Polling boost for Chancellor’s wider role The first voting intention poll on how Brown would do against Cameron for two months is out today and shows that Labour and the Tories would be level-pegging on 38% each with the Lib Dems on 13% Unlike last week’s ICM survey in the News of the World and the Sunday Times YouGov poll three weeks ago today’s poll asked a specific voting intention question taking account of the Lib Dems and other parties….
Is Blair’s holiday host set to lose his job? While all the UK focus has been on whether Tessa Jowell will survive and what impact her departure would have on the Blair premiership the affair is hardly getting any coverage in Italy itself even though the core allegation is that the Prime Minster paid a bribe to Jowell’s now estranged husband, David Mills. For the big issue in Italy is whether the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi will hold onto…
Could a “favourite” be artificially created on the betting markets? The strange goings-on with the Huhne betting price during the final weeks of the Lib Dem race raise the question of whether party supporters with deep pockets could influence the course of a Westminster by-election. For in these contests a party has to establish itself as the undisputed challenger – an area of activity where the Lib Dems reign supreme. Any information, however tenuous, is used to get over that…
How did the predictors do? In our Lib Dem prediction competition, pregethwr has narrowly won from bigbucksbetty to take the coveted PB.C Lib Dem leadership competition trophy for 2006. The top five places went to:- 1. pregethwr (post 86) 1.75 points 2. bigbucksbetty (134) 1.93 3. Vino (114) 2.17 4. Dan (170) 2.57 5. Baskerville (53) 2.67 The winning entry was Campbell to be the leader getting 44.9% of the first preferences and 56.3% of the votes after the Hughes…
So what happened to YouGov? After weeks of arguing and analysis the big loser this afternoon must be YouGov. After the extraordinary successes in in getting the Tory leadership battles of 2001 and 2005 right today’s victory by a 14% margin by Ming Campbell must put a big question mark over membership polls. The 56.9 to 43.1 vote split compared with the Huhne 52% to Campbell 48% share that YouGov was predicting. With the favourite slot changing hands five times…
It’s 1.08/1 on a Hung Parliament With the next Lib Dem leader due to be announced this afternoon a new Betfair market has opened on whether the next General Election will result in a hung Parliament. After pressure from several PB.C regulars the betting exchange has created a market that looks set to be the busiest in the run-up to the next election. The options are LAB Majority (2.25/1) CON Majority (3.1/1) HUNG parliament (1.08/1). At this stage just after…
As a matter of record here is the final betting chart on the 2006 Lib Dem leadership race. This is based on the implied probability of victory based on the best betting prices. I like them because they do graphically illustrate changing perceptions over time. For all but four and a half weeks since the polls closed on May 5th 2005 we have had a leadership race taking place and our traffic has increased so that on most weekdays more…