I could almost have sympathy for Rachel Reeves. The much hyped October budget approaches and whatever she does she will have the sound of wailing and the gnashing of teeth. It has been her misfortune to hang her hat on the OBR and thereby leave a vacuum on what she will do. Politics like nature hates a vacuum and in the self imposed silence all manner of conjecture has been given ample room to feed rumours and speculate on Armageddon. …
Longstanding PBers will know my derision for hypothetical polling, particularly those polls potentially nearly five years away from the next general election but there is something intriguing about this poll. Neither candidate can get the Tories to 200 MPs and Badenoch barely gets them to 150 MPs which would be an even worse result than 1997. As we can see from Bobby J’s tweet Team Jenrick will spin this poll to show he’s better than Badenoch which could shift the…
In America we get to see almost live postal (aka absentee) vote returns in a way that just isn’t permissible in the UK. Whilst most Americans will vote on November 5th a substantial number of Americans are already voting or have voted and people will analyse those returns to extrapolate the result of the White House race and I am not sure that is wise. In the past when I was a political betting ingénue I’ve gotten things wrong on…
Chart from Betdata.io of the next Tory leadership market over the last ten days A few years ago I met somebody from the world of politics and the discussion turned to political betting. They said that people in the Westminster village followed PB and the political betting markets as there was a belief the smart money was always right given the amounts traded. It was no surprise to me that so many people were implicated in the political betting scandal…
I think there’s some value in backing Harris at these prices as this is still a 50/50 race, we shall find out in twenty one days. TSE
The year 2000 is perhaps best remembered in the UK for the Millenium Dome, the fuel protests and Y2K. For the US, it would be their first presidential election of a new millennium. Incumbent Bill Clinton was term limited after winning in 1992 and 1996, meaning there would be a new President For the Democrats, Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee won fairly comfortably against a challenge from Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey For the Republicans, Governor George W…
Not much movement, and yet lots of movement (for some).The national polling gap continues to narrow slightly, fairly uniformly (we’ll get to Princeton). And yet… Harris’s vote share is actually increasing, just slightly slower than Trump’s. It would seem that both sides’ voters are firming up their views. Harris may be happy to have a lead, Trump may be happy the lead might not be enough for Harris to overcome the disadvantage the Dems have in the Electoral College. Princeton…
The Times are reporting Up to a dozen Conservative MPs are considering standing down before the next election because of Labour’s imminent clampdown on second jobs. Senior party sources told The Times that they expected “a drip of resignations” to begin after the Tory leadership contest, starting in the new year. Those who served in Rishi Sunak’s government and who were passed over for senior shadow cabinet roles are said to be most likely to quit. One former cabinet minister…