Are boundaries set to be the hot topic this autumn? Early in September the Welsh boundary commissioners will kick of with what’s looks set to be the main topic for politicians, if not the voters, this autumn, the new seat boundaries. The first draft proposals for the 2015 political map of the UK will come from Cardiff to be followed in the week of September 12th by those for England. Scottish MPs are going to have to wait a bit…
ConservativeHome A view from a Top Tory analyst There’s an interesting analysis of the May 5th local election result by Rob Hayward on ConHome part of which focuses on the Lib Dem seats which the Tories would hope to take given current polling. “…Nothing in politics is ever perfect nor consistent and the LDs showed remarkable resilience in a number of places probably in the form of incumbency. Where there was a sitting LD MP or Mayor they generally performed…
Would the ICM approach have produced a blue lead? Last night, as reported in the previous thread, a new ComRes phone poll suggested that the Tories and Labour were now level pegging – the first time that Miliband’s party had not been in the lead since October 2010. They were both on 37% with the Lib Dems down on just 12%. But looking at the detailed data there’s a huge difference in the “quality” of support between the parties. As…
How likely is brinkmanship to go wrong? The continuing struggle within the coalition over the fate or ultimate nature of the NHS reforms is as good an indicator as is necessary that the May elections and AV referendum really did mark a watershed in the Coalition’s history. The Lib Dems, as Clegg promised, have been much more vocal and active in pressing their case, even where – as with the NHS bill – it reverses their previous stance. This approach…
The documentary you cannot miss One of the great “must-watch” political documentaries of recent times was the on BBC4 channel on Wednesday night on the mighty tussle between two grammar school boys who went to Oxford and fought four general elections against other. Two of those elections were pivotal – 1970 when against all the odds and polling Heath won a majority and February 1974 when the Tories went to the country in the middle of the miners’ strike in…
Is there a lesson to be learned from Scotland? My biggest betting wins of 2011 were against the SNP taking most seats in the Scottish Parliament election earlier in the month. I started piling on towards the end of March when I became convinced that the leaderships ratings of Alex Salmond and Iain Grey were a far better pointer to the outcome than the voting intention polls. At the time Labour was in the lead in almost all the polls…
Will electors vote against the party they want to stop? The above chart seeks to graphically represent data in Denis Kavanagh’s and Philip Cowley’s The British General Election of 2010 showing the mean vote changes of the main parties in different categories of seats based on which came first and second in 2005. In doing it gives an interesting picture of what happened with, perhaps, some pointers to next time. The Labour vote showed the largest range with, interestingly, the…
Will this mayoral battle be best pointer on the night? With Jackie Ashley in the Guardian and Tim Montgomerie at ConHome both raising the prospect of 2011 general election a big question is whether such a gamble by Dave would pay off. For the only point in going to the country four years early would be to secure an overall majority so the party could rule without the need to consider the yellows. Such a battle would be on the…