Party members YouGov 1st round Actual 1st round YG Mili pref Final votes ABBOTT, Diane 11 7.3 0 0 BALLS, Ed 9 10.1 0 0 BURNHAM, Andy 10 8.6 0 0 MILIBAND, David 38 44.1 48 54.4 MILIBAND, Ed 31 29.9 52 45.6 Trade unionists YouGov 1st round Actual 1st round < YG Mili pref Final votes ABBOTT, Diane 12 12.3 0 0 BALLS, Ed 9 10.2 0 0 BURNHAM, Andy 14 8.5 0 0 MILIBAND, David 29 27.5 43...
Would a secret ballot have improved Ed’s mandate? It’s quite rare for any vote to be cast publicly in an election, except maybe when it’s on behalf of someone else. As party members have their own vote in Labour leadership elections, that explanation doesn’t apply so for the party to make its MPs preferences public is unusual. It’s not something the other parties do, for example. What it does do is add pressure to vote in the way an MP would like to be…
Ed beats David by a fraction on the Affiliates section So, Ed wins it – just – with the affiliates section proving the crucial factor and the late rumours for DM were just that and may even have been a case of talk following betting rather than vice-versa. Ed Balls beat Abbott and Burnham for third place, which with a reasonable showing in the MPs section should reinforce his claim for a top job in the shadow cabinet. On a personal…
Has Ed snatched it or did David hold on? What looks like being the closest Labour leadership contest since voting was opened up to the membership finally draws to a close in Manchester this afternoon, with the result expected to be announced around 4.40pm. Until the very final days of the more than four months of campaigning, David Miliband’s position as favourite went more-or-less unchallenged, with his odds at times implying a better than 80% chance of winning. That all…
Who’ll get what in the Shadow Cabinet? One of the first tasks that the new Labour leader will have is to assign portfolios to the members of his shadow cabinet. How he does that could be significant in determining how Labour develops as an opposition over the parliament – depending how radical he chooses to be. To some extent, his hands are tied. Labour’s shadow cabinet is elected, something the PLP stood firm on earlier this month, and so he…
Home Secretary, Theresa May, has tried to turn the spotlight and put the blame on Labour following the chief inspector of constabulary’s criticism of the police “retreating from the streets” and the data that suggests that one such incident was reported every 10 seconds. I just wonder whether bringing a new element into the “Labour blame game” might be devaluing its effectiveness. My sense is that the government needs to be doing more than simply blaming the “last lot” particularly…
Will YouGov have got this one right? Voting closed dead on 1700 in the election of Labour’s next leader. All the contenders were encourage stragglers right until the end to get votes in online. Now we’ve got a three day wait for the ballot forms in this complex election to be counted. The count is being carried out by the Electoral Reform Society without any Labour or campaign representative there. The ERS has a good reputation for confidentiality and I…
Without them could Labour have held on? As part of the ongoing row over Tory election tactics the observations of party campaign chief, George Osborne, have been made public. These are due to be published shortly in Dennis Kavanagh’s and Philip Cowley’s big academic study – British General Election of 2010. They write: “In an implied admission that the media attention on the debates – preparations, build-up and post-debate analysis – squeezed the amount of discussion of policies a senior…