Who’ll benefit from a very low turnout? Looking at the detail from yesterday’s YouGov poll of Labour and TU members on the deputy leadership it’s clear that turnout is going to be absolutely critical. If Brown had not got his coronation there would have been a mass ballot to decide the next prime minister going on at the same time and the proportion voting would have been enormous. But that’s not happening and the election is getting very little media…
Has the past fortnight underlined the challenge for Brown and Cameron? The mathematics of the next general election are straightforward – there are more votes to be gained by appealing to the centre ground in British politics than anywhere else. The Tories need to be winning back the voters who moved to the Lib Dems and Labour during the 1990s. The objectives for Brown’s party, meanwhile, are to get back the 6-7% of the national vote share that moved to…
Is Labour Losing The Former Mining Areas? One friend of mine drew my attention to the fact that Labour had fared badly in local authorities across the old coalfields, on May 3rd. Coal mining bound voters to the Labour Party, being hard, dangerous, work, carried out by a completely unionised workforce, in tight-knit communities, most of whose inhabitants rented their homes from the National Coal Board. The comfortable capture of the Forest of Dean District Council, for the first time,…
Should we be betting on a 2007 election on Betfair’s new market? Is it worth betting on a 2007 general election on the new date market that’s just been opened on Betfair? You have to select in six month bands going through to January 1st 2010. There’s little money on offer at the moment but this will build up as the market becomes known. What are the chances that the author of the new book on Courage, Gordon Brown will…
Brown’s party boosted by big increase in intention to vote News of the final poll for May is just out and shows a big move to Labour. The headline figures from the Ipsos-Mori poll are with changes on last month CON 37% (-1): LAB 35% (+4): LD 18% (-2). Like all Ipsos-Mori polls the figures shown are based on those who say they are “certain to vote” and given what has happened with other pollsters it had been expected that…
With Labour’s deputy hopefuls preparing for their ordeal by Paxman on Newsnight tonight and Tony Blair on his farewell tour of Africa it’s the Tories who are once again making the headlines. The conventional thinking is that this should be harming Cameron. I’m not so sure. The notion of a grammar school is from a bygone age and the Graham Brady looks like just the sort of Tory that the leadership are not going to worry about sacrificing. He’ll have…
Be Careful What You Ask For One old chestnut that comes up from time to time is that the Conservatives have only won the majority of elections since 1918 because the “progressive consensus†is divided between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Hence, if only proportional representation were introduced in British elections, Labour and the Liberal Democrats could form a more or less permanent administration. It would appear that former Lib Dem Leader, Paddy Ashdown, was convinced that Tony Blair would…
Labour deficit moves to 8% when Gordon’s name is mentioned The first full opinion poll since the Brown “victory” in the Labour contest became certain shows some heartening news for the party. For the top-line figures to the hypothetical question of what people would do if there was a general election tomorrow have, with changes on last month CON 34% (-3): LAB 32% (+2): LD 21% (nc) But the Guardian tomorrow will report that the Tories have an 8% lead…