Is it all doom and gloom? I’ve just accepted an invitation to give my thoughts on the general election outcome at a fringe event at the Labour conference in Brighton. This will be the first time I’ve been and I like the idea that it’s at somebody else’s expense. There’s a similar session at the Tory conference the following week. What I’ve been pondering is what on earth can I say in Brighton that is not going to go down…
Was this the secret of his popularity as chancellor? With a bit of luck there might be a weekend poll and if there is it could help us to answer one of the questions that is often posed – does seeing Gordon Brown or not seeing him on our screens everyday have an impact on Labour’s opinion poll ratings? For both he and David Cameron have been away for getting on for a fortnight so any new survey would have…
Sean Fear says don’t bet on a United Ireland any time soon Irish Nationalism has proved to be the most successful, patient, and subtle form of local nationalism within these Islands. Few people would have bet on an end to British rule in Ireland in 1800, yet by 1900, most tiers of government outside Ulster were de facto controlled by Irish Nationalists, and by 1921, most of the country was independent. The exception of course, was in the Six Counties…
Two weeks ago, I introduced a new election forecasting model. This generated much heat, and a little light in the numerous comments. Many were scepticical, arguing that it used proportional swing, others asked how a model that produced such different results to Unified National Swing could be taken seriously. Many of the criticisms came from a lack of understanding of how the model – which we’ve nicknamed Voter Intention Prediction Analysis, or VIPA – works. This post explains why VIPA…
But what did a recovering economy do for Major in 1997? It has been one of the key hopes of Labour that the outcome of the general election will be determined by the economy and how well off voters feel by the time we get to polling day. So there should be delight in Downing Street with some of the new this morning. This is how the main front page story in today’s Guardian by Ashley Seager, economics correspondent, opens:-…
PB March 12 2009 Should we be looking at Labour’s deputy again? Back in March, when Harriet was the 100/30 favourite, I suggested that then might be the moment to cross of her off the least for the Labour leadership. One of my arguments was her poor showing in a YouGov poll of Labour members a week or so earlier in which she did not come out too well. Since then we’ve had the rise and and rise of Alan…
Ipsos-MORI Why do only 2 in 100 voters think that the EU is an issue? The chart above is from latest MORI Issues Index and shows how concern about the Common Market/EU/Europe/EURO continues to be at very low levels – something that now concerns only 2% of those polled. The index has been compiled in the same way for 30 years and involves asking, completely unprompted, what interviewees think are the “most important issues facing Britain today“. There is no…