edit warring occurs in the future. Nicholas13t (talk) 11:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

You perhaps want to check that, looking at 2024 polling article the MRP section is very busy and full of what appears to only be BPC members https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#MRP_and_SRP_polls

The article may require that section now as I am sure I have seen at least 3 MRP polls in teh main table. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:46, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 to clarify i was refering to the subsection about seat aggregations, not MRP polls. Nicholas13t (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification I do think we need an MRP section now as some of these are being inserted into the main table. Looking at previous articles, both polling and Leadeship, it seems very rare that any non BPC member is included in any section but I will have a look at the section you refer to in this current article. Pugpa2 (talk) 16:09, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Can see Freshwater is included again - this needs to be removed…. The argument is that Ashcroft polls have been included, therefore so should freshwater - Ashcroft though not a member do publish their tables that Freshwater do not! NewGuy2024 (talk) 07:55, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Everyone, please stop edit warring. I have counted 11 edits (or 10 reverts) today alone. —Profzed! 21:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

This is getting out of hand. Every time I try to change things to previous (and seemingly current) consensus, people just keep forcing it back.

I'm stopping for the time being because I don't want to edit war but people need to stop ignoring this talk page Kirky03 (talk) 22:00, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Kirky03 Definitely. Even after my post here on the talk page, more edits have been made. —Profzed! 22:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

can we please leave things as they are for the moment at least until a consensus has emerged.

Just did a count and in this talk item there is a majority in favour of only BPC members polls being included 3-1, however that is not any reason to rush in and make changes, lets take a wee bit of time, reflect on where we are and hopefully garner a clear decision, without premature editing.

Articles of this kind tend to only use BPC members polls and for very good reasons, it ensures consistence and transparency, having said that the wording does have a caveat of 'Most' As I understand it this has developed to accommodate a historical anomaly in Lord Ashcroft Polling, they had been members of BPC but left and this accommodation was created. However this may now be creating a wedge type issue allowing others to explore the possibility of including other non BPC members, to the potential detriment of this article.

I am a great believer in Keep it simple and straightforward (KISS) as such I think the simple and most robust position is to make it ONLY BPC members polls are captured in this article. The message is simple easily understood and straightforward to administer. It would mean losing Lord Ashcroft polls but I think that is a reasonable price to pay for consistency and some peace on the talk pages. Currently there are no Ashcroft polls in the main article and only 2 in the preferred PM table, so there would be no real loss in terms of numbers and hopefully put to bed this discussion.

Most polling companies are multi national so there is no problem with any polling company affiliating to BPC, it is there choice and we should respect it. Pugpa2 (talk) 05:49, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Back to BPC exclusivity or not

Just did a wee exercise as I was having some doubt as to my understanding of previous incarnations of this article. I looked at Polling for the 2024 election and chose the year 2024 as my sample, during this period there were 319 polls recorded on the article, of these 308 were BPC registered, of the 11 non BPC polls 10 were Lord Ashcroft and 1 (the very last one before polling) was from Number Cruncher Politics. Assuming the last was an anomaly that would have been picked up my previous assertion that the only non BPC polls typically captured were for Lord Ashcroft and that this is a historical anomaly.

If we hold to previous practice then only Lord Ashcroft would be allowed along with BPC members, this is not a precedence for allowing non BPC members polls. Again I would suggest we tackle this anomaly and just have BPC polls Pugpa2 (talk) 23:59, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Compromise suggestion

Why don't we include BPC polls with a footnote stating that the company in question isn't a BPC member? That way the information is clearly available and readers will be aware of the status of the companies in question.

That or mention at the top which companies are and aren't BPC members. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:44, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Because we would be introducing data that was potentially not of the same standard as BPC. This is not a new position as evidenced by looking at previous UK polling articles, where apart from the historical anomaly of Lord Ashcroft non BPC polls are very unusual, very. Pugpa2 (talk) 17:08, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chessrat @Pugpa2 It would also introduce the problem with which polls to include in the graph. —Profzed! 18:57, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that's really a problem, as Ashcroft/Freshwater polls are reported by reliable sources just as much as BPC members are (e.g. Mark Pack's collection of polls which is cited includes Ashcroft). The point of adding a note would be simply to inform readers. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 19:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you point me at those sources you refer to please Pugpa2 (talk) 19:34, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, City AM is a newspaper generally considered reliable and the Freshwater polls are commissioned by them (https://www.cityam.com/our-polling-shows-hope-of-change-has-turned-to-despair-for-labour/); likewise Lord Ashcroft polls have been reported by the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51457739). Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 21:00, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I think we have previously discussed the historical anomaly that is Lord Ashcroft, city am is a regional paper (around London).

That anomaly is the core of this discussion, better to do away with the anomaly than have it undermine the integrity of the whole article. Pugpa2 (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Disagree - Ashcroft publish tables that can be peer reviewed - Freshwater doesn’t…. Dont like footnote idea - can be missed and table quality is subsequently diluted NewGuy2024 (talk) 09:55, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree - as I've said there has been a precedent previously for the inclusion of non-BPC polls, but adding a note for these polls to indicate that they aren't held to the same standards as BPC polls seems reasonable. Nicholas13t (talk) 21:41, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds sensible - I’m in favour of inclusion with a note 92.20.135.189 (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm personally against this idea but frankly I don't hugely have the effort to argue against it, especially when it feels the debate will continue going until people agree to include them. Kirky03 (talk) 01:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Don’t think it’s as simple as this - it’s a slippery slope we risk going down with this inclusion, even with a footnote - a clear decision needs to be had, however if its decided to included any non BPC members, I will point my students and other academics from this page as it can no longer be relied upon NewGuy2024 (talk) 10:23, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

THIS EDIT WAR HAS GOT TO STOP. There are a number of "problems" with this page, but it seems that there is too much activism going on and not enough objectivity in reaching a consensus. There is not massive urgency in editing the history, but there is some necessity for all concerned to focus on consistency.

I suggest all would-be frustrated editors take the trouble to look at previous Opinion-polls-for-the-next-UK-election pages, of which there are several now, and use the polling consensus from those as a basis.

We know that it looks like some BPS polls are biased towards one party or another, and we know that there is credible motive for politically energised editors to edit in a way that suits their biases, but if we carry on like this, the page will deteriorate, because the graphs can't be updated. There are several things that I don't like, but I've been on Wikipedia since the state, 20+ years, and I know how it goes.

Don't be editing and ranting via your phone. Calm down, and put your differences aside and cooperate to adopt a rule going forward. I personally want the silly extra polling table removed, because it adds nothing, and has no consistent rule for how it's generated, and I think it's people inserting things like this in, that are part of the problem.

This page will work a lot better if it just sticks to the simple way that previous such pages in this series worked. There are some silly comments and justifications being inserted in this talk page by people who have not been on Wikipedia as long as I have, this is not constructive.

