Collapse of school in northern Nigeria leaves 22 students dead, officials say

13 July 2024 

A two-story school collapsed during morning classes Friday in north-central Nigeria, killing 22 students and sending rescuers on a frantic search for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble, Azernews reports.

The Saints Academy college in Plateau state’s Busa Buji community collapsed shortly after students, many of whom were 15 years old or younger, arrived for classes.

A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but Plateau police spokesperson Alfred Alabo later said 132 of them had been rescued and were being treated for injuries in various hospitals. He said 22 students died. An earlier report by local media had said at least 12 people were killed.

Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some weeping and others offering to help, as excavators combed through the debris from the part of the building that had caved in.

One woman was seen wailing and attempting to go closer to the rubble as others held her back.

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said rescue and health workers as well as security forces had been deployed at the scene immediately after the collapse, launching a search for the trapped students.

---

Collapse of school in northern Nigeria leaves more than 20 dead


Issued on: 13/07/2024 - 

A two-story school collapsed during morning classes Friday in north-central Nigeria, killing 22 students and sending rescuers on a frantic search for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble, authorities said. The Saints Academy college in Plateau state’s Busa Buji community collapsed shortly after students, many of whom were 15 years old or younger, arrived for classes.

01:12
Video by:FRANCE 24

 

Malala calls for Pakistan to stop deporting undocumented Afghans

London (AFP) – Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai called for Pakistan to stop deporting undocumented Afghans, saying she was especially concerned about the "dark future" awaiting women and girls sent back.


Issued on: 13/07/2024 - 

Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai called for Pakistan to 'reverse' its policy of deporting undocumented Afghans 

© BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP

"It is deeply concerning that Pakistan is forcing Afghan refugees based in Pakistan back into Afghanistan, and I'm deeply concerned about the women and girls", the activist, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2014, told AFP in an interview on Friday.

Despite extending leave for Afghan refugees with permits to stay in Pakistan for another year, Islamabad this week said it would remove illegal migrants.

More than 600,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Islamabad last year ordered undocumented migrants to leave or face arrest.

Human rights monitors have warned that some sent to Afghanistan faced persecution by the Taliban, who came into power in 2021 and have imposed an austere form of Islam, barring girls from higher education and excluding women and girls from areas of public life.

"A lot of these girls in Pakistan were studying, they were in school, these women were doing work", said Malala, 27, who grew up in Pakistan's Swat valley.

She had to move to the UK after she was shot, aged just 15, for resisting the Pakistan Taliban's then-ban on girls' education in her hometown.

"I hope that Pakistan reverses its policy and that they protect girls and women especially because of the dark future that they would be witnessing in Afghanistan", she added.

'Principled engagement'

Speaking to AFP on her birthday, recognised by the UN as Malala Day, the activist launched into the challenges facing the only country in the world where girls over 12 are barred from school.

"I cannot believe that I'm witnessing a time when girls have been banned from their education for more than three years", she said, adding that while the situation was "shocking", she "admired the resilience of the Afghan activists."

The Malala Fund is campaigning for the UN to formally broaden their definition of crimes against humanity to include "gender apartheid" – a phrase the UN has used to describe the situation in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the UN and Taliban sat down for talks in Doha for the first time since the latter came to power but without women in attendance.

Malala said the Doha talks made a "compromise on the future of women and girls", calling for a "principled engagement" with the Taliban.

"World leaders need to realise that when they sit down with the Taliban… and they're excluding women and girls, they are actually doing a Taliban a favour," she said.

"I want to call out those countries as well – that includes Canada and France – who have a feminist foreign policy" to "condemn" conversations like the Doha talks, she added.
Gaza schools

Malala also called for an "urgent" ceasefire in the war in Gaza.

Afghan refugees arrive from Pakistan in Takhta Pul district of Kandahar province 

© Sanaullah SEIAM / AFP

"It is horrifying how many schools have been bombed in Gaza, even more recently the four schools", she added, referring to four schools that were hit by Israeli air strikes this week.

