Is he now in with a shout in Iowa? With just five campaigning days to go before Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses there’s been huge movement in a CNN/Time poll in the state. These are the shares with changes on the last similar poll three weeks ago: Romney 25% (+5) Paul 2% (+3) Santorum 16% (+11) Gingrich 14% (-19) Perry 11% (+2) Bachmann 9% (+2) Huntsman 1% (-3) The survey came out only a few hours after US political analyst, Nate Silver,…
After experimenting with approval voting for the first two sections of this years election a different approach is being taken for the main ballot. Rather than putting a tick beside the contender of your choice you are asked to rate each of them by clicking on the stars. This is known as range voting – see here. Note that if you do not rate a candidate then that person’s score will be the average from voters who did make a…
How best to avoid the traps and win the prizes? The US presidential election is one of the best in which serious money can be made because of the large number of candidates who might eventually triumph, because it’s not usually clear until relatively late in the day who the final two will be, because the fact that there are only two candidates late on mean bets can be easily laid off without needing exchanges (though Betfair does tend to…
Betfair Politics The main overall White House race market on Betfair is this one – on which party will win the election in November. Clearly at the moment we don’t know who the GOP candidate will be and whether there could be a third contender. Donald Trump has been mentioned as has Ron Paul should he not get the Republican nomination. We’ve also seen Obama’s approval ratings edging back up and generally these can be a good pointer. In the…
How are you liking the system for this year’s POTY elections? As PB regulars will recall we generally hold our Poster of the Year elections using first past the post. Twelve months ago, after the formal voting had taken place, Rod Crosby staged an experimental ballot using the AV system – which was to be the subject of the referendum a few months later. This year, as an experiment, we are using a system that has not been seen much…
Mike Snyder (Sea Shanty Irish) looks back at the record YEAR Party STATE TOTAL VOTES FIRST PLACE 2nd PLACE 3rd PLACE 4th PLACE 5th PLACE 1988 Dem Iowa D = 120,000 Gephardt 31% Simon 27% DUKAKIS 22% Jackson 9% Babbit 6% NH D = 125,000 DUKAKIS 36% Gephardt 20% Simon 17% Jackson 8% Iowa give Gephardt narrow win, but NH backlash boosts neighbor Dukakis, sets back Gephardt & Simon Rep Iowa R = 110,000 Dole 38% Robertson 25% BUSH1 19%…
Now for the international section When voting closed at the appointed time yesterday the person with most votes in the newcomer category of the PB Poster of the Year was MrsB. It was a tightly fought contest with at different stages three contenders being in the lead. The final result was:- MrsB 201 votes Old_Labour 196 votes Beverley_C 192 votes Mick Pork 101 votes Uniondivvie 39 votes Congratulations to Mrs B and all who made the short-list. The election took…
Are we now over the veto bounce? Anthony Wells at UKPollingReport signed off yesterday saying “No polls over Christmas of course,..” well on that count at least he’s wrong. The Guardian has held over its December ICM poll for its Boxing Day edition. LAB is up two to 36% while CON is down three to 37%. The LDs move up another point from the pollster which traditionally has them in a better light than other firms. Although the changes are…