This is the second part of an examination by long-time PBer and statistician, Andy Cooke, into the level of Tory lead that the party will need at the general election in order to ensure a majority. If you have not read Part 1 then read that first before going onto this continuation What lead do the Tories need – Part 2? How to measure the probable unwind? The simplest thing to do would be to set the three effects as…
Based on the concept of a pendulum – not a ratchet Later today we’ll be introducing a totally new commons seat calculator that has been developed by long-standing PBer and statistician, Andy Cooke. This will be published here sometime after lunch. It’s stems from the thinking outlined in Andy’s initial post yesterday in which he argued for the merits of “pendulum thinking” as we seek to project the coming election rather than the mind-set of “the ratchet.” For the conventional…
CON 39 % (40) LAB 30% (29) LD 20% (21) And it reports the lowest Tory share since May New is just coming in of the latest ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph which has the lead down to just 9% and will provide encouragement for Brown Central. It means that the last six published polls have all had Labour in the 30s with the last four of them putting the Tories under 40. This does look like a trend….
Betfair Politics The chart above is from the Betfair line market where punters have bets at evens with each other on what the parties will get at the coming election. Once you get used to how it works it’s quite a neat form of betting. As can be seen the past three months have not shown much movement apart from the Tory wobble in the past week following the spate of polls having both them and Labour in the 30s….
There’s a new poll out tonight from Angus Reid on voter’s attitudes towards electoral reform – particularly the planned alternative vote system on which a referendum is planned and which MPs will decide upon this month. The survey took place amongst a sample of 2,010 people on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week while Labour’s plans were making the news. What strikes you immediately from the numbers above is how contradictory the response it. That the first question sees the…
CON SPREAD RANGES 340 – 345 Sporting Index 338 – 343 ExtraBet 344 – 347 Betfair Line market LAB SPREAD RANGES 220 – 225 Sporting Index 221 – 226 ExtraBet 215.5 – 221.5 Betfair Line market LD SPREAD RANGES 53 – 56 Sporting Index 54 – 57 ExtraBet 53 – 53.5 Betfair Line market Has the Ipsos-MORI aggregate moved the markets? After a week which saw a dramatic move against the Tories on the spread betting markets things have now…
Or will they be squeezed out in the Dave-Gord encounter? The general view ahead of the June 2009 Euro elections was that the parties that would gain most from the expenses scandal, which dominated the headlines for the weeks beforehand, would be UKIP, the Greens and the BNP. And so it was. UKIP easily beat Labour for second place in the national vote, the Greens had a good election while the BNP secured two seats at the EU parliament for…
Has a PM Dave most to fear from the Gord-Ed duo? For me the big news of the week was the report that Brown would not step aside from the leadership even if, as expected, Labour loses the election. For everything we know about Brown is that he loves power and he is not going to give up easily the job he strove after for so long – even though, after May, the chances of him remaining at Number 10…