Will Mitt add Washington state to his victory list? Later on tonight we should start to get results from Washington state where caucuses have been taking place. There’s an 8 hour time-gap with the UK and the meetings were scheduled for the afternoon. The latest polling had Romney ahead. My piece tonight for the Telegraph on the US election is here. @MikeSmithsonOGH
How does the UK get a winning entry again? The decision to have septuagenarian Engelbert Humperdinck represent the UK at Eurovision 2012 has to be one of the bolder picks of recent years and certainly represents a break from the ‘young and pretty’ of recent years. It may yet prove to be an inspired choice but is far more likely to end in tears. Humperdinck does apparently have a fan base in Eastern Europe – though how many of these…
Is he denying Santorum frontrunner status? For all the time, money and energy spent in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, not all that much has been decided in the first two months. The states that have voted so far account for only about three hundred delegates, and the final allocation of some of them isn’t settled. March is an entirely different prospect. After Washington today (43 delegates), Super Tuesday sees states worth well over 400 delegates go to…
#horsegate cont: “In one story you have the PM, a Murdoch crony, the Met and a horse – which in the UK is in itself a symbol of privilege.” — Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) March 2, 2012 Anthony King, Essex prof, on #horsegate: “The intrinsic importance of this story is nil but the symbolic importance is immense.”… — Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) March 2, 2012 @MikeSmithsonOGH
Betfair Politics Is there anything that can stop him now? The big news from the polling ahead of the nominating contests in the eleven states that decide tomorrow or on Tuesday is that Mitt Romney is on a roll. PPP have him 5% ahead in tomorrow’s caucuses in Washington state. The latest from Ohio, Santorum’s big hope, is that Mitt is closing the gap with one poll having him 4% ahead and the other just 2%. If Santorum is overhauled…
Nate Silver’s 538 blog New York Times Nate Silver, who runs the excellent 538 blog at the New York Times, has produced a lengthy analysis overnight on the performance of polls in the current primary season. His chart above tracks the error in the polls and compares it to the number of days in advance of the election that they were conducted. Nate calculates the error by looking at how much the polls missed the final margin between the top…
Boris tells c4 Gary gibbon he ‘wont seek leadership’ of his party and ‘won’t return to parliament’ if he loses mayor vote in may. — Robin Brant (@robindbrant) March 1, 2012 Is he planning to leave politics if defeated. It sounds like it? @MikeSmithsonOGH
What’ll this do to VI figures? ICM, which in 1995 became the first UK polling firm to mount political surveys by phone, announced this afternoon that from the March poll for the Guardian about 150 of the 1000 interviews will be achieved via interviews on mobile phones. This is in response to the decline in proportion on the population who have land-lines and the increasing difficulty reaching young voters particularly young men. According to research by Ofcom 32% of those…