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Category: General Election

Welcome to the new confident Gordon

Welcome to the new confident Gordon

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But is there a danger when’s he’s over-confident? Anybody watching PMQs today would have seen an emboldened and confident Gordon Brown dealing with a slightly down-beat David Cameron. Probably Brown was the winner though his continued evasiveness and what turned out to be a wrong assertion on Spain’s G20 membership might just take the gloss off it. He of all people should have known that simple fact and it came over as though he was over-egging the truth to deal…

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Could a climate change split undermine Dave’s chances?

Could a climate change split undermine Dave’s chances?

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How dangerous is the issue for the Tories? Only days before the Copenhagen climate summit Andrew Grice in the Independent is reporting what’s said to be growing split between many parts of the Tory party and its leadership on the issue. It will be recalled that just four years ago one of Cameron’s first acts as leader was to take a lead on climate change as part of his effort to try to modernise his party and there was that…

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Is this the man to take over from Gord?

Is this the man to take over from Gord?

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Could he become Labour’s William Hague? One of the problems of Mr. Brown’s style of government is that he makes most of the big announcements and his top team get very little public exposure. So if there’s something big to say about health then it’s not the Secretary of State responsible who gets the lime-light. Not only does this mean that outside three or four figures there’s relatively little public awareness of the second string of party figures – but…

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Who is going to win the 2010 polling race?

Who is going to win the 2010 polling race?

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Now you can bet on the most accurate final poll? Aside from the party HQs the most tense places to be on election night will be at the six polling firms which carry out monthly surveys of political opinion in Britain. How close were they with their final poll? For they all know only too well that this will be the one set of numbers that will be flung back at them for years to come. And within the industry…

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Could UKIP switchers cost Dave his majority?

Could UKIP switchers cost Dave his majority?

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But will it be the same in the marginals? Just looking at the detailed data for the latest ComRes poll and we see the dynamic that is causing the Tory totals to fall and is putting into question what seemed to be the forgone conclusion of a Tory majority. For helpfully the firm is the only one of the pollsters where it’s possible to see the switching to the minor parties from what respondents said they did at the general…

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Will day-time counts mean we have to rely more on this?

Will day-time counts mean we have to rely more on this?

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Is the wise strategy not to bet on exit polls? If there is a huge increase in the number of day-time counts, as many are predicting, then the general election exit poll is going to become even more important. For its projections will be what will dominate perceptions of the election for several hours and maybe into the following morning. Arrangements, I understand, have been made for just one such survey to be mounted which will feed all the main…

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Remember this poll – exactly a year ago today?

Remember this poll – exactly a year ago today?

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CON 37 LAB 36 LD 17 ComRes: Nov 30 2008 UKPollingReport Whatever happened to Brown’s Bank Bailout Bounce? On November 30 2008, precisely a year ago today, ComRes finished their monthly poll for the Independent which had Labour just one point behind – figures which suggested that Mr. Brown was within a whisker of an overall Labour majority. This followed an extraordinary couple of months after his widely acknowledged role in the bank bailout – not just for the UK…

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Are UKIP and the Lisbon driving the Tory poll decline?

Are UKIP and the Lisbon driving the Tory poll decline?

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BBC news – Nov 4th Can Dave win back the Tory doubters? All seventeen polls published between the end of the Tory Party conference and Cameron’s dropping of his pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty had the Conservatives on at least 40%; of the eight published since then, only twice has the Tory share broken into the forties. Two conversations I’ve had in the last week give anecdotal evidence that Cameron’s move has gone down badly in…

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