A pollling quirk or are women really flocking to Dave? The full dataset from May’s YouGov poll in the Telegraph shows a gender divide in voting intention on a scale that is almost unprecedented. The 1,009 men in the sample split CON 33: LAB 35: LD 15: OTH 15 – Labour 2% ahead The 1,093 women who were polled split CON 43: LAB 28: LD 16: OTH 13 Conservatives 15% ahead Putting these shares into the Baxter calculator Labour would…
. Could one of these be Britain’s 2nd woman party leader? With the speculation about Ming’s future as Lib Dem leader it’s inevitable that people should be thinking about who could succeed him. So far the main focus has been on Nick Clegg (8/11), who did not do his chances any good the other day after being over-heard discussing Ming’s failings in a mobile phone call. As well as Clegg in the betting are David Laws (4/1), Ed Davey (5/1)…
Could a contest now be a proxy vote on both Brown and Blair? The two big current issues in UK politics – Blair’s departure date and whether Brown will succeed him – could be brought to a head if the Deputy Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott steps aside and there is a contest. After a weekend of rising specualtion both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have come to Prescott’s defence because it appears to be in the interest…
“They’ll be dancing in the streets of Witney tonight!” Phew! Everyone calmed down now after the local elections at the start of the month? That’s a relief because boy has this month been a real rollercoaster for all concerned (and to think it all started with a set of local elections that were quite frankly unpredictable). When the dust had settled and the councils all declared it was clear that was just one winner and that was David Cameron’s Conservatives….
The week when Labour stopped being General Election favourite A hugely significant betting moment during the week when, almost certainly for the first time since 1992, the Tories became favourite to win the following General Election. The Betfair “Labour winning most sears” price is 1.02/1 compared with 0.98/1 for the Toires. What’s interesting is that this change has taken such a long time coming. Throughout the past few months of cash for peerages, Tessa Jowell, and the foreign prisoners affair…
Who’ll succeed John Prescott as Deputy Leader? You’ve heard of shy Tory voters. Well, I’m a shy Labour MP who’s been reading the site for a while. While Nick Palmer and to some extent Stewart Jackson seem willing to post under their own names with reckless abandon, most MPs are reticent about accumulating a trail of comments that can be dug up years later. And I don’t have the time for the running battles that most of you seem to…
HOW BADLY ARE LABOUR DOING AT LOCAL LEVEL? My initial reaction to the local election results was that while they were bad for Labour, they weren’t terrible. Having thought more about this, I think the results were indeed terrible for Labour. Labour now has almost as few councillors (in percentage terms) as it had in 1978, and far fewer than it had in the 1980s. Labour’s local government base has eroded far more rapidly than that of the Conservatives in…
Could new poll put further pressure on Ming? The May YouGov poll in the Telegraph has the following shares with comparisons on the last survey by the pollster two weeks ago CON 38 (+1): LAB 32 (+1): LD 16 (-1). So all the main pollsters with the regular monthly newspapers slots – YouGov, Populus and ICM – put Cameron’s Conservatives on the same level of support – 38% – and this is starting to look fairly robust. But a 38%…