According to the education ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 percent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.

"It is deeply concerning because we know that children do not have a future when they're living under a war, when their schools and homes are destroyed", said Malala.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, said it used more than half its budget before the war to fund education.

However, it is facing funding woes after several countries including the United States and Britain suspended aid following Israeli accusations that its workers were involved in Hamas's attack against Israel on October 7.

Some countries like Australia and Germany have however resumed funding when evidence could not be found to support Israel's claims.

"When it comes to humanitarian support, all countries should be making no compromise. They should make sure that all the immediate and urgent needs of people are provided, and UNRWA is an example of that", Malala said of countries resuming funding for the group.

"I do hope that all countries are providing aid and support because it's about those innocent people and civilians who need to be protected".

© 2024 AFP

UN chief Guterres calls for funding for Gaza aid agency


Issued on: 13/07/2024 - 

The United Nations chief appealed for funding Friday for the beleaguered UN agency helping Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, accusing Israel of issuing evacuation orders that force Palestinians “to move like human pinballs across a landscape of destruction and death.” UNRWA’s 30,000 staff provide education, primary health care and other development activities to about 6 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

01:42
Video by: FRANCE 24

The Bronx, a steaming symbol of climate inequality in US

New York (AFP) – As much of America baked in heat waves this week, the relatively poor New York borough of the Bronx suffered disproportionately.


Issued on: 12/07/2024 -
People stand outside a corner store during a summer heat wave in the Bronx borough of New York on July 11, 2024 © ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Reinaldo Morales, a 68-year-old military veteran, went to a seniors' community center with air conditioning because turning it on at home is too costly.

"We live in a cement jungle," he said.

"It's nice that they have a cooling center like this. But the idea that we can't even afford to cool our home is outrageous," said Morales.

Temperatures soared as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) this week in New York, far from the 118F (48C) that roasted Las Vegas.

But one image here stuck out: a swing bridge linking the Bronx and Manhattan got stuck in the half-open position for hours on Monday as the heat expanded the metal in its hydraulics. Boats pumped water to cool it off.

The Bronx endures problems with poverty, health care and air pollution, and some of its neighborhoods suffered more than others in the heat because of a lack of trees to cool things off.

"We have limited shading so it does get very hot especially when the sun is at its peak," said Sandra Arroyo, program director of Casa Boricua, the seniors' center where Morales went to cool off.

'You are suffocating'

Senior citizens play dominos at a cooling center in the Bronx 

© ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Many residents of the Bronx are low-earning Latinos or African Americans, who say the heat-absorbing buildings that line street after street make life -- and even breathing -- difficult in the scorching, muggy New York summer.

"You walk a block and you are suffocating," said Juan Lorenzo, a 72-year-old Dominican.

"You just get really tired," added Stephanie Rodriguez, a 21-year-old cashier watching her two-year-old son play in water spouts at the only large park in all of the borough.

Arif Ullah, environmental justice advocate and executive director of South Bronx Unite, takes a water sample from the Harlem River © ANGELA WEISS / AFP

"We need more green spaces," said Arif Ullah, head of a community organization called South Bronx Unite.

All along one bank of the Harlem River in the Bronx stand waste treatment facilities, a power plant and warehouses -- all sources of industry and thus, more heat.

Nearby sits a small shadeless kids park, under a series of highway overpasses.

Ullah said racist urban policies have allowed communities like his to become urban heat islands that lead to health problems.

"And really, it's a matter of life or death," he said.

Neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Mott Haven in the south of the Bronx have above-average rates of emergency room visits for respiratory problems attributable to pollution, according to a report issued in April by the New York city government, its first to address the issue of what is known as environmental justice.

The city says around 350 people in New York die each year because of the heat or health problems made worse by it, and Black residents are hit twice as often as their white counterparts.

The city says aggravating factors include a lack of air conditioning at home, a situation more common in the Bronx than New York's other boroughs.

