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Category: General Election

Is this the day that will decide the next election?

Is this the day that will decide the next election?

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Will Osborne’s big gamble succeed? Well we are here at least – what will almost certainly be the defining day of the coalition government. If Osborne & co have got this right then the this will be seen in an improving economy as we get nearer to 2015 which could produce a second victory for a Cameron-led government, with or without the Liberal Democrats. If the Osborne medicine is wrong then the political consequences for the coalition partners could be…

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Did the debates cost Labour at least 20 seats?

Did the debates cost Labour at least 20 seats?

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Rod Crosby on the impact of Brown’s decision to take part After working hard in the run-up to the election I took a break for a while, and have really only just begun the post-mortem on my predictions and the actual result. One thing that caught my eye is this graph. For those who don’t recall, I promoted the Kalman Filter as the best way of “averaging” the polls, and as far as the critical Tory lead was concerned it…

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The Polls: Does anybody really know where we stand?

The Polls: Does anybody really know where we stand?

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Polling ranges Oct 8 – 16 High Low CONSERVATIVES 43 (YouGov) 38 (ICM) LABOUR 40 (YouGov) 34 (ICM & ComRes) LIB DEMS 18 (ICM) 11 (YouGov) Why the difference between the pollsters? As we start this critical political week it is extraordinarily hard to come to any real conclusions about where opinion stands from the polling. Just look at the ranges that we’ve seen since last weekend and the different pictures that the three polling organisations – ICM, YouGov and…

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Will Laws be back this year?

Will Laws be back this year?

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Suddenly the man who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury for 18 days, David Laws is back in the news again. Earlier in the week he gave evidence before a commons committee on the formation of the coalition and at the end of the month a book with his account of the negotiations will be published. But what are the chances of him becoming a minister again? Political Smarkets have a market up with options of “during 2010”; the first…

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Is the poverty move the LDs “reward” for student fees?

Is the poverty move the LDs “reward” for student fees?

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Which would his party prefer – help for students or poor children? A key reason, I believe, why there have been just two changes of government during the past 30 years is that whoever is in power has so much control over the news agenda. The ability, day in and day out, to make announcements that grab the headlines is awesome. Not only does it keep your people up-front apparently doing popular things but sophisticated scheduling of stories can often…

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Does the coalition make a Tory outright victory harder?

Does the coalition make a Tory outright victory harder?

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Final week campaign poster – May 2010 How will the blue team campaign next time? We all remember the closing stages of the May general election. The Lib Dems had surged following the debates and the Tories launched a furious campaign warning of what would happen if there was a hung parliament. In broad terms it worked – certainly in impeding the move to the yellows. But the blues were still 18 seats short of an overall majority and Cameron…

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Will YouGov ease Tory jitters over child benefit?

Will YouGov ease Tory jitters over child benefit?

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The Sun How much can we read into the figures? As reported overnight the Sun is carrying YouGov poll figures this morning which suggest that the George Osborne plan to take child benefit away from those paying higher rates of tax is actually pretty popular. It’s hard to argue with an 83%-15% split. But how much can you read into findings like this? For generally pollsters find that people are happy to support tax increases when it doesn’t affect them….

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But why didn’t the Tories get a majority?

But why didn’t the Tories get a majority?

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Was/is the Conservative brand still contaminated? It’s now just on five months since the general election and the conference season has prompted a fair bit of looking back to try to work out what happened and why, specifically, the Tories failed in their attempt to secure an overall majority. I’ve just finished reading Denis Kavanagh’s and Philip Cowley’s The British General Election of 2010 – the eighteenth in a series of studies that go back to 1945. It comprises of…

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