Specific to the point about to BPS or to not BPS, you may as well also complain about GB v UK or sample size, or who commissioned it, but either way, to image that this page is going to be of academic quality is a little bit optimistic. It's a dump of polls that don't all follow the same criteria, and don't map 100%, and so the end result is only ever going to be an approximation, and that's fine. This is Wikiepdia, it's not a peer-reviewed academic publication, it's not likely to be even as accurate as many "journalist" articles. Get used to it. "I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 10:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes! People need to stop forcing their opinions through, this page has spiralled into madness the last 3 or so days. Kirky03 (talk) 11:17, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

There is no reason not to include non-BPC polls; other countries do not even have such similar associations and we do not discriminate opinion polls based on that. Indeed, the article itself states that ost of the polling companies listed are members of the British Polling Council (BPC) and abide by its disclosure rules, i.e. "most", not "all", this is not a requirement for inclusion. If this is such a really important topic for some users, I do not see any issue with adding a footnote for those polls that are non-BPC. Obviously, those editors being disruptive to the point of blocking including these polls by accusing others of vandalism should be shown what Wikipedia rules on WP:VANDAL and WP:DE are and stop their behaviour ASAP. Impru20^talk 10:58, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Footnotes can be easily missed and if you see the need to include a footnote, you agree there’s a caveat that should be noted before used - therefore why risk including them alongside BPC members? I’m certain this wasn’t the approach undertaken for the 2024 GE polling - so don’t agree that our standards should be allowed to slip now NewGuy2024 (talk) 11:04, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, people need to stop fighting it out with edits while the discussion is still ongoing, its getting completely out of hand. Although, I daresay that even includes old and wise people who have been on the site for years...

My view on the discussion has been made enough, we need to draw the line somewhere, why not BPC? The argument that Lord Ashcroft used to be BPC and so has remained by convention is one that, while I disagree with, I admit has merits and so I have no issue with that. Freshwater, on the other hand, should not be included. Kirky03 (talk) 11:22, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

But the UK does have such an association, which if memory serves came into being in the 90s following a particularly poor showing from the polling companies at a GE. The BPC has been central in raising and maintaining the standard of polling in the UK. It seems non sensical to me not to take advantage of this. Until recently the only real Non BPC pollster recorded was Lord Ashcroft, a historical anomaly due to being a BPC member previously. It makes more sense to tackle the anomaly and preserve the highest standard. This convention is long standing across many UK poling articles. The notion of a footnote actually shows the that these non BPC polls are different so why include them in teh first place. I would suggest that removal will only add to the problems this article already has, does every poll get included no matter the source, what the criteria, who manages or gate keeps this. I fear that it will only increase the number and intensity of thee brush fires that break out here all too often already. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:58, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Completely agree - if you need to add a footnote, that tells you something… NewGuy2024 (talk) 12:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Just to point out: I am fine with no footnotes at all. A footnote was the compromise solution made by another user to appease you, and I was supportive of it if it worked as a way to circumvent this weird "worry" about the non-BCP thing; this said, if you do not want a footnote because nothing sort of your desires will be fine for you, I am fine with having no footnotes and with non-BPC polls remaining in the table. I don't agree with their removal because 1) pollsters may have their own motives not to join BPC; 2) a new pollster may conduct legitimate polls but may not join BPC right away; 3) long-established pollsters may leave BPC because of their own reasons; etc. Pollsters should be added based on their reliability. BPC membership can be a criterion for realiability, but it cannot be the only one, and it's absurd that polls are discarded bases on their BPC membership when it's failrly obvious this is being done because some users don't like a particular set of polls and just want the exclude these right away. Reliability cannot be the cherry-picking conducted by some random editors. That's neither scientific nor constructive. Impru20^talk 15:15, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Reliability is the key element here…bringing in non BPC members, with no obligation to open their tables or indeed publish the rational behind their polls, brings a level of unreliability and risk I genuinely can’t fathom why anyone, who has a genuine interest in this field, would want other results diluted by….no way they should be included and I’m astounded it’s even a debate now NewGuy2024 (talk) 15:38, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

From where are you getting that non-BPC polls are automatically "risky" in any way? We are not here to discuss what astounds you or not. Impru20^talk 15:40, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Non-BPC polls are not automatically flawed, but there are not protected against these flaws, hence there is a risk. Kirky03 (talk) 15:51, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And BPC polls have some automatic protection against any flaw?

I bet you can make the case for BPC polls having some greater degree of reliability than non-BPC polls as they abide to a set of rules and methodology, but you cannot automatically discard non-BPC polls as "flawed", which is what some users are doing right now just because they do not "like" them. If you have a poll being commissioned by a reliable source and have no reason to exclude them other than their non-BPC membership, then those should definitely not be excluded. Impru20^talk 15:57, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed - maybe flawless but is basically a big black box that were now being expected to treat alongside other polls that allow peer to peer reviews and methodology clear and published NewGuy2024 (talk) 15:56, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Quite simple really! In summary, it’s a big black box, with no peer to peer review of tables and methodology is not published! NewGuy2024 (talk) 15:54, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Interesting use of language.

Solution to your somewhat strawman argument is include polls by pollsters who were members of BPC at time of polling.

BPC pollsters have a standard they work to that in itself is worthy of them being given their place. As I understand it the process to join BPC is fairly straightforward perhaps a better question would be why of these other companies not done so. I don't think anyone is saying non BPC polls are flawed, just that we have no evidence as to standard they are working to. Pugpa2 (talk) 16:46, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

You are basically assuming non-BPC polls are automatically untrustworthy just because of them not being BPC members, which is what I am criticizing. That's not a "strawman argument" and I don't get what is that "solution" you are proposing me, putting in my mouth words that I have not said.

I have said that BPC membership can be a criterion for reliability; indeed, that's what has been in place for many years in UK opinion polling articles. But it's not just BPC polls that get added, and you need more than just non-BPC membership to get any poll excluded. If a poll is commissioned by a reliable source and is not proven to have been conducted under a flawed methodology, what's your reasoning for excluding them? That's arbitrary and somewhat elitist, i.e. requiring pollsters to associate themselves with the BPC in order to grant them recognition in this article. The process may be straightforward, or not, but no law requires them to do so and a pollster does not need to be in the BPC to have a trustworthy methodology. I fear it's you using a "somewhat strawman argument". Impru20^talk 16:54, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

As a user of the page who finds it useful to refer to and is grateful for the effort put into maintaining it, I think it depends a bit on what you're trying to do with the page, which I'm not totally clear on.

