Could the GOP be repeating the mistake of 1996? Anybody thinking of betting on John McCain for the White House should take a look at one or two articles recently that have started to draw parallels between his presidential bid and the last time the Republicans chose a candidate in his early 70s – Bob Dole. Like McCain Bob Dole is a war hero having won two purple hearts and one bronze star. Only a few weeks before the German…
This week’s YouGov poll on the London Mayoral race has Boris’s lead before the second preference distribution down from 13% to 6% in a week. The margin is exactly the same for this measure as in yesterday’s MORI survey. The figures are: Boris 45% (-4): Ken 39% (+3):Paddick 12% (+2) Where YouGov and MORI diverge is over what happens to the second preferences. YouGov reports an 8% Boris margin while MORI had this at 2%. This is all in line…
Are there signs that they are becoming less enthusiastic? If at the end of August in Denver Hillary Clinton is crowned as her party’s presidential nominee then there is one demographic segment she can thank the most – white women. Throughout the campaign the ex-first lady has consistently led amongst this group who, it will be recalled, first made their presence felt when they flocked to the polls in New Hampshire at the start of January and helped her pull…
A new regular column focusing on the international scene Welcome to what’s planned to be a regular Sunday evening column, partly inspired by Sean Fear’s excellent Friday articles on UK politics. I can’t promise that this column will be quite as regular as Sean’s, but the plan is for it to come out fortnightly if possible and we’ll see how it goes. The “mission statement” for the column will be to focus primarily on international politics, outside the PB mainstays…
What will the next YouGov poll show? The betting markets had this one right yesterday. Late on Saturday morning there was a big move back to Boris in the London Mayoral betting and there was speculation here that someone had got wind of some new polling. The Ipsos-MORI firm, which was showing 2% leads for Ken in the previous two of its polls to be published, is now reporting in the Observer that the Tory is 2% ahead amongst those…
Cameron’s party hits 44% – the highest since the Thatcher years A new YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times puts the Tories at 44% the second highest share in any poll since the Thatcher years. The headline with figures the changes on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago are:- CON 44%(+1),: LAB 28%(-1): LD 17%(nc). This poll equals that which Tony Blair got in his landslide victory in May 1997 and the margin is in excess of…
Why the change in Boris and Ken prices? There’s been a sharp move to Boris during the past hour in the London Mayoral race betting. As at 12.25pm he was at 1.51 which he was last at before the Unison-sponsored Ipsos-MORI poll in Wednesday morning. A couple of people have emailed me to say that the Observer is carrying a poll tomorrow and the paper’s normal pollster is Ipsos-MORI. I don’t know the truth of this but have been following…
Is 5/1 that he will a good value bet? Matthew Parris’s Saturday column in the Times is almost always a good read although his views on Gordon Brown have to be read in the context of an hostility that has continued for years. But this morning he raises an issue that I have been planning to cover for weeks – could Gordon be out before the general election? Parris concludes: “..Many political and journalistic reputations have been staked on taking…