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Category: General Election

Tories drop five seats on the spreads following the Andrew Neil interview rumpus

Tories drop five seats on the spreads following the Andrew Neil interview rumpus

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SportingIndex Commons Spreads Punters think it will have an impact Just before the Andrew Neil video attack on Johnson was published the Tories were trading at 344 sell and 350 buy on the Sporting Index Commons seats spread betting market. Those are now down five seats. On the Betfair majority market the Tories are down just a point. Spread betting is much more sensitive here because the more people are right the more they win and the more they are…

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The killer polling numbers for Corbyn – the pre election Ipsos-MORI leader ratings

The killer polling numbers for Corbyn – the pre election Ipsos-MORI leader ratings

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As I have said repeatedly over the years leader ratings are a better guide to election outcomes than voting intention numbers. The reason is that this form of questioning is what pollsters do best – asking for opinions not seeking to get poll participants to predict whether they might take part in some future event and what they will actually do. Ipsos-MORI has been doing this in the UK since the late 1970s and has resisted the temptation to mess…

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The number that should worry the Tories

The number that should worry the Tories

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Andrew Neil’s attack on Johnson goes viral By 5am this morning, as my screen grab shows, there had been 3.3m views of the Andrew Neil video attacking Johnson for chickening out of doing an interview with him. That is a staggering number which doubt will increase during the day. No doubt the calculation in Number 10 was that the potential negative of being subject to 30 minutes of forensic scrutiny by Neil was worse than the downside of not taking…

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Johnson’s taking a big gamble avoiding Andrew Neil

Johnson’s taking a big gamble avoiding Andrew Neil

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“It is not too late. We have an interview prepared. Oven-ready, as Mr Johnson likes to say” Andrew Neil issues a challenge for Boris Johnson to commit to an interview with him, to face questions on why people have “deemed him to be untrustworthy”https://t.co/daHLxEYn4r pic.twitter.com/oQ21uDdtJe — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) December 5, 2019 This’ll contine right through to next Thursday In this clip Neil makes a powerful case why Johnson should be there and if Tory strategy is that this could…

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Protecting Our Democracy?

Protecting Our Democracy?

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Remember the Supreme Court cases on prorogation or Article 50? How irrelevant they seem if, as polls indicate, the Tories get a majority. With 7 days to go, can there be a better time to wheel out Wilson’s dictum about a week being a long time in politics?  There cannot. Consider it duly wheeled out. And yet the “Protect our Democracy” section in the Tory manifesto (pages 47-48, here) has not received the scrutiny it deserves. It starts with what some might consider a…

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Johnson is surely relatively safe in his Uxbridge & Ruislip constituency

Johnson is surely relatively safe in his Uxbridge & Ruislip constituency

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At the referendum it was 56.4% Leave In some quarters quite a lot of people have been getting excited about Johnson possibly running into trouble in his Uxbridge & Ruislip constituency which he held at GE2017 with a majority of 5k+. In the chart I’ve shown the vote shares from last time and the projection by Prof Chris Hanratty on the party shares there at the May 23rd Euros. First thing to note is that this is not your typical…

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Dominic Raab’s rock solid safe seat now a key GE2019 battleground

Dominic Raab’s rock solid safe seat now a key GE2019 battleground

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What happens when anti-CON voters decide to go tactical There is little doubt that if the LDs are to salvage anything from from a hugely disappointing GE19 campaign a lot depends on what happens in Esher & Walton – the seat currently held by the Foreign Secretary and former BrexSec, Dominic Raab. A victory here would be the Portillo moment of the election and might just take some of the edge off Johnson’s likely victory. The chart shows the result…

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Thoughts from a Big Beast

Thoughts from a Big Beast

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On Monday evening, Ken Clarke, described by Intelligence² as a Big Beast of British politics, was being interviewed by John Humphreys, though even Humphreys was scarcely able to get a word in, as Ken opined, entertainingly and at length, on Brexit, Boris, elections and a life in politics. The following comments he made are worth noting as relevant, not just to the election, but to politics thereafter:- Communicating with voters The challenge now for politicians was how to talk to voters,…

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