1) Be (yet another) polling aggregator to show people what the state of polling is. In this case some decisions have to be made on which polls to include to avoid junk data. But the other polling aggregators do this in a variety of ways and seems hard to avoid doing at least some WP:OR in picking things like which to include, what averaging period on the graph "looks right", etc. There's never going to be a "right answer" to this, or there wouldn't be multiple other polling aggregator sites all with their own selection, averaging, etc. mechanisms, so the arguments are going to be permanent. (BPC-only is about the simplest possible rule in this case, of course)

2) List those polls which are reported on by reliable sources (the article becomes "which polls did RS consider significant", not "which polls meet some standard of statistical value"). Would be more conventional for other parts of WP, but obviously means getting away from the idea that inclusion of a poll in the article is saying anything about the poll's *quality* rather than its *media importance*.

3) Give up on listing every single poll in a table at all, and just summarise in prose (based on other aggregators, reliable sources, etc.) what happened in opinion polling during the period covered. Also very conventional for the wider WP - Dow_Jones_Index has some graphs, sure, but not a table of every single closing level for every day of its existence, or live updates of the current level. There *would* be far fewer arguments if you didn't start the article until after the election it polls for had already happened.

Anyway, good luck and best wishes with sorting that out. 2A02:C7C:DAE1:FC00:692:26FF:FE59:D09B (talk) 14:57, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it is that complicated, we have had a very successful article going back over many years that only used BPC and anomaly of Lord Ashcroft, if this is seen a setting a precedence then the solution is to remove the precedence not turn it into a free for all.

1 we are not other poll aggregators most of whom would dream of having the traffic this article has, people are free to choose which aggregator the prefer, its their choice

2 you would need to first define 'reliable sources'

3 thats a blog Pugpa2 (talk) 16:40, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

From my perspective BPC membership is merely indicative of legitimate polling (and there are definitely poor pollsters within the BPC that come to mind as well). The key principles of the BPC however should be used to judge the reputability of a pollster, as opposed to membership itself. Those being for example, publication of tables, non-witholdal of conducted polling, transparently weighted samples, etc... see no issue including non-BPC polling as Impro has mentioned and the need for that to be sign posted doesn't seem extremely neccesary though may be potentially beneficial. Hinging reputability on one organisation feels like a dangerous path, so I agree with commentary that we stray away from using BPC membership as a sole indicator. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 17:33, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Including non BPC polling but with a footnote just degrades the value of this site in my humble opinion. What next, voodoo polls from twitter (with added footnote indicating that in reality it is meaningless). BPC membership is not a guarantee of accuracy, but it does indicate a certain level of standards being met by the pollster (and without that what is the point of this site). Happytiger00 (talk) 18:06, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

100% my feeling too - those arguing the need for a footnote, which can easily be missed, need to ask themselves why they feel the need for a footnote? NewGuy2024 (talk) 19:58, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Links to Data Tables

Best practice in these sort of articles has always been to link to pollsters data tables as soon as possible, it is usually acceptable to initially link to newspaper, social media but soon after link to data tables must happen. Disappointingly this convention has fallen into disuse as far as this article is concerned, we have an inconsistent approach where prime link is to newspapers, pollster articles but rarely if ever to the most reliable source the data tables. Therefore I have begun doing exactly that, it is a slow laborious process as I have to check the existing link, where it goes to and availability of data tables. So it may take some time but please bear with me and by all means jump in and help. Lets get this article back to the standard it should be. Pugpa2 (talk) 14:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I have started with the most recent polls first, as I suspected it is a bit of a mixed bag re existing links. My first trance will be to get those links changed to the ones that are most easily dome usually where existing link is to article that has link to data tables, I am coping that data table link and hyperlinking through pollsters name. However there are some that will require some searching I am passing over these in first trance but will come back to them. Hoping to get 2015 completed by end of day

Currently about half way through February but feel will to life fading so am taking dogs for a walk. Pugpa2 (talk) 15:18, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Links to the articles are preferable in my opinion because the articles lead on to related articles, the data, etc. Linking directly to a pdf is less useful. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 15:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

If you actually looked at what I have done so far you would see I have left the original link to articles as a reference etc and introduced the hyperlink to data tables using the text of the polling company. I would have to disagree with you the best data is always the data tables, as many newspapers and magazines may not be neutral, doing it this way allows readers the option and choose while at same time being consistent with best practice on other UK polling articles Pugpa2 (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 I understand thinking tables are preferable to the newspapers (although while they might try to frame it, they can't lie about the numbers), but I don't see an issue linking to pollster web page. Furthermore, one issue with the tables though is the requirement to download and web pages are easier to navigate. But I have no problem with including both. However, it looks bad to use an external link + a reference, so I think it would be better to just double ref it. So table ref and article ref and possibly place both under a note to avoid clutter. —Profzed! 17:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I have always believed that one of the real benefits for many people of articles like this is being quickly and easily able to get to the data tables, however there can be really useful takes in analysis articles especially if carried out by the polling company themselves, which led to me thinking that having both was the way to go. I had hoped that eventually we might do a wee guide to users and thought that having a hyperlink and a Reference would be an easy way to distinguish the 2 Pugpa2 (talk) 22:25, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 I suppose, that is one way of doing it. Alternatively, if were to do the note method, we could have it display something like:

Newspaper/pollster article: [ref]

Data table: [ref]

I think that might be a bit more explicit and clear and it wouldn't require the reader to have seen a guide. —Profzed! 22:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Reflecting on this one, down side might be the size of the reference page which could end up enormous , previous articles had very small reference pages as they used hyper links for data base links and nothing else, 2024 article had 87 references and 2019 had 45, this current article has 165 already. Again it seems as if this article for some reason has gone down a different path, not sure why or even when but it does appear to be creating issues that were perhaps unforeseen. I am minded at the moment to revert to previous articles practice. Pugpa2 (talk) 05:58, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 Personally, I don't see the issue with having many references. Their point is to verify the information, so the reader only needs to check them when they are cited. I don't suppose they are reading directly through the reference list. But I do believe there was a discussion around using references instead of external links so before making any changes, you should see if you can find it. —Profzed! 08:08, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

The issue is to do with the size potentially of the article, what I am doing here is based on what has been done in previous UK polling articles, it worked very successfully then and readers do not seem to have difficulty navigating or understanding it. Above all that is keeping the article focused on its prime task and the reestablishment of simple robust rules, many of the current issues seem to stem from ill thought out changes. Claims of link rot appear to be overstated, looking at the 2015 article links still work and many have used a bot to change links using wayback machine Pugpa2 (talk) 10:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Firstly my apologise for yet another post, however I tend, when faced with uncertainty, stand back and try to focus on the prime issue. The prime purpose of this article is to provide data for readers in respect to polling for GE, so I thought I would do a wee analysis of where we are and how well we are matching that task, to do so I thought I would look at the current links on the polls so far recorded in 2025, so far there has been 46, that's an average of 2 every 3 days a considerable bombardment rate and perhaps one that requires us to have clear simple rules for inclusion to be able to handle the bombardment rate but for this particular discussion can I ask we leave aside BPC and MRP important as they maybe lets concentrate on prime purpose.

