But how much can we trust a pollster that’s not in the BPC? Ben Brogan is carrying a report that a new poll for the Scottish Daily Mail has Labour 17% ahead in Glasgow East. This comes as the campaign goes into its final weekend. The pollster, Progressive Scottish Opinion, is not listed as a member of the British Polling Council and it is hard from its website to work out what its methodological approach is. We do not know…
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Is this why you have to be careful about extrapolation? One of the main innovations in modern polling is the mechanism to ensure a politically balanced sample by asking how people voted last time and then attaching a weighting. Sometimes this can produce very strange results and there have been none stranger than what happened for former Lib Dem voters in the ICM Glasgow East poll at the weekend. Here, for some reason, the pollster only found six people who…
Are we seeing a re-run of the politics of the 60s and 70s? With council workers starting two days of strikes this morning there’s almost a 1960s and 1970s feel to the way the political scene is evolving. For in the run-up to the last time that a Labour government lost power, in 1979, it was public sector industrial action – the so-called “winter of discontent – that dominated the agenda and paved the way for Mrs. Thatcher. Only five…
The July Populus survey for the Times is coming out this evening and some information is starting to come out. I have not got the figures yet but the Tory lead is the second highest ever from the pollster – which means that there has been a recovery since June when it was C45-L25-LD 20. UPDATE: The shares are: CON 41% (-4): LAB 28% (+3): LD 19% (-1) One of the headline items is that most Labour voters think that…
Two columnists in the Independent consider the long-running Brown saga, with John Rentoul declaring that Labour awaits “The Issue” to topple Gordon, while Alan Watkins in the above piece argues that “tomorrow never comes” for Labour MPs: “His colleagues, if they do it at all – if they get rid of the Prime Minister – will do it tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. A hurdle is erected for Mr Brown to jump, or, at least, to scramble over somehow. He…
Was a deal done or not? The big news from PMQs was the revelation by David Cameron that he had a letter from Geoff Hoon which could be read as suggesting that that the Leicester MP would be rewarded for voting with the government in the 42 day detention period vote three weeks ago. Until now Gordon Brown has flatly denied all suggestions that deals were done. The handwritten note said “”Dear Keith … Just a quick note to thank…
Q4 2008 now becomes the favourite date? The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh runs through all the options on who will be able to tell Gordon and ends up by quoting a friend – “It has to be Sarah,†said a friend. “Nobody in this Cabinet has the balls to do it.†The general consensus, though, is that is has to be soon. In the departure date betting Oct–Dec 2008 has now become the 1.7/1 favourite. Second favourite is July – September…