How an automated canvas is made to sound like a poll This week the excellent Pollster.com site in the US carried this video of what was purported to be a survey from a pollster but was probably what is known as “push polling”. This is defined by Wikipedia as “…a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large…
Will today’s polls bring a smile back to his face? Following the good news for Labour in last night’s YouGov poll on the London mayoralty there’s a further boost for the party in new national voting intention surveys from YouGov and ICM this morning. And one of them has Labour’s deficit down to just two per cent. The latter finding is in the monthly ICM survey for the Guardian which has, with comparisons on the last poll from the firm…
YouGov puts him 4% ahead After one of his most controversial weeks since becoming Mayor in 2000 there’s a boost tonight for Ken Livingstone in his bid to secure a third term in the most powerful directly elected office in the UK. A Yougov survey for ITV London found – with changes on its last poll a month ago – Ken 44% (-1): Boris 40% (-4): Paddick LD 8% (nc) The poll detail is not yet available so it’s hard…
Could the Lib Dems Replace Labour? An electoral system based on First Past the Post forces voters to choose between two alternatives. Constituencies that are three (or even four) way marginals rarely remain in that position for very long. Sooner or later, they revert to a two way contest. Sometimes, the party that originally held the seat will be relegated to a distant third place. What is true at constituency level has historically been true at national level. There is…
Can the pollster be accused of “persistently understating” his ratings? With the row over Ken Livingstone’s custodianship of the London mayoralty continuing unabated the election on May 1st that will determine his future looks set to be the biggest UK political betting bonanza since the 2005 general election. It has all the ingredients that make it attractive to punters – high profile contenders who everybody knows by their first names; passionate feelings across the political spectrum about the current incumbent…
Betfair now match £1m on the Democratic battle? With just one day’s campaigning to go before the crucial South Carolina Democratic primary both of the leading contenders, Clinton and Obama, have issued new radio ads in the increasingly angry war of words between the two camps. The impact of such advertising is not usually to make converts but to reinforce your own side to get them to vote. Obama needs a big victory on Saturday to stay in this race….
Is this worth betting on? William Hill are offering odds of 5/1 that Peter Hain will be back in the Cabinet by the end of 2008, and 3/1 that he will return there by the end of 2009. ‘Mr Hain was a 7/1 shot to be out of the Cabinet by the end of this January and 2/1 to be the first Cabinet Minister to lose his position – so many political punters are celebrating his departure’ said Hill’s spokesman…
Within the past few minutes we have had the news that Peter Hain has resigned. The move follows an announcement by the Electoral Commission announced that it had referred the issue of undeclared donations to his deputy leadership campaign to the police. The question now is what will be the political impact? This had also been a betting market – at one stage you could have got 7-1 that he would be out this month. Mike Smithson