More on the referendum

Apparently, the Daily Telegraph reports that a 3/5 majority is needed to pass a resolution permitting a referendum. If so, this would probably make it impossible. But although this may be totally clear to a constitutional lawyer, it is not clear to me at all. Article 44(2) of the Greek constitution provides for two sorts of referendums: on "crucial national issues" and on "serious social issues". In the former, government proposals must be passed by an absolute majority in Parliament. In the latter, 2/5 of parliament proposes and a 3/5 majority is needed. But although we could spend a lot of time thinking about the fascinating distinction between "crucial national issues" and "serious social issues", I don't think we need to. The main distinction seems to be between who proposes the referendum. If government, absolute majority. If parliament, qualified majority. Therefore, if we are talking about the former, as I think we are, the referendum is not as impossible as a 3/5 majority would suggest. Unlikely, but not impossible.

It should also be mentioned that when the possibility of such a referendum was first announced - last June, no less - the government also announced that it would introduce changes to several procedural aspects of referendums, which nonetheless must abide by article 44(2) of the Constitution.

Referendum in Greece

Ah, politics: always so inconvenient. Faced with intraparty dissent and horrible polls, Papandreou announced he is going to call a referendum on the debt deal. In the meantime, another PASOK MP resigned, the party's majority in parliament is now down to two MP's, and six members of PASOK's national council called for Papandreou's resignation. And a recent poll shows 60% of Greeks to be against the deal.

According to the database at the Center for Research on Direct Demcracy, Greece has not held a referendum in 37 years. The last time was in 1974, after the collapse of the military Junta, to decide whether Greece would remain a Republic. Indeed it did, 69% to 31%. Turnout was 76%.

Apparently, judging from this Venice Commission document, this is the procedure:

1. Government proposes referendum.
2. A majority of MP's must support a resolution.
3. The President calls the referendum.

And Friday there's a confidence vote in parliament. So we're not quite there yet...

Next!

Spanish polls update

Several new polls in the last few days, as reported in Electometro. The overall picture since January 2011:

And a closer look at the smaller parties:

Looking at the more recent polls, especially by those pollsters who publish results more often, vote intentions for PP and PSOE seem very, very stable. The table below compares the results of the last to the next to last polls published by NC Report, Sigma Dos, and Metroscopia. Almost a little bit too stable, if we're talking about (as we think we are) independent samples.

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Marktest, 18-22 Oct, n=809, Tel.

Here. The government's PSD drops 5 points in voting intentions, but remains comfortably ahead of PS. The Prime Minister's approval falls 9 points. Having said that, the poll estimates 19% for blank votes and for other parties besides PSD, PS, CDS, CDU and BE, which is something so detached from any plausible scenario that one has to wonder what the whole results mean.

Eurosondagem, 20-25 Oct, n=1032, Tel.

Unsurprisingly, following the 2012 budget plans, not very good news for the Portuguese government in the most recent poll. Government approval drops 7 points in relation to the previous poll by the same company, and there's now more people disapproving than approving. Drop in voting intentions for the PSD is less impressive: a 2.4 drop, bringing it to 36.9%, and a 3.4 drop in the lead over PS. Tomorrow, I believe, we'll know results on questions about the budget and its measures. What do you expect?

P.S- Here it goes: 81% oppose budget proposal, 80% against bonus cuts, 58% distrust the government, 63% support the strike and don't think the budget targets will be achieved. Disappointing that, as usual, most Portuguese pollsters offer no breakdown of results by party ID, or vote intention, or, in this case, whether respondents are civil service workers or pensioners.

Polls in Portugal

Surprisingly few, as Pedro Lains suggests. The last I know of is from October 6th. Until then, as suggested here and can be seen here, good news for the government. But of course, what happened since may matter a lot. I like it when people complain there's not enough polling: I think they're absolutely right, but probably most of you disagree. By the way, we should have a poll on that too.

More Spanish polls

Two recent polls in Spain, one by Metroscopia and another by Sigma Dos. The Metroscopia poll has PP's lead over PSOE standing firm at around 15 points, while the Sigma Dos poll places that lead at 17, also like in their previous poll.