Matias, 2, plays in a water fountain to beat the heat in the Bronx 

© ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Deadly heat waves in major cities in America and elsewhere have become more common because of climate change and things will only get worse, experts say.

© 2024 AFP

Crucial farm jobs dry up in drought-stricken Morocco

Sidi Slimane (Morocco) (AFP) – In a sun-baked village north of Morocco's capital Rabat, Mustapha Loubaoui and other itinerant workers wait idly by the roadside for farm work made scarce by a six-year drought.

Issued on: 13/07/2024

A man inspects his damaged crops, in the Moroccan town of Sidi Slimane, after six years of drought

Loubaoui, 40, rode his combine harvester for 280 kilometres (175 miles) hoping to pick up work in what previously had been the booming agricultural village of Dar Bel Amri.

His day-long journey was for nothing. Now Loubaoui fears he will end up like the roughly 159,000 Moroccan agricultural workers who, official figures say, have lost their jobs since early last year.

"Work has become hard to come by because of drought," Loubaoui told AFP.

Large areas of the Mediterranean have been under "alert drought conditions", a phenomenon even more pronounced in Morocco and its neighbours Algeria and Tunisia, according to the European Drought Observatory's latest analysis.

In Morocco, a lack of water threatens the viability of the important agriculture sector, which employs around a third of the working-age population and accounts for 14 percent of exports.

More than one third of Morocco's total cultivated area lies unused because of drought.

A Moroccan woman fills containers with scarce water in Sidi Slimane 

The area is now about 2.5 million hectares compared to four million prior to the onset of severe water scarcity, according to figures given by Agriculture Minister Mohammed Sadiki.

And as the arable land shrank, so did employment.

The North African kingdom's unemployment rates rose to a record 13.7 percent in the first quarter of 2024, said the High Planning Commission (HCP), the government's statistical body.

It said 1.6 million of Morocco's 37 million people are out of work and stressed that "the labour market continues to endure the effects of drought".
'At the mercy of climate change'

Among the people behind the statistics is Chlih El Baghdadi, a farmer who lives near Dar Bel Amri.

A farmer smokes during a break outside his house in the parched lands around Sidi Slimane 

His grain harvest suffered a major loss from drought, leaving him sitting at home rather than working his fields.

He and his five children now depend financially on his wife, who is employed at a larger farm near the city of Meknes, about 70 kilometres from their village.

Such operations, whose yield is mainly for export, have survived the drought because of their water-hungry irrigation systems employed under the "Green Morocco Plan" (PMV) launched in 2008.

Since then, agricultural revenues doubled from 63 billion dirhams to 125 billion dirhams ($12.5 billion) in 10 years, according to official data.

Another programme, "Generation Green 2020-2030", aims to enhance Morocco's sustainable agriculture in light of climate challenges.

It targets a doubling of agricultural exports to reach 60 billion dirhams by 2030.

Yet despite the initiatives, climate change-driven unemployment has not eased.

"We have modern and sophisticated agriculture, but it only spans around 15 percent of cultivatable areas," said Abderrahim Handouf, a researcher and agricultural engineer.

The "majority of farmers remain at the mercy of climate change" and other economic sectors are "not able to accommodate them," he added.

-'Employment is the weak spot'-

The kingdom has striven to develop its industrial and service sectors over the past two decades, hoping to create more jobs, but these have not compensated for climate-linked unemployment.

Cars, for example, topped Morocco's exports last year with a record value of more than 141 billion dirhams.

Large areas of the Mediterranean have been under 'alert drought conditions', says the European Drought Observatory 

But the industry "only creates up to 90,000 jobs per year" while there are 300,000 job seekers, Moroccan industry minister Ryad Mezzour said in May.

"Employment is the weak spot of the economic system," he said in a radio interview.

Facing criticism, Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch told parliament last month that "drought has become reality".

He announced the expected creation of 140,000 new jobs as part of investment deals worth 241 billion dirhams in fields including renewable energy, telecommunication, tourism and health.

But the numbers were far from the million jobs he had promised to create by 2026.

