Is now the time to bet on a hung parliament? A new YouGov poll for today’s Sunday Times shows a small movement from the Tories to Labour and that the “others” total remains constant. These are today’s shares with comparisons on the last YouGov poll at the end of January: CON 37% (-1): LAB 32% (+1): LD 18% (nc): OTH 13% (nc). Putting these numbers into the seat calculators produces a CON 277: LAB 294: LD 47: OTH 32 seat…
Would Ming’s party be better off rejecting both suitors? (This is part of an article I wrote for CONtinuityIDS this morning about a hung parliament and what I think might happen if Labour just squeeze ahead on seats even though they are far behind on votes. My starting point was the CON 39%: LAB 33%: LD 22%: OTH 6% in the previous thread producing this Commons outcome – LAB 284: CON 283: LD 54: OTH 29.) My reading of Brown…
It’s rubbish to say the changes hand the advantage over to the Tories This story by Colin Brown in the Independent is typical of some of the coverage that we’ve seen over the weekend on the impact of the boundary changes on the next General Election. Labour goes into the next election still with a massive advantage – it is just that it isn’t quite as big as was before. What’s happened is that there’s now the “official” version of…
Will the Lib Dems go on getting an “anti-war” bonus? After yesterday’s first full debate in the Commons in Government time on Iraq since the war ended in 2003 the question needs to be asked – how big an issue will this be at the next General Election? Will the presumably Brown-led Labour administration be able to cut itself off from the massive negatives that the war created for the party in 2005? Could the issue for post-Blair Labour have…
Does anybody want to bet that I’m wrong? There’s a rather a desperate sounding piece in the Telegraph again this morning by Simon Heffer headed “Cameron mocks the ‘loonies and fruitcakes’ of UKIP at his peril” in which he tries to argue that the Tory leader is wrong not to take the UKIP threat seriously. Heffer’s problem, like for all those on the right, is that Cameron has them over a barrel. The Tory leader has gambled that he can…
The Guardian’s pollster has the Lib Dems going up five points The monthly ICM survey for the Guardian which has been going continuously for nearly a quarter of a century records a sharp jump for the Lib Dems and shows that the Labour deficit would be bigger if Gordon Brown was leader. The main vote shares are with changes on December – CON 37% (-3): LAB 31% (-1): LD 23% (+5). When the second question was asked – how would…
Is 50/1 against it happening a good value bet In a new market the bookmaker Stan James is offering 50/1 against this eventuality which puts the assessment of it happening at 2%. All betting is about value. How does your assessment of something happening compare with the betting prices available? If you think the probability of an outcome is better than the betting odds then you have a good value bet. Is this one worth taking? For Cameron to be…
Who would gain and who would lose if the voting system was changed? There is said to be information coming out of the Brown camp that one of first acts he is considering as Prime Minister will be to abolish first-past-the-post for Westminster seats and replace it with the alternative vote system of proportional representation. Under this voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate in a constituency gets more than half the votes cast, the one…