Are the Tories being out-classed in the spin wars? One of big decisions that Gord took during his summer holiday was to beef up Labour and the government’s whole PR operation in order to compete with the Tory threat. Result: the return of perhaps the most successful political spin team ever – Mandelson and Campbell. And over the past six weeks we have seen a transformation in the way Team Brown is getting its message across and its ability to…
Why the default assumption is against Labour With two polls this morning showing very different outcomes and both apparently have taken place at the same it’s perhaps a good moment to bring PB’s “Golden Polling Rule” out again. Just to recall YouGov in the Sunday Times has the Tory lead narrowing to 5% while ComRes in the Indy on Sunday has it increasing to 12%. Eh? For based on the polling record at every single major election since the 1980s…
CONSERVATIVES 41% (-1) LABOUR 36% (+3) LIB DEMS 14% (-1) Labour back to General Election level of support The first of tonight’s new national opinion polls is just out and has Labour narrowing even further the gap with the Tories. The five point margin, if repeated at a general election, puts a general election well within hung parliaments territory. My comparisons above are with the last poll from the pollster. No doubt the Sunday Times will follow its normal and…
Projected CON majority: 34 (+8) seats Whatever the rights and wrongs of yesterday’s fierce exchanges in the House of Commons the spread betting punters who risk shed-loads of cash on the commons seats markets have given their verdict by “buying” Conservative seats and “selling” Labour. On Tuesday, as I reported here after the Populus poll, the commons seat spreads from PB’s co-sponsor, Sporting Index were: CON 336-342: LAB 240-246: LD 43-46 seats. Taking the mid-point between the buy and the…
Is Paddy Power’s the best Labour bet about? The Glenrothes by-elections and the narrowing of the gap in the latest Populus poll has renewed interest in betting on the outcome of the next general election – but the possibility of confusion has arisen over how you define “winner”. Most bookies and Betfair use this format – “Which of these parties will win the most Parliamentary seats at the next UK General Election?”. That seems simple enough though you could see…
Are we seeing politics turn upside-down? While the main story today has been the 90th anniversary of the ending of the First World War all three main party leaders have been casting their hats into the ring in the new war – that of who has the best tax cut policies. No doubt we’ll see more hostilities at PMQs tomorrow. Gone are the days, it seems, that before you put together a cutting proposal it had to be funded in…
CONSERVATIVES 41% (-4) LABOUR 35% (+5) LIB DEMS 16% (+1) In what is by far and away the best poll for Labour for more than six months the November Populus poll for the Times has last month’s Tory lead of 15% down to just 6%. This is a very big change and means that the pollster is showing a very different picture from ICM which reported at the weekend. Putting these numbers into the UK Polling Report seat calculator and…
Is John Curtice right about it being a myth? One of the biggest errors that many pundits make is when they compare the numbers from one pollster with another and then conclude that there is a trend. You see this all the time and it is wrong. The six pollsters that regularly carry out voting intention surveys in the UK each have their own bespoke methodology which is unique to them. The only valid comparisons are when you compare like…