“LAB 359: CON 198” – Is it really so bad for Michael Howard? Our longstanding call on Labour to win most seats at the General Election and the huge mountain that Michael Howard has to climb are, on the face of it, reinforced by this latest General Election prediction by City financial mathematician, Martin Baxter. LAB 33.22% (-8.87%): CON 32.46% (-0.24%): LIBD 20.77% (+1.93%) This gives the following Commons seats- LAB 359 (-44): CON 198 (+33): LIBD 58 (+7) Overall…
Post Updated Sunday – 0530 But be careful about rushing in to bet Unsurprisingly two opinion polls this morning show that a big majority of UK voters would vote NO in the planned referendum on the EU Constitution that was agreed in Brussels on Friday. YouGov for the Sunday Times has 23% in favour to 49% against. An ICM poll, commissioned by the non-party NO campaign, has 28% in favour to 57% against. But political gamblers should be very wary…
A week on from the London Mayoral Election and our abortive call you cannot but admire what an extraordinary politician Ken Livingstone is. Looking at the results again the striking feature is that more than a third of all those who gave Ken their first preference did not vote Labour in the London Assembly election at the same time. They were voting for the man and not the party. To work out why all you have to do is get…
Labour’s Barry Sheerman Polititcal gamblers should ignore what appears to be a concerted campaign, that includes Downing Street, to rubbish YouGov, the internet company that this week proved itself to be the UK’s most accurate polling company. Only two of the four organisations that regularly look at voting intention in the UK carried out surveys ahead of the European elections, the results of which came out on Sunday and Monday. One was Populus that uses conventional methodology – the other…
How Labour’s 22.6% Euro votes would have produced 300 Westminster seats For several months we’ve been warning political gamblers about the risks of backing the Conservatives for the General Election because the way that Westminster seats are distributed means that the system is skewed towards Labour. With the rise of non-traditional parties such as UKIP this bias has become even more acute. It’s now possible for Labour to be 9% behind on votes and end up with more MPs. Nothing…
This 2001 General Election poster seeks to address a big problem for the Lib Dems – that of credibility. Electors might be attracted by the policy platform, they might give them a try at a local level as 29% did last Thursday, but at a General Election many do not believe they can win in a particular seat and see the Lib Dems as a “wasted vote”. But performances like this year’s local elections might start to change perceptions, especially…
The price on Tony Blair being Labour leader at the General election dropped nearly a third in the aftermath of yesterday’s press conference when he appeared to look unwell. Prior to yesterday the Blair price had been trading at about 1.6. In the immediate period afterwards it went to touch 1.8 and has now settled down at about 1.68. For those not familiar with this form of pricing it means that if you had £100 at 1.6 you would receive…
Are the spread gamblers reading it wrongly? Either spread gamblers or the spread bookmakers seem to have concluded that Super Thursday was better for Labour than the Tories or Lib Dems and prices have moved Labour’s way. LAB 328-338 (+5) CON 240-250 (-3) LIB 53-58 (-2) Although our General Election CALL remains with Labour this was not reinforced by Thursday’s elections and we think that the spread markets are reacting wrongly. The Lib Dem spread seems to offer good value…