Sending a message that’s only heard by the target audience The real reflection of the state the Tories are in is that if they make the magic number of 200 seats it will be seen as some kind of victory. Yet even at that level Tony Blair would be returned with an overall majority of more than 70 – sufficient to sustain the party for a full third time. It’s against this background that the poll moves after last week’s…
Where’s Veritas going to get its votes from? With the UKIP share down to just 1% in one of the weekend’s polls there are further blows for the party with news tonight that it has lost one of its two London Assembly members to Robert Kilroy-Silk’s new political party, expected to launch on Wednesday. Mr. Damian Hockney said Mr Kilroy-Silk had made him deputy party leader of Veritas, Latin for truth and sources stated that around eight other members of…
The methodology divide deepens Three new surveys this morning from conventional interview-based pollster show big leads for Labour and contrast sharply with the interviewer-free YouGov poll on Friday that had the party just 1% ahead. ICM in the Sunday Telegraph, which uses telephone interviews, have the Labour margin down by 2% on last week’s survey by the same pollster in the Guardian. The shares are – CON 32(+1): LAB 37(-1): LD 21(nc). Interestingly both YouGov and ICM are recording the…
But some good news for Howard and Kennedy After Friday’s YouGov poll with a Labour lead of just one point a very different picture of the current political climate is shown in the January survey by Communicate Research for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday. The figures are: LAB 40 (+1): CON 32 (-2) LD 20 (+1) and mean that the pollster’s Labour total is 2% higher than any other firm. But all is not plain sailing for Tony Blair because the…
An interesting new market on how many seats each of the main parties will win has been launched by Skybet. The structure is similar to the one that Bet365 recently had but with the seat options at levels more in keeping with current forecasts. The markets make a good alternative for those wanting decent prices but are not willing to take the risks or get involved with the complications of spreadbetting. Labour seats 7/4 0-340 15/8 340-365 6/4 365+ Conservative…
In all the focus on spread-betting we’ve somewhat ignored the main General Election market on which party will win most seats. This has just been spiced up by a new Labour price of 7/50 from SuperOdds – which offers almost twice the return as many of the other bookmakers. Given that you would only be locking up your stake for about 13 weeks this seems like a good value bet. Betfair have a similar price but with the betting exchange…
Why did nobody realise that this was offensive? Labour’s poster featuring Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin as the faces of flying pigs was surely not designed to make political capital out of the Jewish backgrounds of the Opposition Leader and Shadow Chancellor. But how come that Alan Milburn or somebody else in Labour’s campaign team did not know that it is distasteful for a Jewish person to be associated with a pig? And given the fuss why have Labour PR…
Are betting markets a good guide to changing opinion? A remarkable aspect of today’s YouGov move to the Tories was that the change was forecast more than forty-hours beforehand on the betting markets even while the survey for the Daily Telegraph was still taking place. On Tuesday Michael Howard’s party was at it’s lowest point for years on the spread-betting markets with the range being predicted by those ready to back up their opinions with cash at 183-190 seats. The…