A look at the Spanish polls

There's a wonderful resource about the Spanish general elections that will take place about a month from now (November 20th, to be more precise): Electometro.com, a collection of web-based news on all voting intention media polls. Before looking at the data, a few aspects of these polls and how they are reported merit mention:

1. Fifteen different companies (including CIS, the state's Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) have published polls results since January 2011, according to Electometro. Most of them, however, seem to do it on an irregular basis.

2. Maybe it's because Electometro gets its news from online sources (rather than print media), but it's surprising to see how lax the standards seem to be in terms of reporting basic methodological aspects of polls. Many results are presented without mention of sample size, mode, or even the estimated voting intention for parties other than the incumbent Socialists (PSOE) or Partido Popular (PP).

3. In most cases, percentages are presented with decimal points. Oh well...

4. Average sample size is surprisingly high with 2,175, but that's mainly due to a single poll published in April with a staggering sample size of 45,635! I don't enough about the vagaries of Spanish politics, media, and polling to understand what may have led a media company to sponsor something like this. Without this poll, average sample size drops to 1,323.

Spanish polls don't have a particularly stellar reputation in what concerns accuracy - if by accuracy we mean presenting voting intentions that end up being close to the final outcome. In 1996, polls suggested a PP lead over PSOE of about 10 points, while the actual margin of victory ended up being a single percentage point. In 2000, polls suggested a PP lead of 5 points over PSOE, but it ended up being 10 on election day. Things may be getting better, however. If we discount 2004, where the March 11 terrorist attack obviously disturbed the relation between intentions measured before the attack and the election outcome, most media polls in 2008 were close to the 44% score and 4 point lead that PSOE enjoyed over PP.

So what do things look like today? The following graph shows the results of the 64 polls published since January 2011 (as reported in Electometro), with voting intention for the five largest parties and a kernel smoothing line (25% points to fit):

The two vertical lines represent the dates when PM Zapatero announced he would not be PSOE's candidate (April 2nd) and when Minister of Interior Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba became the de facto Socialist candidate (June 13th). Mere visual inspection seems to suggest a positive (for PSOE) reaction to Zapatero's withdrawal from the race but no clear effects of Rubalcaba's selection. Izquierda Unida seems posed for a much better result than in 2008 (where it got 3.8%) and the same is true for Unión Progreso y Democracia.


Another way of looking at this is to focus on PP's lead over PSOE since the beginning of 2011, which seems to be on the rise since May and is, as of today, higher than 15 percentage points in almost all of the recent polls:

I also regressed each party's score on dummy variables for each polling company (taking CIS as the reference category) and for each month, excluding the constant from the equation and thus taking the estimates for each monthly dummy as monthly results cleaned of "house effects". In what concerns PP, the recent October results are close to the best the party has had since the beginning of 2011. For PSOE, the highest point was in April, after Zapatero's withdrawal, which seems to have given PSOE a 4-point bump. But voting intentions for the Socialists have declined ever since and there's indeed no evidence that Rubalcaba changed anything there. The results also show interesting house effects: in comparison in CIS, pollsters like Sigma Dos, NC Report, and DYM seem to generate results that are particularly flattering for PP, while the opposite occurs with Metroscopia and Obradoiro de Sociologia. As for PSOE, the most unflattering results have come from NC Report, GAD, TNS, and Metroscopia again.

Out today: a report by GAD interestingly entitled "¿Nos podemos fiar de las encuestas electorales?", recalling past problems with Spanish polls and a tendency to underestimate incumbent vote share.

Rescaldo

Resultados finais:
PSD: 48,6%
CDS-PP: 17,6%
PS: 11,5%
PTP: 6,9%
CDU: 3,8%
PND: 3,3%
PAN: 2,1%
MPT: 1,9%
BE: 1,7%

Espero que já não me fique mal dizer isto, mas a Católica arrasa a concorrência de tal maneira que nem vale a pena fazer quadros comparativos.

E mais Madeira

Últimas sondagens Madeira:

Eurosondagem, 2-4 Out., N=763, Tel.
PSD: 50,5%
PS: 17%
CDS: 10,5%
CDU: 5,5%
BE: 3,5%
MPT: 3,3%
PTP: 2,7%
PAN: 2,5%
PND: 2%

CESOP, 1-2 Out, N=1712, Presencial.
PSD: 48%
CDS: 16%
PS: 14%
CDU: 5%
PTP: 5%
PND: 4%
BE: 2%
PAN: 2%
MPT: 2%

Entretanto, segundo este artigo, alguns dos 45 mil "eleitores-fantasma" poderão votar, o que mostra que Madeira continua a ter coisas novas para mostrar ao mundo.