As it exists this is what I found looking at the existing links in the main table.

2025 links breakdown

I think this is self explanatory

It shows that of the 46 polls links 8 don't work and only 18 go to data tables, we as editors are failing to maintain this to the standard we should be aiming for.

Can we at least agree that best source is Data Tables, followed by Pollster Analysis and then Website of Pollster and aspire to get every poll as high up this as possible.

I appreciate that often the Pollster Analysis is very interesting and would like to find a way to include it, however if we are to only have one data source/reference then I would go for the Data Tables every time. I had previously suggested Hyperlinking Pollsters name with Data Tables and Referencing other source I still think this is a desirable out come. Pugpa2 (talk) 15:23, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:EL: External links in an article can be helpful to the reader, but they should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article. With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article. Using hundreds of ELs in an article is not keeping them "minimal, meritable and directly relevant to the article". This is it, it's a wiki policy. Claims of link rot are not "overstated": the issue with external links is that they may rot, and then you directly lose all information; as per WP:LINKROT: Link rot is a significant danger to Wikipedia because of the reliability policy and source citation guideline. Using citations, these sources can be preserved and archived, but this cannot be done with external links. What's the problem, really? Use full citations, which btw allow you to use more than one reference for each poll. Impru20^talk 15:33, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

As previously stated WP:EL is not an absolute, editors if they so choose can over ride that. Just as happened in every previous previous version of this article, interestingly I had a look at the 2015 and there is very little evidence of linkrot and to some extent would it really matter as this article tends to be a here and now article. Perhaps we need to look at wiki definition of this article as a 'List' which is what it is, and thats ok as judging by the page views it is a list that many find useful.

We have flexibility here if we choose to use it, in fact we could use it to enhance the article. Pugpa2 (talk) 16:34, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

No policy is an absolute, but what is your reasoning for making such a strong exception (one that would involve hundreds of links) here? You are providing none other than that being your personal preference.

You keep arguing over link rot in previous articles, entirely failing to get the point of what WP:LINKROT means. Links can work for years, but at some point they will all inevitably fail. With the use of external links, you will basically ensure that, once a link rots, all information contained within it is lost forever, because the link could not be recovered nor preserved in any way; this does not happen with full citations. In any case, I have checked Opinion polling for the 2015 United Kingdom general election and it has over 500 archived links; how is it that you can only see "very little evidence of linkrot"? 500 archived links, I insist; that's a crazy lot. And should external links in that article not be replaced with proper citations, a lot of these will end up lost as they will not be automatically updated. Impru20^talk 16:43, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

My basic premise is 2 fold previous well established practice that has worked well and better for user Pugpa2 (talk) 16:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 I don't see how putting the same links in a ref would somehow work worse for the user. The only difference is that it prevents link rot and provides more info on source. —Profzed! 17:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Even if you reject the notion of link rot, it does no harm to use refs. —Profzed! 17:02, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it saves the reader having to hover over ref to see what it is, hyperlink pollsters text for data base link and reference for any other pertinent information such as Pollsters analysis. The evidence re link rot is there to see I looked at previous article for 2015 GE and as far as I could see there was no issue as least as far as the user would be concerned, the system bots periodically check and amend links as required. Pugpa2 (talk) 20:44, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

531 Archived links one to be precise, all archived at wayback machine all with link still working to data tables all original and still hyperlinks. Wiki deals with this as I am sure you must know by deploying bots to archive to wayback machine and change hyperlink when required. I think you have just made my case for me, link rot is vastly overstated and is not a valid reason for not using hyperlinks. Pugpa2 (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Order of Parties in Tables

Somewhat surprised at the ordering of the parties in column headings, the convention followed in every other UK polling article reflects the number of elected representatives and not the current voting % as such I would propose that this article follows that long established convention in which case the order should be 1st Labour 404 MPs 2nd Con 121 MPs 3rd LibDems 72 Mps 4th SNP 9 MPs 5th RUK 5 MPs 6th Greens 7th PC with 4 Mps (last 2 sorted alphabetically) This will be a massive task to undo the poor standard current on display but will significantly improve the article. As always I would welcome views and hopefully we reach a consensus and allow the work to begin. Pugpa2 (talk) 17:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 I agree. Polling is very variable, whilst seats are (almost) fixed. So I would say seat count as of 2024 election (should there by a hypothetical scenario with 80 by-elections or whatever). —Profzed! 17:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

No! Opinion polling headline percentages, reflect the popular vote. That is why Wiki always has ordered parties in order of the popular vote at the previous election. This should be open shut but no doubt we’ll see some political activism on here 92.20.135.189 (talk) 17:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Firstly I tend to give less weight to IP address contributions, especially ones that have few contributions and all on just this article.

Having said that I would be pleased if you could provide some evidence to support your view, like perhaps other wiki UK polling articles, here is a starter for you https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election

or this one https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#Opinion_polling

or maybe even this one https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election Pugpa2 (talk) 18:05, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pugpa2 I had a look. The IP user's claim is backed up by the UK examples. Lib Dems got more votes but fewer seats than the SNP, yet come before the SNP (so votes determined it). On the Scottish example, votes and seats march up so fails to be of help. I also think using the popular vote from the last election is reasonable, so I take back my for-stance.

But I would like to remind the IP user to assume goodfaith. —Profzed! 19:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Will have a look and a rethink if required Pugpa2 (talk) 21:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but you are just wrong, wiki uk polling has always sorted parties by number of elected representatives and capture the popular vote by reporting the % for each party Pugpa2 (talk) 18:16, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

All previous articles sort by percentage vote share in the last election rather than number of MPs. See e.g. Opinion polling for the 2017 United Kingdom general election. This is the most consistent way of doing it given that polls report on vote share rather than number of MPs. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 20:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Seat prediction tables ought to be ordered by seat winners, voting intention by vote winners, it's really that simple. CR (how's my driving? call 0865 88318) 21:07, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

This makes sense, if it isn't inconsistent with previous articles. Kirky03 (talk) 21:48, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Ok thanks for that I will have a look and if required will amend my position accordingly Pugpa2 (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I stand corrected, having misread previous results, having only looked at the 2017 and the layout for 2019 in that example UKIP were well done on where they should have been as % of popular vote and it appeared as if it was MPs returned. This was incorrect as all other recent examples follow the criteria of % of popular vote at previous election. Regrettably I stumbled upon the only example that did not and took that for norm. Thank you to those who pointed this out.

