Kamala Harris still clear betting favourite to be Biden’s running mate
If it hadn’t been for CO-19 we would be just three weeks away from the local elections including the big one for Mayor or London. Those, of course, got postponed and there will be an even bigger range of elections taking place in May 2021. In previous years the London Mayoral race has been a big betting event and the incument, Sadiq Khan, was the tight odds on favourite. My guess is that it will be the same in a…
With six and a half months to go till WH2020 Trump is still in negative approval territory
Unlike in the UK where for less importance is attached to leader ratings the approval numbers for an incumbent US president are generally seen as a good indicator of how the next election is going to shape out. YouGov, which is now very well established in the US, just put out its latest chart showing the trend since just after Trump became president in early 2017 till the present day. What can be seen is that he has had much…
In a State: Assessing WH2020
Why Trump approval ratings are a better pointer than state polls I do have some fairly strong views on the election. In particular, I would advise you to cast aside state polling on Biden vs Trump and look instead at Trump’s favourability on a state-by-state basis. Why? Because US pollsters use very strict turnout filters. Didn’t vote in Election 2016… well, they largely assume that you won’t vote in 2020. This matters, especially as President Trump didn’t win 2016, Hillary…
Biden moves to a 92% chance on Betfair following the Sanders pull-out & Harris remains VP favourite
Following last night’s Wisconsin primary the big WH2020 news today has been the widely expected withdrawal from the race by Bernie Sanders. This means that Biden now has a clear run into to what would have been the convention in three and a half months. That clearly remains very much in doubt because of the epidemic and the party will be looking at other ways of staging the convention which would give the nominee a big publicity boost. One feature…
How Trump and his media acolytes got the coronavirus wrong
Might be problematical in election year The above compilation of clips, mostly from Fox News, shows how leading media supporters of the President and Trump himself were viewing the epidemic only a few weeks ago. Since then the US has become the nation most affected and Trump has changed his tune. His latest is blaming the World Health Organisation. The initial stance from the White House was reflected in the polling. In mid-March Ipsos found that 63% of Democrats and…
Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the woman who’s got under Trump’s skin, moves up in the Dem VP betting
At 15/1 she’s worth a punt One of the features of the coronavirus crisis is that we are hearing a lot more from some American state governors. We’ve already seen the developments relating to Andrew Cuomo of New York and another one whose role in the crisis is getting a fair degree of national coverage is Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. You can tell she’s being effective because her approach is causing a lot of irritation from President who who refers…
Biden trailing badly in terms of the enthusiasm of his backers
These are worse numbers than Hillary was getting at WH2016 This is a good polling question and one that I attach importance to – just how enthusiastic are your backers. This, surely is something that will show when it comes to election day and how many of your backers will actually be bothered to turn out. The comparison with Trump supporters is striking. What should worry the Democratic establishment is that when a similar question was asked of party supporters…