Mais Madeira

Intercampus, 30 Set- 3 Out, N=609, Tel.

PSD: 53,5%
PS: 16,9%
CDS-PP:11,8%
CDU: 3,9%
PND: 2,8%
BE: 2,5%
Outros: 8,5% (ou 8,8%, não se percebe bem)

Aqui.

Madeira

Que sondagens existem? Depositada na ERC e colocada nos seus arquivos públicos, que eu saiba, a mais recente é esta, de Julho (Julho!) passado:

PSD: 57%
PS: 16%
CDS-PP: 10%
CDU: 4%
BE: 3%
PAN, MPT, PTP e PND com 2% cada.

A anterior tinha sido esta, de Junho. Eu percebo: o assunto não está na ordem do dia.

Depois, claro, também há coisas como esta: Sondagem na posse do PSD que aponta para a renovação da maioria absoluta". Hum...

Parece que 5ª feira é que é. Mais uns dias e já não era preciso.

100 dias

O PSD teve 38,7% nas eleições. Olhando para os arquivos do blogue, o que diziam as sondagens feitas 100 dias após as eleições?

- 2005: descida do PS em relação aos 45% das eleições no caso da Eurosondagem (40,5%) e uma subida no caso da Marktest (46%).
- 2009: o PS andava com cerca de 38% quer na Marktest quer na Eurosondagem, ou seja, 2 pontos acima dos resultados das eleições, e com 33% na Aximage.
- 2011: PSD 1 ponto acima em relação às eleições na Eurosondagem, 2 na Aximage, 4 na Católica e 8 na Marktest.

Forecasting Spanish elections

At The Monkey Cage.

Homens

1. Sad Men, de Richard Cohen, sobre Mad Men, detergentes e o declínio da classe-média americana.
2. Confidence Men, o livro de Ron Suskind sobre a presidência Obama, revela uma "macho White House".
3. Homo economicus: um digno sucessor para The Worldly Philosophers? Duvido respeitosamente.

IMPACT

Aqui em DC, onde existem algumas das piores escolas públicas nos Estados Unidos, foi criada uma coisa chamada IMPACT, um sistema de avaliação dos professores cujo critério fundamental é baseado em melhorias verificadas de um ano para o outro nos resultados dos testes anuais aos alunos realizados em Abril. Há também cinco observações anuais de aulas, três pela administração da escola e duas por observadores externos formados para o efeito. Professores com a classificação máxima recebem um bónus anual que pode ir até $25,000. Professores com repetidas classificações máximas recebem aumentos de salário que podem ir até $20,000 anuais.

O que o sitezinho não explica bem é que os professores que optarem por receber o bónus  - 70% dos 670 classificados este ano como highly effective - abdicam também de benefícios em caso de despedimento. Mas como se explica aqui, estes professores são precisamente os que têm menos probabilidade de serem despedidos, o que ajuda a explicar o facto de o número dos que optam por receber o bónus ter aumentado significativamente. Mais giro ainda é de onde vem o dinheiro para os bónus e aumentos: de uma coisa chamada DC Public Education Fund, apoiado por donativos...privados.

Há uma discussão muito interessante sobre se os modelos que visam estimar o aumento do desempenho dos alunos o fazem de forma correcta, se, apesar de tomarem em conta a mudança relativa (e não o desempenho absoluto) dos alunos, não continuam a prejudicar professores que ensinam nas áreas mais problemáticas, ou se o sistema gera os incentivos correctos. Mas o Washington Post parece achar que a coisa é genericamente boa.

D. Afonso V chega a Washington

The Pastrana Tapestries at the National Gallery

Pequeno-almoço de Domingo (ou, Washington Post entregue em casa às 6 da manhã)

1. Um bom exemplo de como o jornalismo e a Ciência Política se podem tornar mutuamente mais relevantes.
2. De como a política americana pode ser tão deprimente como a portuguesa.
3. Michael Lind sobre como seria o Mundo sem as torres ainda lá estivessem.
4. Uma bibliografia sobre o 11 de Setembro.
5. Não li o livro nem a recensão mas o título já vale os $26.99.