My sincere and somewhat sheepish apologise. Pugpa2 (talk) 22:07, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Can this discussion now be archived? It would be good to bring back a certain discussion that was archived. Some editors are making it extremely difficult to assume good faith, especially when they criticise IP editors for no fair reason… I have an edit history just the same as anyone else, many who have an account are just as anonymous as me. I think what I’m asking for is reasonable 92.20.135.189 (talk) 22:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@92.20.135.189 I don't see a problem with archiving it. I've also noticed the accusations against IP users on this talk page, which I agree are unfair. People need to remember that IP editors are human too. —Profzed! 23:09, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but it is a very straightforward process to create a wiki account and difficult to see why some folk might not do so, it raises a reasonable doubt as IP address can be faked and to my mind it is perfectly reasonable to perhaps allow less weight to there contributions. That is not an accusation merely a reflection of the reality of situation.

As to archiving, yes please if only to save my blushes Pugpa2 (talk) 04:19, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I’m sorry but that’s unreasonable. Again, I have an edit history, I am just as real as you. I like to try and show respect to the views of others but the view expressed is particularly objectionable. I don’t understand why you seem to have recently asserted such dominance over this page. I am alarmed 92.20.135.189 (talk) 09:14, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Please forgive me if I have "alarmed" you it would not be my intention to do so. My position is not personal rather it highlights an issue that may come along with anonymous editors, them the facts. Ergo it is not unreasonable to consider giving less weight to folk who cant be bothered to sign up. My interest in this page stems from a significant history of interest in political polling, frankly I was shocked at the appalling state this article has gotten into, what was once a reliable consistent source of information has descended into a bit of a mess, I hope to be able to help to reverse that fall. Pugpa2 (talk) 10:13, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Said without the slightest sense of irony! 92.20.135.189 (talk) 10:18, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

why would it need irony? Pugpa2 (talk) 10:31, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Archiving

This is one of the most active talk pages right now. Too many discussions make it hard to follow what is currently being worked on. Per WP:TALKSIZE a page should consider archiving when it has exceeded 75k, and this page is almost double that.

Topics that have concluded or gone stale can be referred to with links such as Talk:Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election/Archive_1#BPC Polls. It is better to start a fresh topic when revisiting an old area of discussion. Wizmut (talk) 23:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

The issue here seems to have been that archiving was happening too quickly which has resulted in some topics being rediscussed in a very sort time. I notice wiki guidance re unarchiving but it assumes that editors have checked a fairly lengthy archive before creating a new talk topic. Pugpa2 (talk) 04:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest having the bot there but adjusting the settings as needed. Based on the traffic here, I would suggest an archiving time of weeks rather than months, and perhaps a minthreadsleft of 10, later adjusted down to 5 or so. Wizmut (talk) 04:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there anyway, even temporarily, to extend the archiving timescale? Given that the very short timescale may have been creating issues especially around consensus being overturned after a very short time, this has led to some editors feeling aggrieved which is unhealthy and counter productive.

On a broader note there may be need for a more disciplined approach by some editors such as allowing a reasonable timescale for discussion before making changes, again in some instances I have been left with feeling that as soon as even minimal consensus has been agreed there is a tendency, by some, to dive right in. Which in turn leaves other editors feeling this is too rushed.

Perhaps we need to introduce some house rules of allowing talk to run for a few weeks and confirm consensus before editing Pugpa2 (talk) 04:38, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

The timescale can be anything, although I rarely see it set longer than 365 days. If it's changed the bot notices about 24 hours afterward. Wizmut (talk) 04:47, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

May I therefore suggest that we have, for the moment, a fairly lengthy period say 6 months which may be useful in taking some of the heat out of the talk pages and allow a period of calmer reflection. This can be changed be reduced later as required. Pugpa2 (talk) 04:51, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Possibly but then it might be advisable to manually archive some of the topics that seem to be stale. If there's 30 topics on the page then people won't check to see what they're about anyways. Wizmut (talk) 04:57, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Or we could archive the pointless discussions like the one above and keep the most relevant.

had certain discussions not been archived, newer discussions would not have been started and further spiralled. I am not in favour of the bot idea, in this case it is the very cause of the problem it is trying to solve

92.20.135.189 (talk) 09:20, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. A longer archiving period is necessary to stop retreading old ground but manually archiving discussions that are of no consequence seems to be the best middle ground.

I worry this might be done over zealously and then we end up in the same situation but I trust people to use their wisdom. Kirky03 (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

As long as it is done sensibly then it is IMHO a good starting point, hopefully things might quieten down a bit and a more bot driven solution could be used then. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Things agreed in last few days

The talk topics can get long and mixed up, so thought might be an idea to write down what we have agreed in last few days 1 That ordering of parties in header is complete reliant on % of popular vote gained at last election 2 That polling companies decide on what parties are included in the table ie if the polling companies regularly poll a party then it should be included 3 That lead column was too cluttered, reverted to simpler layout with addition of Text for the benefit of those using a reader 4 BPC exclusively or not is a discussion still happening, although indications seem to be for exclusivity. We should wait a few more days before considering actioning, so for present let things be as they are. I hope I got this correct and am not looking to kick off further discussion, comments should be made in the appropriate talk topic. Pugpa2 (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, summarising this is a good idea! Kirky03 (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I do not agree with this summary. Nor do I think it helpful to start yet another thread. 92.20.135.189 (talk) 13:38, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Other editors appear to disagree with you, each of these points have gained consensus which is why they were changed. I appreciate that you may not agree however would ask that you respect the process and the consensus. Pugpa2 (talk) 13:42, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

It’s more that I dislike your approach and manner. I’m clearly not the only one that finds you objectionable. You expect respect but are unwilling to give any. It’s not unreasonable for some of us to find that objectionable 92.20.135.189 (talk) 19:20, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

So nothing to add that would actually help inform the discussion rather trying to bring it down to personal level. I don't play that game. Pugpa2 (talk) 19:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

My position on the various issues have already been set out. Unfortunately, my views are archived and dismissed. 92.20.135.189 (talk) 19:36, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Archives are available, I know as I havechecked them, the recent changes introduced have concensus, I ask that you respect that and the process. Pugpa2 (talk) 19:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

What's going on here? Recent activity in this article and its talk page

From what I am seeing, in the last few days, a selected few users (some new), whose editing histories show that their only (or most) contributions are in this article and this talk page, have swarmed this talk page with some kind of concerted effort to depict some "consensus?" and subsequently likewise swarmed the article with edits and changes from previously-established consensus, which go even against established Wiki policy (most notably, WP:EL). They seem to have also prevented discussions from being archived in this talk page ([1] ??) or issued some kind of "threat" to have this have some impact elsewhere ([2] ??). Seriously, what's going on here? This looks anything but natural, especially considering that no election is in place right now and that this is quite beyond the normal activity that one of these articles gets at this point in the parliamentary term. Impru20^talk 21:18, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think me primarily using and engaging with this page has much to do with anything but I do ask, what do you think should have happened?

Take the BPC Poll situation. It's clear there's a big push against including them but certain parties - yourself included - are refusing to allow that.