For farmers like Benaissa Kaaouan, 66, it's too late. He said he would have walked away from agriculture if he had learned another skill.

Now he stands in the middle of his zucchini fields in Dar Bel Amri, most of them sun-spoiled.

"There's no life without rain," Kaaouan said ruefully.

FOTOS © FADEL SENNA / AFP

© 2024 AFP

French left propose Huguette Bello as compromise PM pick, but Socialists are on the fence

As France's left-wing alliance scrambles to agree on a candidate for prime minister after taking the most parliamentary seats in the July 7 snap election, the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party has proposed veteran politician Huguette Bello as a compromise candidate. The former Communist Party member from the French overseas region of Reunion is a respected politician whose candidacy is supported by most parties in the New Popular Front coalition, but the Socialists appear to be reluctant to endorse her, explains Damien Lecomte from the Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University.

Issued on: 13/07/2024 - 

Huguette Bello  in Saint-Paul on the French overseas island of La Reunion.

 © Richard Bouhet, AFP

By: FRANCE 24

Video by: FRANCE 24

After nearly a week of frantic negotiations, Huguette Bello emerged as a contender for the French prime minister’s post when Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard left France Unbowed (LFI) party hailed the latest “solution” to the political impasse that has gripped France since the July 7 legislative elections produced a hung parliament.

Speaking to supporters on Friday, Mélenchon said Bello, a committed “anti-racist feminist” was a "solution" to the political impasse.

The 577-seat National Assembly is roughly split into thirds between the New Popular Front (NFP) left alliance with 182 seats, President Emmanuel Macron's Ensemble centrists at 168 and the far-right National Rally (RN) with 143.

French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel told a local TV station the 73 year-old politician from France’s Reunion Island has “the right stuff” to fulfill the PM role.

But Damien Lecomte, a researcher from Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University, notes that the Socialist Party within the New Popular Front alliance is defending their party leader Olivier Faure as the best candidate to head the new French government.

French people divided as parties struggle to form govt coalition in parliament

Issued on: 13/07/2024 - 

People in the central Auvergne region are divided as they watch France's political parties struggle to form a ruling majority in Parliament. The 577-seat National Assembly is roughly split into thirds between the New Popular Front (NFP) left alliance with at least 190 seats, President Emmanuel Macron's centrists at 164 and the far-right National Rally (RN), with 143

01:33
Video by: FRANCE 24

Polish MPs reject bill seeking to ease strict abortion law

Poland's lower house rejected a bill on Friday that sought to decriminalise the act of helping someone get an abortion. The vote – in which 218 MPs voted against the bill and 215 were in favour – highlighted the divisions in the ruling coalition over easing one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.


Issued on: 12/07/2024 - 

Anti-abortion demonstrators march in support of every conceived life and against steps taken by the new government to liberalize Poland's strict law and allow termination of pregnancy until the 12th week, in Warsaw, Poland, on April 14, 2024.

 © Czarek Sokolowski, AP

Polish MPs on Friday rejected a bill that would have decriminalised the act of facilitating abortions in a blow for reproductive rights and the country's new liberal government.

The draft law, seen as a precursor to easing traditionally Catholic Poland's almost total ban on abortions, was rejected by 218 MPs against and 215 in favour.

The bill would have helped, for example, campaigners who provide women wanting to terminate their pregnancies with pills obtained in other countries for medical abortions.

The bill was the first and most conservative of four draft texts to liberalize abortion access in Poland put forward by members of the ruling pro-EU coalition.

Poland currently has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, and remains deeply divided on the issue.

The alliance of pro-EU parties came to power in October promising to legalize abortion, which is currently only permitted if the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault or incest, or if it poses a direct threat to the life or health of the mother.

The text submitted to the vote on Friday was rejected by representatives from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party and the far-right Konfederacja, which are two major opposition groups.

Read more PM Donald Tusk faces uphill battle on reforming Polish abortion rights

Some deputies of the PSL (Christian Democrats), members of the ruling coalition, also voted against it.

