Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps

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Recently, a lot of people have been making incorrect claims about what a gender pay gap tells you.  I have been pointing out these errors but in doing so, I am conscious I come across as a pedant or a negative voice.  The problem is that the official gender pay gap measure (the difference between the median man and the median woman) is just a single number and that single number does not capture the full nuance of what is going on.  I have decided it is time to introduce the Gender Pay Fingerprint to the world as an alternative and going forward, I will be encouraging people to use this instead.

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Pay Gap Case Study #3- Will the BBC’s gender pay gap narrow after losing to Samira Ahmed?

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The BBC presenter Samira Ahmed has won her claim for equal pay at the employment tribunal.  She successfully claimed that Jeremy Vine was an appropriate comparator for her pay.  She is not the only female presenter to make a claim with over 50 more claims under consideration at present.  Assuming that these are all successful, will these have any effect on the BBC’s gender pay gap for 2019 of 7p in the pound?

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Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?

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On 5th February 2020, Baroness Prosser laid a bill in the House of Lords which calls for the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting in addition to a number of other initiatives.  Last year I explained why ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot follow the same process as gender pay gap reporting so now is the time to explore how ethnicity pay gap reporting could be carried out.

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UK General Elections #5 – How accurate are voting intention polls? – updated with GE19

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After 3 general elections with severe polling errors, the UK opinion pollsters redeemed themselves in the 2019 UK General Election with their most accurate performance since 1955.  I base this statement on data provided by Mark Pack who has systematically recorded every opinion poll published since 1945.  The challenge now for the industry is to maintain this level of performance for the next election which may be easier said than done given that 5 out of the last 8 elections have experienced a major polling error.

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UK General Election 2019 #2 – My forecast is the most accurate & beats the Exit Poll!

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At 2200 on Thursday 12th December 2019, the BBC/ITV/Sky Exit Poll was revealed to the nation and pointed to a large majority for the Conservatives.  Unlike 2017, I was able to turn to my wife and say “it looks like I will be right this time!”  By the end of the night, Gavin Freeguard from the Institute of Government was tweeting that not only was I the most accurate election forecaster of 2019, I was more accurate than the Exit Poll.

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UK General Election 2019 #1 – My Official Forecast

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My forecast for the 2019 UK General Election this Thursday is that the Conservatives will win a majority of 72 seats.  The margin of error in this forecast is very wide though due to the fact that 5 of of the last 7 general elections have seen a major polling error.  If there is a repeat of the GE2017 underestimate of Labour, then there will be another hung Parliament.

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