Will incumbents hold on in London/Washington/Paris? It’s a big year coming up opening with the Iowa caucus on Tuesday to be followed by a White House race primary programme lasting nearly six months – which I think is the longest ever. On this side of the Atlantic there’s the French Presidential election in April/May where Sarkorzy will be fighting for a second term. We haven’t covered that yet – I’ve been waiting for Betfair to open up a market –…
Were your 2011 picks crystal clear or “through a glass darkly?†Congratulations to Oliver who finished 29 points ahead of Jim Lowe with Dan Tor in third place in PB’s annual prediction competition – the full table with all players is available here, as well as an Excel spreadsheet showing the detailed breakdown of results. These were the questions from a year ago. The first section looked at key posts as at Christmas 2011, and the first three questions were…
Which of these 5 women will still be in the cabinet at the end of 2012? (Tick all that apply) Baroness Warsi Theresa May Justine Greening Cheryl Gillan Caroline Spelman pollcode.com free polls
Will 2012 bring tests for all three party leaders? First up in January David Cameron needs to make a judgement call on a tricky little situation involving Aidan Burley MP. The Conservatives are currently investigating the situation that resulted in the MP for Cannock Chase being present at a Nazi-themed stag party in a French Restaurant, praising the Third Reich and allegedly hiring the costume. To make things worse Burley, now shorn of his PPS role and of future Ministerial…
Which of these Lib Dems will still be in the cabinet at the end of 2012? (Tick all that apply) Chris Huhne Vince Cable Danny Alexander Nick Clegg Michael Moore
Is he now in with a shout in Iowa? With just five campaigning days to go before Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses there’s been huge movement in a CNN/Time poll in the state. These are the shares with changes on the last similar poll three weeks ago: Romney 25% (+5) Paul 2% (+3) Santorum 16% (+11) Gingrich 14% (-19) Perry 11% (+2) Bachmann 9% (+2) Huntsman 1% (-3) The survey came out only a few hours after US political analyst, Nate Silver,…
After experimenting with approval voting for the first two sections of this years election a different approach is being taken for the main ballot. Rather than putting a tick beside the contender of your choice you are asked to rate each of them by clicking on the stars. This is known as range voting – see here. Note that if you do not rate a candidate then that person’s score will be the average from voters who did make a…
How best to avoid the traps and win the prizes? The US presidential election is one of the best in which serious money can be made because of the large number of candidates who might eventually triumph, because it’s not usually clear until relatively late in the day who the final two will be, because the fact that there are only two candidates late on mean bets can be easily laid off without needing exchanges (though Betfair does tend to…