I've openly stopped engaging in edit warring so I'm not exactly bullying my way through, that is the method of other parties.

What precisely would you expect me to do differently in this situation? Kirky03 (talk) 22:27, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd also add there has been no attempt to remove archiving but rather reduce how quickly it happens. There's been a lot of confusion about what's been said and decided and that's likely what's been causing all the issues here.

So, to reassure you, no one is arguing for the end of archiving Kirky03 (talk) 22:30, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm where to start

Firstly it is concerning when such an experienced editor appears to have rushed in and taken a very high handed approach, completely ignoring consensus on a number of matters that have been reached, and undoing what I regarded as work that made this article consistent with its predecessors and other UK polling.

Yes I took out the archiving as it was set to a ridiculously low level of 21 days, IMHO this was helping to fuel the edit/counter edit as many did not seem to be aware of previous discussions, as stated I would see this as a temporary measure to hopefully bring talk and editing back to some lower level.

I note you have chosen to remove changes that had been agreed by fellow editors, if you had read the talk pages and edit summary you would have seen that, again I am surprised that such an experienced editor has behaved in such a manner.

Again if you had actually looked you would have seen that this article has strayed significantly from previous incarnations not the least of which is merging what had previously been 2 separate articles that operated different criteria, this has led to many of the contentious issues being discussed at present.

I note you removed the hyperlinks I had put in the main table, were you in your rush aware that everyone of these links went directly to the pollsters data tables? The references you left are a mixed bag, some to data tables, some to analysis pieces and some to newspaper articles, please explain to me how this improved the article that by removing what is long established as the gold standard in these sort of articles has been deleted by you, this has precedence going back many election cycles but it would appear as if you place yourself and your view above that and in fact above consensus reached by editors.

I am sorry to say but your behaviour reeks of you pushing your preferred option and ignoring any other voices, and reads more like a rant than the considered view I would hope that such an experienced editor would have.

One last thing what exactly is a SPA you used it in one of your edits, the one where you removed the text from the lead column, I would like to understand what you meant by that.

I intend to change at least some of your changes back as I do not believe you have consensus to do so, these will include the hyperlinks to data tables (accepted by almost every other UK polling article as gold standard) this has been acceptable to Wikipeadia for many election cycles. I also intend to reintroduce the Text in Lead column, as explained this was at the request of a fellow editor that felt this would be of assistance to those who use a reader.

I would ask fellow editors to indicate if the AGREE or DISAGREE with my proposed action. Pugpa2 (talk) 23:01, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

The quote from your edit summary includes " A bunch of (SPA?) editors seem to have hijacked the article " please advise what a SPA is? Pugpa2 (talk) 23:06, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

A Single-Purpose Account - see WP:SPA. (Wikipedia does have a lot of jargon - you'll often find that if you hit some you haven't heard before, going to the page WP:[acronym] will explain it.) TSP (talk) 10:13, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd say hold off for now because there's no point engaging in constantly flip-flopping the page between two versions.

Once this discussion has run its course, I do agree. Kirky03 (talk) 01:48, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree. This page has been overtaken by political activists mascarading as academics. Some are so dogmatic they can’t engage with arguments from the original consensus, what can be done about this problem? The page has been politically compromised 92.20.135.189 (talk) 23:10, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

There have been a lot of new editors coming into this article to push their own viewpoint and treat everything as if it's a vote, rather than trying to engage in constructive dialogue to find agreement. I do always appreciate new people getting involved but I feel like it would be useful if firstly anyone who wants to contribute regularly makes an account (it is much easier to recognize accounts rather than similar-looking IP addresses), and secondly if we could focus on discussing the actual merits of different layouts rather than meta-discussion on the level of consensus that a previous discussion a few months back achieved. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:21, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you expand on what you mean by "political activists"? Kirky03 (talk) 01:48, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree on the “political activist” - the only possible rational of including non-BPC members for some - is that it’s currently giving the view they desire - no other possible explaination for anyone remotely interested in polling reliance, accuracy and yes maybe even integrity NewGuy2024 (talk) 08:44, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I have detected at least one major attempt at WP:INAPPNOTE to this article in recent days ([3] [4] [5] [6] [7]). The large number of seemingly random IPs and new users coming here does not seem casual, and I do not know whether some form of off-wiki canvassing or meatpuppetry may be ongoing as well. Impru20^talk 10:05, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Would say the shoe horning of non-BPC polls, against the longstanding convention to just include BPC members is a clear example of bias! Yes Ashcroft isn’t a member but they publish tables and approach openly - Freshwater doesn’t…. NewGuy2024 (talk) 10:14, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Some answers here:

• Firstly it is concerning when such an experienced editor appears to have rushed in and taken a very high handed approach, completely ignoring consensus on a number of matters that have been reached I would advice you to check WP:VOTESTACKING and WP:VOTE. What you are doing is not "consensus" but, rather, the imposition of a number of random decisions seemingly agreed for by a limited number of users who unilaterally are chosing to modify ling-existing consensus without properly structuring discussions.
• Yes I took out the archiving as it was set to a ridiculously low level of 21 days Excuse me, but: who are you to do that?
• I note you have chosen to remove changes that had been agreed by fellow editors See point 1, and yes, we may all be aware that you are all "fellow editors".
• this article has strayed significantly from previous incarnations Yes, it has: because of you. I have been here for over 13 years and have been involved in opinion polling articles for all that time; and this is the first time I'm seeing such an effort to unilaterally modify existing consensus by a small number of users acting in this manner, pushing their viewpoints and treating everything as a vote without any constructive dialogue.
• were you in your rush aware that everyone of these links went directly to the pollsters data tables No, what I'm aware is that your edits are in violation of WP:EL, of which there is a template note at the head of the article, which you basically seem to ignore. External links should not be used in such a massive way, and yes, this is one of the things in which this article (and other UK polling ones) deviated from Wiki policy.
• what exactly is a SPA WP:SPA = single-purpose accounts. For example: NewGuy2024 is a SPA (only contributions to Wikipedia are in this article and its talk page, except three edits in the 2024 UK opinion polling article); Kirky03 is a SPA same reasons); you are a SPA (371 edits focused mostly on this topic), etc. And we could enter on the multiple IPs editing this article as well.

I guess this issue should be brought to WP:ANI so that admins can actually check what's going on here. Impru20^talk 10:22, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

So, we have a new IP at home to conduct reverts on behalf of other users now without even caring to provide an edit summary? ([8]) Impru20^talk 10:42, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your response If I may respond

This is an article I rarely pop into my interests in wiki are in the political polling field and my engagements are usually elsewhere on wiki.

While I can appreciate annoyance not to say frustration at what has happened to this page and in many ways share concern as to the state of the article, do not in anyway cast aspersions on my motivation, which remains to try to make the article as helpful to readers as possible.

