Polling

UK General Elections #10A – The Cursed Ratios of British Politics

December 7, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

I used to be a commodity trader in the 1990s. This wasn’t my day job, which was to forecast supply & demand, but I had the statistical skills to develop automated trading strategies for the traders I worked with. These were either based on moving averages of futures prices (known as technical trading) or buy/sell signals based on the underlying supply & demand picture (known as fundamental trading). I don’t trade commodities now but I’ve applied the stats skills I learned then to many time series since including those for elections and voting intentions.

Another trading strategy I could have used but didn’t was Chartism. I vividly remember the training course I did on this and coming away gobsmacked. How on earth were people being allowed to buy and sell millions using nothing more than astrology, spiritualism, numerology and other superstitions?! I immediately swore of from Chartism and have managed to stay away from it until this year. I hope you understand why it’s taken me many months to build up the courage to publish two articles where I use chartist superstitions instead of statistics to interpret long term trends in the vote shares of the major parties in the UK.

For this article, I explain why my charts show the Cursed Ratios of British voters are 52 : 26 : 13 : 6.5. For my next article, I will have you fearing for my sanity…

Stats Training Materials – Sampling & Surveys

July 17, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

The core expertise that Statisticians offer to the world is drawing conclusions from small samples. Therefore, knowing how to design surveys, estimate the right sample size, decide on the right way to ask the question or measure a property are all essential skills for any statistical thinker. The skills you need to be competent in Sampling & Surveys are best captured by my Survey Wheel.