Interview: Andy Cooke

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this Interview with @AndyC here

 

[Stateless]

Looking forward to reading about his DJing career.

 

[Charles EP M.]

How did you get such an accurate prediction of where UKIP could surge? (Or, I guess, how you did and others did not despite having the same data)

 

[Thande]

How did you get such an accurate prediction of where UKIP could surge? (Or, I guess, how you did and others did not despite having the same data)

Andy can answer obviously, but a lot of the places where UKIP surged in OTL were where they had already surged in the 2004 European elections - with the exception of some parts of the Midlands where Kilroy-Silk had had a kind of personal vote. There's more to it than that though, I believe Andy said he had some kind of demographic analysis spreadsheet.

 

[David Flin]

There's more to it than that though, I believe Andy said he had some kind of demographic analysis spreadsheet.

I understood a pact with the Devil was also involved.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Andy can answer obviously, but a lot of the places where UKIP surged in OTL were where they had already surged in the 2004 European elections - with the exception of some parts of the Midlands where Kilroy-Silk had had a kind of personal vote. There's more to it than that though, I believe Andy said he had some kind of demographic analysis spreadsheet.

Yeah, UKIP were minor in 2011 but they had received nearly a million votes in 2010 and came joint 2nd in the 2009 european elections, there was data to work out where they'd get extra votes from. UKIP winning the 2014 European elections and then getting nearly 4 million votes in 2015 was not remotely predicted in 2011 but if you're told that will happen, you could probably work out where the votes came from.

And Andy was writing a story based on UKIP do better so had motive to look into that whereas if you're just doing predictions, you're less likely to do that. In the same way you probably don't look at where TUSC are gaining votes.

No disrespect to Andy intended, his research was excellent and his modelling of top quality, but there is a different between a fiction writer going 'if UKIP surge this is where they will surge' and a poll company going 'UKIP will surge here'.

 

[AndyC]

I've just found my old spreadsheet for this and that brought back memories.

I'd love to say it was a bunch of great insight, but it was based on:
- Regions (where UKIP had surged/fallen short in the Euros)
- Urban vs Rural status
- How close previous elections had been (swingier seats were deemed - well - swingier)
- And then UNS off of that.

There was some manual adjustment done for when things got ridiculous at the extremes (no-one could get fewer than zero votes, for example), and then... I must admit I made further adjustments in order to get more dramatic results from constituencies that looked as though they could get dramatic.

To be fair, the region/urban-vs-rural/swinginess did shockingly well at pinpointing the rest of it. The "making things more dramatic" can even be justified as a kind of simulation of what might happen with parties cranking up the campaigning in seats that look really close.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Discuss this Interview with @AndyC here

I just read the interview and being autist, more specifically Asperger's, I liked the question about the autist character.