Has Gord anointed Balls as the next Labour leader? After more than a decade of serving under the ex-public school boy and Oxford graduate, Tony Blair, it’s suggested this morning that Gord has decided that Labour’s next leader should be Ed Balls – who went to a £10,000 a year public school as a day pupil and then onto Oxford. According to Iain Martin in the Sunday Telegraph Brown is planning to hand-over to his former top aide and now…
This could be about the narrative – not the numbers Firstly can I make clear that the last post was by my son Robert and not me – as some on the thread suggested. I have not changed my mind from Wednesday and believe that in spite of the apparent mathematical disadvantage that Hillary might just still do it. A good test of US opinion is the Iowa Electronic Market – an institution that was set up by the state…
Hillary has a plan; win the popular vote and persuade the super-delegates that she is not just the better candidate but has a moral claim to the nomination. Should the gap in pledged delegates be less than 100, then this might just work. The only problem she has is that the maths is hard; very hard. Excluding Florida, Hillary needs to pull back 410,000 votes between now and the final primary. (And she’ll be hard pressed to include Puerto Rico…
Just over a fortnight ago I suggested that the picture of John McCain being hugged by George Bush might come to haunt him. Well within two days of him securing the GOP nomination it is already starting. Above is Democratic party general election ad seeking to get over the close links between Bush and McCain. The closing sequence is that hugging picture. The linkage with Bush that his opponents are trying to establish will be one of the key determinants…
Why the new confidence on the spread markets? While all main focus has been on the US elections there’s been a quiet move to the Tories on the spread betting markets on the number of seats the parties will get at the general election. This is the form of betting where you “trade” on the seat numbers and where, if you predict it right, you can make short-term profits to pocket now even though it is at least a year…
A new storm is brewing tonight in the fight for the Democratic nomination – a suggestion that in one of her Ohio and Texas TV ads that the Hillary campaign darkened Obama’s skin. The above is from the American Blog although the story first started on the Daily Kos. This one is bound to run. Mike Smithson
What about a “something untoward” wager? Some bookmakers have already paid out on John McCain securing the Republican nomination for the November Presidential election. While that’s very commendable it is important to note that he isn’t the nominee yet and we’ll have to wait until the party convention in September before this is formalised. Betfair, which has seen nearly £1.8m matched on this market, will be holding onto punters’ money (and earning a nice slab of interest) until everything is…
Does anybody out there care about EU matters? After last night’s big commons vote rejecting a referendum on the Lisbon treats it is perhaps worth looking at how all of this ranks in the public’s mind. For once again there’s strong polling evidence that it barely registers as an issue that voters care about. For after a period when the big political story has been Britain’s relationship with the EU the latest Ipsos-MORI monitor is out with, amongst other things…