Any punter thinking of backing any party but Labour at the next UK General Election should be aware of the “power of the Donut” – the term that was used by Labour stategists the last time the boundaries for Westminster seats were re-drawn ten years ago. A real possibility, based on current polls, is that that Labour could hold onto power at the next election even though it is three or four full percentage points behind the Tories. The winner…
The latest YouGov poll, published this morning in the Daily Telegraph, shows almost no change in March and would produce a hung parliament. The following is the split together with a projection from Financialcalculus of the distribution of seats at a General Election assuming a universal swing across the whole of the UK. Con 39 – 271 seats Lab 34 – 300 seats LD 20 – 46 seats Thus Labour would be 23 seats short of a Commons majority. YouGov…
A big issue for political gamblers at the next UK General Election will be whether we can trust opinion polls that are carried out online, rather than by the traditional routes of telephone or face-to-face interviews. There’s a huge debate on the issue within the opinion poll community so it won’t just be the party officials who will be biting their finger nails on election night. In 2001 all the traditional pollsters wildly exaggerated the Labour lead and underestimated the…
However bad things might sometimes appear Labour is going into the next election knowing that it’s almost a foregone conclusion that it will come out as top party. The way the Westminster seats are distributed makes Michael Howard’s task of winning most seats, let alone getting a majority, almost impossible. A top Cambridge and now City mathematician, Martin Baxter, has created his own model of the UK scene together with an incredibly useful table called the “Battlemap” that illustrates very…