Remember the 2007 Labour deputy election? It’s a good political trivia question. Can you name the six prominent Labour figures who fought for the deputy leadership of the party in June 2007? They are lined up above for the deputy TV debate. They were, of course from left to right, Hilary Benn, Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson, Peter Hain and John Cruddas. All of them were returned to the commons on May 6 2010 and yet not one of…
How long can the coalition go on? There are two big questions in British politics at the moment – who is going to win the Labour leadership and how long can the coalition survive? Both, in a way, are interwoven because as we get closer to September’s voting in Labour’s election we’ll be four months on from the creation of the coalition and the key criteria for the movement will be which of the candidates is best placed to be…
Did his dithering blow Labour’s election chances? The first Thursday in June exactly a year ago was one of the most significant days in the history of the Labour government when one man, David Miliband, had to make probably the toughest call of his political career. Should he join the Works and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, who resigned at precisely 10pm as soon as voting in that day’s local and EU elections came to an end or should he stay…
What’s the impact of improved Labour poll shares? We have spent very little time looking at the voting intention polls (VI) since the May 6th general election. The next encounter seems to far off that it hardly seems worthwhile. Maybe this is a mistake. For a marked trend in the VI surveys that there’ve been following the election is that Labour has been polling quite a bit above its 29.7% general election share. The latest from ComRes overnight had with…
Dr Rob Ford (University of Manchester), Dr Will Jennings (University of Manchester), Dr Mark Pickup (Simon Fraser University) and Professor Christopher Wlezien (Temple University) reflect upon models and methods for projecting the vote at the 2010 British election. In this post we consider the performance of our projection model and the other models published in the run-up to the May 2010 UK Election, discuss the methodological issues involved, and consider some of the future directions for projection both in the…
BBC election map Could T&M spring an expenses saga surprise? Electors finally go to the polls today in the final seat of the 2010 general election where voting had to be put back from May 6th after one of the candidates died. This is the North Yorkshire seat of Thirsk and Malton where the notional 2010 result was CON 25,702 (51.88%): LAB 11,585 (23.39%): LD 9,314 (18.80%): UKIP 1,522 (3.07%): OTH 1,417 (2.86%). So even if, as is likely, turnout…
Rank Pollster CON LAB LD Error 1 RNB India: Phone 37 (+0.1) 28 (-1.7) 26 (+2.4) 4.2 2= ICM phone/past vote weighted 36 (-0.9) 28 (-1.7) 26 (+2.4) 5 2= Ipsos-MORI: phone 36 (-0.9) 29 (-0.7) 27 (+3.4) 5 4 Populus: phone/past vote weighted 37 (+0.1) 28 (-1.7) 27 (+3.4) 5.2 5 Harris: Online 35 (-1.9) 29 (-0.7) 27 (+3.4) 6 6 ComRes: phone/past vote weighted 37 (+0.1) 28 (-1.7) 28 (+4.4) 6.2 7 Opinium: online 35 (-1.9) 27 (-2.7)…
SportingIndex Is this a case of sell the Tories: buy the LDs & LAB? SportingIndex has put up an intriguing handicap market on the final seat to be resolved in the 2010 general election – Thirsk & Malton in North Yorkshire where the election had to be put back until this coming Thursday because of the death of one of the candidates. With a notional 2005 outcome of CON 25,702 (51.88%): LAB 11,585 (23.39%): LD 9,314 (18.80%) this is the…