The three other bills, still being debated in parliamentary committees, directly propose easing access to abortion, each to a different extent.

This week, President Andrzej Duda, a close ally of the PiS, warned that he would veto all the bills even if they are passed.

(AFP)

US consumer sentiment falls to lowest in 8 months

Half of consumers still object to high prices, even as they expect inflation to continue moderating in years ahead, says survey director

Ovunc Kutlu |12.07.2024 - TRT/AA

ISTANBUL

US consumer sentiment declined in July to its lowest level in eight months, according to preliminary results from the University of Michigan's consumer survey released Friday.

The index of consumer sentiment decreased 2.2 points to 66.0 in July from 68.2 in June.

The market expectation for the index was to come in at 68.5.

"Nearly half of consumers still object to the impact of high prices, even as they expect inflation to continue moderating in the years ahead," Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu said in a statement."

"With the upcoming election, consumers perceived substantial uncertainty in the trajectory of the economy, though there is little evidence that the first presidential debate altered their economic views," she added.

Year-ahead inflation expectations fell to 2.9% in July from 3.3% in June, falling for the second consecutive month.

Long-run inflation expectations, meanwhile, came in at 2.9%, down from 3% last month.

Euro 2024: battles on and off the pitch reflect a continent struggling with its own identity

Ronaldo reacts to his missed penalty against Slovenia.

 Ronald Wittek/EPA-EFE

THE CONVERSATION 
Published: July 12, 2024 


After more than four weeks and 51 football matches, Euro 2024 draws to a close with its total audience again likely to have exceeded 5 billion live viewers. Europe’s premier international football tournament has certainly retained its global appeal, but its overall report card presents a rather more mixed picture for the continent – of fading glories and harsh realities.

The most recognisable symbol of waning strength has been Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. For years, he has been considered one of the sport’s greatest talents, but at 39 his presence on the pitch is visibly less potent.

Ronaldo’s tears of frustration after missing a penalty against Slovenia were a reminder of what once was but can no longer be – rather like Europe itself, which is struggling to retain its power, influence and relevance.

But while Ronaldo cried (Portugal were ultimately knocked out by France in the quarter-finals), Italy wept. For, if another reflection of European nations losing their way was needed, the chaotic Azzurri provided it. Once the kings of elegance and style, Italy (knocked out by unfancied Switzerland at the last-16 stage) looked bereft of ideas, playing a brand of football that was stilted and lacked dynamism – akin to Europe’s approach to the current stormy economic waters.


And then there was France (beaten by Spain in the semi-final). Just days before the tournament began, French president Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election after European polls went the way of the far right.

The country’s captain, Kylian Mbappé (of Cameroonian and Algerian descent), then implored young French voters to resist the rise of far-right extremism. It was a sentiment echoed by Ibrahima Konaté, Aurélien Tchouaméni and many other players in the ethnically diverse French squad.

Yet after the first round of voting, in which the National Rally party came out ahead, its president Jordan Bardella announced that he would strip away the automatic right to citizenship of children born in France to non-French parents. In other words, people like Mbappé, Konaté and Tchouaméni.

Meanwhile, England’s largely dour, directionless football matched Britain’s post-Brexit woes. Ramped-up on an anglicised vision of hope, Gareth Southgate’s side’s painful progress through the group stages ran in parallel to Rishi Sunak’s stumbling general election campaign. Both were difficult to watch – but at least England made it to the final.

Elsewhere, the Hungarian national team (eliminated at the group stage) turned up in Germany fuelled by more than €3 billion (£2.5 billion) of government investment. Prime minister Viktor Orbán, another right-wing populist, is not just a football fan but someone who isn’t afraid to deploy the game for political purposes.

The host country Germany (beaten by Spain in an exciting quarter-final) fared better on the pitch than many had expected. But while traditional stereotypes emphasise the nation’s efficiency, the Euros have exposed that its railways are in a state of disarray, confronted by funding issues and management difficulties. Thousands of fans were left stranded on station platforms after matches in Germany’s old industrial heartland, exemplifying the infrastructural challenges that many European countries now face.

