It was always going to be the case surely that support for the monarchy would fall off a bit following the death of the Queen. She had a very special appeal built up over the decades and this was something that she could not pass on to her firstborn. The cost and sheer extravagance of the Coronation at a time when the vast majority of the Kings subjects were having to tighten their belts was inevitably going to be difficult…
But he’s still a 25% chance in the betting The big development in the 2024 White House race has been the expected announcement by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that he was in fact standing for the presidency. This was hardly a surprise that has had almost exactly no impact on the betting. It has had an impact on his fundraising. NYT reports that he raised $8.2 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate – a huge sum…
Robert Ford is the Professor of Political science at Manchester University.
One of the great things about the pollster Ipsos is that it has been carrying out political surveys in the UK since the mid-1970s. In the early days, it was known just as MORI but now it is part of the international polling group Ipsos. It has an incredible polling library which enables it to produce comparisons like the one above on how various opposition leaders were doing at this stage into their term of office. One thing the chart…
My one WH2024 Republican nomination bet so far is on the former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. That is pretty impressive CV. A big reason is that she is likely to do very well her own state’s primary which usually comes straight after Iowa and New Hampshire. If that happens then it’s likely she will be portrayed in the media as the frontrunner to take on Trump very early on in the…
As well as the regular general election voting intention polls we should not ignore the leader approval numbers and the latest weekly numbers from R&W sees both Sunak and Starmer taking a bit of a tumble. The big challenge for opposition leaders is getting their voice heard because inevitably they can only say things whereas the PM can do things that can be both a positive and a negative. I like the way R&W test this every week in its…
As can be seen in the Smarkets chart Biden has continued to rise in the WH2024 betting and the main limitation he faces is in relation to his own health. When the primaries start in early January he will be 81 and that is surely going to become an issue. It is increasingly likely in the eyes of punters that WH2024 will be a rematch of WH2024 with Biden facing Trump. All the polling has voters saying that Biden should…
The big political betting news today is that a by-election looks set to take place in the Scottish seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West which was an SNP gain from LAB at GE2019. The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP broke Covid rules in 2020 by traveling on a train from London to Scotland having tested positive. The standards watchdog recommended that she be banned from the Commons for 30 days – a punishment that has now been confirmed. This now leaves the…