How’s the Sun going to affect the voting dynamics? As we discussed on Thursday night there is a non-traditional candidate running in the Crewe and Nantwich by election who might just pick up enough votes to make a difference in the overall race. And this morning the Sun is going big this morning in its coverage of Gemma Garrett – the reigning Miss Great Britain who is standing as the “Beauties for Britain” candidate. Her basic platform that “I want…
Looking at the details of the Mayoral result? London Elects has now released ward-level data for the Mayoral and Assembly elections. It will provide hours of fun for political anoraks such as myself, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. I have, however, come to several conclusions. Firstly, Labour’s core vote strategy, which depended on portraying Johnson as a bigoted Hooray Henry, was successful across much of London. Overall, there was an average swing of 7.4% (on first preferences)…
Will the PM’s £2.7bn gamble pay off? In the previous thread we looked at the latest betting on Crewe and Nantwich where the best you can get is 0.21/1 on the Conservative victory. I think that is going to happen but betting at that price – not my normal way of doing things. I am coming to a view that Gordon Brown has wagered so much on next Thursday that if Labour is defeated by a significant margin then the…
…or have the punters got this one right? There were suggestions yesterday that Labour “private polling” was showing that the by election may not be the foregone conclusion that it appears. I am always suspicious of anything that party machines allow to be leaked – if they have such data then let the party publish it as was done in the London Mayoral race last February. If this is more than just spin to boost the morale of the troops…
Will the “dream ticket” happen whether Obama likes it or not? An interesting scenario on what could happen at the Democratic Convention in August over the party’s V-P choice is set out in this piece from Huffington Post. Jason Linkins puts it like this: “You imagine being on the floor in Denver. Hillary’s delegates, NEARLY HALF THE DELEGATES, are demanding she be on the ticket. These are true believers who have stuck with Clinton through thick and thin. To them,…
Screen shot from the Daily Politics What’ll be the polling impact of today’s media blitz? It has been very hard over the past eight or nine hours to avoid Gordon Brown. He’s gone from one TV or radio studio to another doing a big series of interviews to try to seize back the initiative. But will it have helped in the polls and at the Crewe and Nantwich by election? How will all this be going down with the public….
Is this the first polling move in the post-Ken world? In a number commentaries ahead of the May 1st London mayoral election I questioned whether the telephone pollsters were over-stating Ken’s support because of the way they calculated voting certainty. In fact it was this element that caused me to maintain a big betting position on the Tory even when the phone polling firms had Ken ahead. For it was clear from the turnout history of previous mayoral races that…
Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin is predicting a big announcement tonight. Could it be that John Edwards has come off the fence and is going to endorse Barack? Or could this be the start of something bigger – an Obama-Edwards ticket? The website Political Insider is making a strong case for Edwards who was , of course, the V-P nominee in 2004. We shall see. Mike Smithson