WP:EL is not an absolute and to present it as such is misleading, if editors agree this can be dispensed with for evidence look at the previous incarnations of this article, and other UK political polling, stuffed full of EL and functioning well and judging by page visits very much appreciated by readers. I am sure you are well aware but that in political polling the Data Tables are the best data we can present, we should always be aspiring to that.

What we need right now is analysis of what has happened, how it has happened and what we might do to sort it.

In my opinion this article had gotten off to a poor start with the merging of what had previously been 2 articles. So early in the election cycle it has perhaps been prone to being used by some with an axe to grind, it then began to wonder off in directions not previously seen and include innovative if perhaps not overly helpful features such as Latest Polls by Pollster and second place naming in lead column. At the same time the quality of links to verifiable data has dropped markedly, rarely now do you find links to the Data Tables. talk page is overly busy as a result of these early missteps and so a circle of doubt and accusations emerges to take the place of sound convention and an established framework in which to operate. This has gotten to such an extent that even an attempt to improve access for colour blind or visually impaired readers is dismissed out of hand.

So how do we break this circle of suspicion and doubt. For a start I notice we have many editors but it is only a small handful that post in talk page, how do we harness a broader group of editors. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:20, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we could "break this circle of suspicion and doubt" if random accounts stopped appearing out of nowhere to engage in edit warring and/or attempt to influence opinions in this talk page by vote stacking. We have another new account appearing out of nowhere with only four edits, of which three have been to intervene in an edit war in this article in support of other random IPs and/or new accounts.

On the issue of garnering for editor attention, the WP:RFC system could be used, provided that the canvassing/meatpuppetry issue is dealt with first. Impru20^talk 11:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean the view isn’t valid - there’s plenty of longstanding contributors who agree with the notion of BPC only polling…why are you ignoring these? Is there a poll we can do and run for a few days - seem to be going round circles here NewGuy2024 (talk) 11:28, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

It appears there is a perspective that new users are worthless and old users are priceless. Obviously older users have more experience and knowledge that they can bring to a discussion which will hold more weight that the gut instinct of a new user, but the use of "this is a new user focused on a small number of pages" as justification for completely disregarding and in some instances, overriding the opinions of multiple users is not only ridiculous but against guidance within WP:SPA itself!

I suggest all involved in the discussion stop attacking each other. Kirky03 (talk) 11:41, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree - play the ball and not the man… NewGuy2024 (talk) 11:47, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree we need some arms length support to break this circle. Is there a way to freeze the article as it is for a while, giving a breathing space to begin a reflective and hopefully broader consultation as to what to do and have real consensus before unfreezing Pugpa2 (talk) 12:10, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Worth noting that a rough compromise was made on the improvement for colour blind people which was then undone by Impru because they didn't like it and felt it was a waste if space. Kirky03 (talk) 11:33, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Worth noting is that you just made up this claim against me, because I never said I "didn't like it or that it was a waste of space". I'm curious as to how set precedent for opinion polling articles is applied for some issues, but then it is entirely ignored and despised when it comes to other issues. Lead columns have never been shown in the way that it was attempted by a few users in this article in the last few days. Impru20^talk 16:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Your words were "What's even the point of this?" in your edit summary which I think says enough.

Also, your adherence to precedence firstly stops the wiki from improving in any way (although I do agree using precedence is a good argument, it is not all important), and secondly appears quite correlated with how much you agree with it. Kirky03 (talk) 16:14, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

So, there have been a lot of different things under discussion in recent days which is part of why this has been such a mess.

1) The lead column- this one did seem to reach a broad agreement to use the format "Lab+1" rather than simply "1" thanks to MOS:COLOR

2) Inclusion of polls by non-BPC-registered companies (Lord Ashcroft and Freshwater). No strong consensus in either direction

3) Inclusion of separate columns for the SNP and Plaid Cymru versus including them in the "other" column. Again no strong consensus either way

4) The addition of direct links to data tables in sources- not been discussed enough to come to an agreement.

There have also been several more discussions in recent weeks which have thankfully died down, namely: the type of graph used, the inclusion of the summary table, the three-letter abbreviation of party names in table headers, and the layout of the Preferred PM table.

There has also been suggestion of splitting the article but that's been on the backburner lately.

Overall I think your cleanup of the article was the right thing to do to stay in line with existing practice. I would say the lead column should stay in the Lab+1 format as that's the one discussion which there was a reasonable amount of agreement on, but if necessary to stop edit warring it's okay to keep the current format until things calm down a bit. I'd also mention that whilst the removal of links to data tables per WP:EL was right, in the past there have been plenty of direct links to the data tables so I don't think there's an issue with including them if properly formatted (i.e. reference rather than external link).

To stop further edit wars it may be necessary to open an RfC on the most contentious topics- I will open a new section here planning out a possible RfC. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:42, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

The fact remains you edited them out. Are you seriously suggesting we should not be making what is a minor change to benefit people with visual impairment? seriously. Pugpa2 (talk) 16:50, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I am somewhat amused (confused?) that you claim this in this specific case, when your position on many other issues has been the literal opposite: you don't want to remove external links to comply with WP:EL/WP:LINKROT, you want to exclude legit polls based on a particular membership to some organization, you complained about how this article "has strayed significantly from previous incarnations" yet this change is one of the most significant ones that strays from previous incarnations... what gives? Also, don't toy with me: I have not said what I have been accused as saying, so don't try to play dumb with me here. Impru20^talk 17:02, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

That is an odd summation, holding to established precedence does not necessarily hold for every single issue, it is not contradictory on my part but rather I believe shows a willingness to change if a good enough case is made for the change, that change was miniscule and impact on article would be tiny compared to some of the other changes proposed, most certainly a false comparison.

I would remind you that in your haste to change that back you deleted almost all the links that were there for every entry bar one, leaving the table in a considerably poorer state information wise, that is never a good thing to do. Before your hasty edit 45 entries of 46 for 2025 had links direct to data tables. How do I know this because unlike you a looked and checked every single link in all and reference for all 46 entries in 2025 before I made changes, for the majority of the entries that had no data table link I searched and found them before adding. I was careful and methodical to ensure accuracy. That is what I believe all editors should be doing and by doing so show respect to fellow editors and to the article. Pugpa2 (talk) 21:16, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

It was undone because there was no consensus for the change, and did not follow any existing precedent. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 17:23, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Only the precedence of over 20 years of previous articles where links to the data tables or other were always done by hyperlink to the pollsters name, go check them out it really is as plain as the nose on my face, which makes it harder to understand this reluctance to even consider it. Pugpa2 (talk) 21:18, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

then seek consensus if you have a strong case to make, that's how Wikipedia works. You may think of it as a minor/beneficial change and that's great, but it's for the editors to discuss its inclusion not for one editor to decide on everyone else's behalf. If we all just did what we thought was best, Wikipedia would be a mess. EnglishPoliticalPerson (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