All of this was set against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Its national team finished last in its group, but perhaps more surprising was how little the conflict was mentioned. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, football fans and players loudly expressed their support for Ukraine. But during this tournament, signs of such solidarity were scarce.

Cohesion in the streets

On the plus side, the absence of widespread hooliganism during the event was encouraging. Some fans, like those from the Netherlands (beaten semi-finalists), stood out for the party atmosphere they brought, while the soft power of bagpipe bands and the tartan army from Scotland (group stage) charmed many.

But political divisions were never far away. While some fans sang anti-Vladimir Putin songs, Serbian supporters arrived in Germany under suspicion that some were planning violence in support of the Russian president.

Supporters of Serbia (eliminated at the group stage) were goaded inside the stadiums by rival fans from Croatia and Albania (both also group-stage departures). And a player from Turkey (quarter-finalists) celebrated scoring a goal using an ultra-nationalist hand gesture.

Corporate concerns

Evidence of a troubled Europe, uncomfortable with itself and unsure of its identity, was seen on the corporate side of the tournament too. Most of Euro 2024’s sponsors were not European, with the biggest group coming from China (Hisense, Vivo, BYD, Ali Express and Ali Pay).

Yet even as the Euros kicked-off, the EU announced plans to impose trade sanctions on the Chinese electric vehicle company BYD – an unfortunate juxtaposition given the car giant’s sponsorship deal with tournament organisers Uefa.

There was also a marked contrast to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where Germany’s national team protested against the Gulf nation over human rights issues. For this tournament, Qatar Airways landed on the country’s doorstep as a major sponsor. But there were no protests – just the sense that European companies and brands have neither the money nor the appetite to take on their Asian rivals.

Despite the difficulties, global interest in the tournament shows there is still much to be celebrated in Europe. Euro 2024 had some great football, enthusiastic fans, and sporting moments to savour. But it could not distract from the deeper malaise we are witnessing across the continent.

Authors   

Simon Chadwick
Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy, SKEMA Business School

Paul Widdop
Associate Professor of Sport Business, Manchester Metropolitan University

Disclosure statement

Simon Chadwick teaches on UEFA education programmes.

Paul Widdop does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

UK Election 2024 polls were wide of the mark on Labour’s margin of victory – this is what may have happened

Even the exit poll struggled to pin down Reform’s seat count. 

Alamy/Ron Fassbender

THE CONVERSATION
Published: July 12, 2024 

The 2024 UK election campaign was dominated by discussion of the polls, from start to finish. This was partially because of the sheer volume of polls being published. We had more MRP (multi-level regression post-stratification) polls than ever before, many giving quite different pictures of the size of Labour’s lead.

The chart below shows the average performance of 27 polls which predicted vote shares in the contest just prior to the election on July 4. The polling predictions are on the left and the actual vote shares are on the right for each of the five UK-wide political parties.

As a standard industry approximation, if the results differ from the outcomes by more than 3%, there is a statistically significant difference between the polling and the outcome. In other words, the pollsters got it wrong.

Final poll predictions and actual vote shares:

How the pollsters did. P Whiteley, CC BY-ND

Using that rough yardstick, the pollsters over-predicted the Labour and arguably under-predicted the Tory vote, although in the latter case it was on the boundary of statistical significance. The other parties were within the margin of error. To be fair, different polling companies varied in their accuracy, so we need to look a little more closely at the results.

The list below shows how accurate 27 polling agencies were in forecasting the vote shares in the election. Accuracy can be measured in different ways, but the method used here is easier to understand than most others. A low score means the poll was more accurate.

Pollster accuracy. Mark Pack

To explain how this was calculated, we can look at the example of More in Common’s regular poll, which was one of the most accurate. We simply calculate the distance between the poll and the vote shares for each party and then add them all up. For example, More in Common predicted that Labour would get 39%, the Conservatives 24%, Reform 15%, the Liberal Democrats 12% and the Greens 5%.

