What are the best bets? The first round of voting in the French Presidential election takes place on Sunday with the second round scheduled for a fortnight later. The system is that the top two this weekend go forward to the final round provided no candidate has got more than 50% of the vote. At the PB party last night the consensus was that the Socialist contender, Francois Hollande, would win both the first and second rounds of voting –…
..is a CON majority becoming an impossible dream? The chart shows the latest LAB leads in the eight pollsters featured and the top six present a very glum picture for the Tories. The chart shows that last night’s YouGov 32/45/8 is not out of line – certainly in terms of the LAB lead over CON. The exceptions, ICM and Ipsos-MORI, with just 1% LAB leads, are the oldest in the list and are from March. Fieldwork for their April surveys…
This is the place for PB’s easy going overnight conversation. Have a good evening. Just heading home from Dirty Dicks. More later @MikeSmithsonOGH
Why the difference with the telephone pollsters? The big polling story this wekk, apart from the London mayoral race, has been the very high UKIP shares that have been reported. To track it I put have together the above chart showing the latest UKIP shares across the range of pollsters. The difference is very clear – the online firms appear to have much bigger numbers. As can been seen the latest surveys from all the telephone polls have UKIP at…
Who’ll survive with fewer losses – the blues or the yellows? The above charts are from the presentation by Professor Colin Rallings at the briefing on the May 3rd local elections organised by the Political Studies Association. Each year Rallings, together with his academic partner at the University of Plymouth, Michael Thrasher, compute a national equivalent vote share based on the local election results. The top chart shows the trend since 1997 which illustrates vividly why the 2012 elections hold…
This is the place for PB’s easy going overnight conversation. Have a good evening. @MikeSmithsonOGH
National Equivalent vote share: CON 34%-4/LAB 37%-/LD 18%+2 The above national equivalent vote share projection, with comparisons on last year, is the annual one produced by Professor Rawlings & Thrasher of the University of Plymouth. The figures are derived from local by elections which in the past have proved to be quite a good predictor. They were produced at a briefing session in London this morning organised by the Political Studies Association. Compared with 2008 when most of the seats…
Economist/Ipsos-MORI Issues Index The April Ipsos-MORI issues index for the Economist is just out and shows that concerns about unemployment are the highest since 1998. Petrol prices/fuel which was just 6% in February continues to rise and is now at 15% – reflecting both the threat of the tanker drivers strike and the increasing price of a litre. The other main changes are in the table above which features the top ten. We’ll have to wait until the full data…