Why is there confusion at the Guardian over the Lib Dem total? The main lead in the Guardian this morning is its new ICM poll which shows huge changes on the last survey from the pollster just under a fortnight ago. These are the shares with comparisons on that survey – CON 37% (-6): LAB 31% (-4): LD 21/23% (+6/8) The reason why I am quoting two figures for the Lib Dems is that the story in the Guardian says…
Focus on Lancashire I’ve commented several times that while a strong performance for the Conservatives in Southern England would be sufficient to deprive Labour of their majority, there is no chance of the Conservatives winning an overall majority without regaining a lot of ground in the North of England, something they conspicuously failed to do in 2005. Nowhere is that more true than in Lancashire, a key battleground for decades between the Conservatives and Labour. When the new boundary changes…
Sky News commissioning Huhne-Clegg poll Adam Boulton has emailed me to say that Sky News has commissioned a YouGov Poll of party members on the LibDem Leadership race. This will be carried out next week and they will have the results to make available ion the evening of Saturday 1st December. Given that by then a large proportion of members are likely to have voted then at least part of it will be akin to an exit poll. My guess…
Is Huhne really 20% ahead? In the absence of any proper polling of Lib Dem party members anybody wanting to have a punt on the leadership election has almost no hard evidence on which to make their choice. The Guardian, however, reports on a survey it carried out on Wednesday night amongst 200 members it questioned at a hustings meeting in Cambridge. The outcome was certainly encouraging for the former Guardian journalist and now party environment spokesman, Chris Huhne. This…
New poll indicates an overall Cameron majority of 14 A new YouGov poll tonight for Channel 4 shows the extent of the damage that has been caused by the CD-rom affair and indicates an overall majority for David Cameron of 14. These are the shares compared with the last survey from the YouGov panel on Sunday: CON 41% (nc): LAB 32% (-3) LD 14% (+1) The nine point Tory margin over Labour is the biggest that has ever been recorded…
Did Darling mislead the House? Some wag on the Today programme used the joke featured in the headline this morning – and after this evening’s release of emails from the National Audit Office it appears to be even more apt. For documents have just been released (you can download them here) which shed further light on the circumstances leading to the dispatch by HMRC of the missing data discs. Most importantly they cast doubt on the statement by Alistair Darling…
Is now the time to get on at 0.58/1? The above appeared in the Times earlier in the week and I have kept it to one side because of the missing CD-roms story which has dominated everything. Ken Livingstone’s brilliant ability as a politician is to find a simple, easy to understand issue ahead of an election and make that the main plank of his campaign. He also knows that the issue that’s central to voters in a vast conurbation…
Could Darling/Brown be accused of being “less than frank”? Two main articles this morning – a competition devised and operated by the site’s regular stand-in editor, Paul Maggs, on the Australian general election and the ongoing implications for the government of the missing data affair. Amongst the acres of coverage of the missing data CDs there are two stories which have the potential to cause serious problems for both Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown. For they suggest that the issue…