politicalbetting.com

How come the firms have such different results? Above is the rather anonymous office block in Bedford which houses the ICM calling centre where, more than likely, the field-work for today’s Populus poll in the Times was carried out. “ICM calling centre..”, I can hear you saying,”.. surely some mistake?” No – because the process of doing the telephone interviews is something that Populus usually contracts out and ICM are a leader in this field. There are other similarities as…

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Will the smiles continue when the cameras aren’t around? Marf’s cartoon this afternoon is on happenings in Washington DC where in a few hours all eyes will be focussed on the White House where the President and the President-elect will have their first formal meeting. The plan is for Obama and Michele to spend about 90 minutes there and the Obamas will make a tour of the White House. Then the two men will sit down to talk about the…

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Back Lammy to Lead Labour’s London Bid The recent months have seen some interesting little developments that could impact on who will be Labour’s mayoral candidate in London. Ladbrokes have been first off the mark with a very thorough market for who will be the next Mayor of London. Boris Johnson is 5/6 and as much as it pains me to say it, I think this is a value choice. However it is also worth examining the possible runners and…

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How long until a BME PM? Trevor Phillips, former Chairman of the Comission for Racial Equality, now a Labour member of the GLA and head of the equality watchdog, claimed yesterday in a Radio 4 interview that “institutional racism” would prevent a black or Asian politician from reaching Number 10. He was particularly damning of the unions and the left-leaning think-tanks for supporting the notion of ethnic minority candidates, whilst (in his view) the systems and structures of political parties…

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CON 43(+1)LAB 30(nc)LD 18(-3) No solace for Brown in new poll A new ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph puts the Conservatives on 43%, Labour on 30%, and the Liberal Democrats on 18%. The changes from the last ICM poll (in the Guardian on October 19th) show that the Tories gained 1 point, Labour saw no change, and the Lib Dems fell by 3 points from their previous score of 21%. In spite of a good win in Glenrothes, increasing…

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Can Our Genial Host do it again? After the dramatic events of this week, and with some issues such as Nebraska’s college votes and the Minnesota senate race still unresolved, already the bookies are pricing up the markets for the 2012 race. Mike’s 50-1 Obama bet is rightly and firmly enshrined in PB legend, so I thought this would be an appropriate time to “benchmark” the odds for the next election just days after this year’s vote. Obama is already…

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How much was down to Gord being local? (Note: this posting was prepared before I left for my short holiday – if it has been overtaken by events then that’s the reason) One feature of this election is the extent to which we should have taken into account that there is undoubtedly a lot of Fife pride about a local man being prime minister. This is the same pattern that we see in the constituencies of party leaders during general…

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