You are just wrong, there was discussion about the lead column and the change I made was consistent with that discussion Pugpa2 (talk) 09:22, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@Impru20 The edit warring has continued. At this point, almost all edits are now a part of the edit war. I think we need to request protection. —Profzed! 22:13, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

A non-editor but regular user of this page writes: please stop the edit-warring, it's making the page unreliable & hence unusable. I'm referring primarily to which pollsters are included and excluded; the other issues, while they do need to be settled, are less disruptive to users. Numerous earlier pleas seem to have been ignored, so I would suggest the page should be reverted to the most inclusive recent state (i.e. including both Ashcroft and Freshwater, up to and including 3rd March) and then protected pending the outcome of an RFC. It's a big step, but the page is frankly a mess at the moment, and things don't appear to be getting any better. (Its current state isn't a mess, I hasten to add - it looks fine - but the list of recent polls can't be relied on to remain unchanged from one day to the next.) 95.172.230.133 (talk) 09:33, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Think it becomes more of a mess with footnotes and caveats if we go down to the route of including non BPC polls - keep it consistent and clean NewGuy2024 (talk) 09:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

It seems to have calmed a wee bit, lets hope that continues.

Given behaviour in talk page we would then have a situation where they would disagree about the freeze date and at least some would likely be partisan about it. I think we freeze it as it presently is at least then everyone would be a bit miffed that there preference is frozen out. Pugpa2 (talk) 10:11, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Non BPC polls

If it’s insisted that we want to dilute the quality of the table of polls with their inclusion - surely it needs to be in own section - no logical argument can be had to include them - don’t agree that a footnote, which can be easily missed is sufficient to allow this in NewGuy2024 (talk) 08:10, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't be including BPC Polls but there's already a discussion open and active about this so I suggest writing this in there because it is already confusing trying to keep up with what's what.

But yes, I also don't like the footnote. Kirky03 (talk) 09:34, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

This is not helpful, we already have a discussion on this topic, use it. Pugpa2 (talk) 11:27, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

In the context of a push to archive less engaged discussions, I suggest archiving this one as it is a duplicate. Kirky03 (talk) 11:36, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Possible RfC planning

Opening this section to hopefully collect and collate current topics of dispute, for the purpose of a future RfC. Starting things off I would say

• Question 1) Include polls by non-BPC members? Options A) Yes, B) Yes with a footnote noting their non-BPC status, C) No
• Question 2) How to display SNP and Plaid Cymru? Options A) Both have their own columns, B) Only the SNP has their own column, Plaid Cymru in the Other column, C) both in the Other column
• Question 3) What sources should be used? Options A) Reference to article, B) reference to PDF/direct data table, C) both
• Question 4) How to display the lead column in the main table (rather than summary table)? Options A) "1", B) "Lab +1", C) "Lab +1 over Ref"
• Question 5) Should the article be split, and if so how? Options- I don't know, any suggestions?

I'd propose that to avoid further edit warring, we keep the article in the condition Impru20 has left it in- i.e. as similar as possible to the situation it was in previous years (Option A for all) until an RfC runs its course.

Are there any other controversial topics related to this article that would need discussing in an RfC? Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Good effort but have to comment

Question 2 is perhaps already moot as current layout is compliant with previous articles and based solely on pollsters prompting, I sense this is not the issue it perhaps was previously.

Question 3 is just wrong, there is no question that Data table links is the best and long established, it has been like that since at least 2010, the question should be about including a second link through references to other reliable but lesser source.

Q4 has been partially agreed already with the notion of second place having been rejected, the only Q remaining is what format to record the lead

Q5 we should be complying with the format used since at least 2010 and have a Leadership article that captures much material as previously Pugpa2 (talk) 17:11, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) The whole "Most recent polling by pollster" table should be put into question as well; that's a notable deviation from previous articles and does nothing but to needlessly duplicate content already in the article.

On question 1, I don't know, since that basically means opening the door to overruling WP:RS specifically for this article only because of a few users' particular views.

Question 3 is basically mandated by WP:EL and WP:LINKROT, it's not a personal whimp by any particular editor, so a reference to these should be included in the question. Impru20^talk 17:12, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, include all these. Ignore everyone else who has seemingly decided consensus has been found or there is an objective truth on all issues and it agrees with them. I personally believe many of these have reached enough of a decision - such as 4 - but honestly we can't keep debating this as we have, we're just going in circles. Include everything you've mentioned.

I don't suggest including "Most Recent Polling" as an issue as Impru suggests because its not currently mixed in this edit warring drama and can be dealt with later in a more civilised matter as it was previously (and previously decided to keep). Bringing it up now just creates another front for everyone to be arguing on and we already have enough. Kirky03 (talk) 17:41, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record, that's not to say I don't think consensus ever was found - it was on many of the issues mentioned. It is just that some people have more recently refused to allow them to pass and now we are unable to reach agreement. Kirky03 (talk) 17:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Even if there was some agreement on some of those topics for a period, it's clear that such agreement does not exist at the moment.

I am inclined towards inclusion of as many possibly-controversial topics as possible in an RfC to avoid future issues. I'll start it in a few days to give room for anyone to mention more topics that should be included first. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 19:44, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree Kirky03 (talk) 20:14, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

My views on this.

Q1: B. I don't see the harm in adding non-BPC pollsters providing context is given to the reader. Also providing the poll is published by a reliable source. The only issue is around wether to include them in the graph, as they would affect the average there. This however I believe should be a separate debate.

Q2: B. This is how it was done in the article for the last parliamentary period. I assumed that SNP was dropped due to their poor general election showing, however I think they should be included still as they still poll around 2-4%. Plaid shouldn't be included and should be in Other.

Q3: C or B. If the poll has a client the article from the client should be the reference for that box while the table should be the main reference. If the poll doesn't have a client, than an article reference can be used until the tables are released, which can replace the reference.

Q4: B. C is too cluttered. A is too simplistic and it's not immidately obvious.

Q5: Keep as is for now. ShotoKye (talk) 20:10, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I understand why you have started this topic however on reflection I think we need to go back a bit and agree on topics before we trying to define questions having said that the risk is we drag up every topic again, for my part I think we need clarity on

BPC only or not.If not then is it unrestricted or with some expectations as to standard

Most recent polling by pollster

How to capture Sources Hyperlink, reference or both

A pecking order for sources Ie Data Tables, Pollster analyse or other

Split articleprecedence from previous articles, this one is anomalous by merging them

Lead Column may already be resolved as i sense with better understanding people are more relaxed at % + Party ID

Actually as I write these down I begin to wonder what all the fuss is about as individually they seem fairly straightforward Pugpa2 (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2025 (UTC)