The final vote share on July 4 was 34% for Labour, 24% for the Conservatives, 14% for Reform, 12% for the Liberal Democrats and 7% for the Greens. If we calculate the difference between the forecast and the outcomes, More in Common was 5% out for Labour, 1% out for Reform, spot on for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and 2% for the Greens which produces an accuracy score of eight.

Accuracy scores vary quite a lot between pollsters. The list contains five MRP polls. These big data polls are best known for predicting the results in specific constituencies using large samples. The YouGov MRP had a sample of nearly 60,000 respondents.

It is noticeable that despite the very large samples associated with MRP polls, they were not the most accurate in the list, although they did better than the average accuracy score of just under 13. At the same time this difference was not consistent. The YouGov MRP had a score of eight compared with a score of 11 for its regular poll. However, the reverse was true for the More in Common, which scored eight for its regular poll and ten for its MRP.

Why do polls get it wrong?

One of the most acute problems in polling is getting representative samples of the electorate. All survey firms are struggling with this problem since the gold standard, random probability surveys, where people across the country are randomly selected and called, have all but died out on account of being too expensive and time consuming to conduct.

Practically all polling companies now use quota samples. This involves interviewing a set proportion of different groups needed to make the sample representative of the electorate. They interview defined numbers of people from groups based on things like age, gender and ethnic background. This requires data from the census and other sources to identify the size of the quotas.

When the quotas are not filled this can create bias in the samples. This is not always a problem since weights can be used to compensate for non-response. For example, if we need a quota of 200 voters under the age of 25 for a representative sample but we only get 100, we can count the latter twice in the analysis. This is essentially what weighting does.

However, the hidden assumption here is that the young people interviewed are representative of those who aren’t interviewed. The US journalist Ken Goldstein has cited this as contributing to the failure of the polls to predict the 2016 US presidential election. He said: “Usually we assume the problem is that group X is too small, but the actual problem is that group X is too weird.”

Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

This gives rise to a serious problem highlighted by political scientist Michael Bailey in his recent book, Polling at a Crossroads. The technical term for this is “non-ignorable non-response”. If respondents and non-respondents differ and we cannot verify this from other sources, then the poll will be biased and give the wrong answers.

We can find out from the census if the quotas of young people or ethnic minorities are correct, but it will not tell us if respondents are more interested and less alienated from politics than non-respondents.

The implication is that the eve of election polls contained this type of non-response and so exaggerated Labour and Reform party support. It was very likely caused by non-respondents being more apathetic or more alienated from politics than respondents.

Author   

  

Paul Whiteley
Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex
Disclosure statement
Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

China building more wind, solar capacity than entire world combined: report

Recent extreme weather events, exacerbated by the climate crisis, have highlighted the urgency of these efforts.


China has committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060. / Photo: Reuters Archive

China is building almost twice as much wind and solar energy capacity as every other country combined, research published showed.

The world's second-largest economy is the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that drive the climate crisis.

China has committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.

It has endured several waves of extreme weather in recent months that scientists say are rendered more severe by the climate crisis.

China currently has a total of 339 gigawatts (GW) of capacity under construction, including 159 GW of wind and 180 GW of solar.

That is "nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined", according to the study by Global Energy Monitor, a United States-based NGO.

The figure far exceeds the second-ranked nation, the United States, which is building a total of just 40 GW, the report said.

Renewable generation

It said China has broken ground on a third of the new wind and solar capacity it has announced to date, compared to a global average of just 7 percent.

"The stark contrast in construction rates illustrates the active nature of China's commitment to building renewables projects," the study said.

Absorbing the boom in renewables remains a challenge for China's coal-centred grid and faster development of transmission lines is needed, GEM research analyst Aiqun Yu said.

Still, the new capacity pushed renewable generation to record highs recently, according to a separate analysis published by Carbon Brief on Thursday.

JULY 11,2024