This draft thread header was written in December 2019, but due to pressure of work I never had a chance to send it in. Alterations are shown in italics. In 1918, Couponed candidates took 20 seats, Asquithian Liberals three seats, and Labour or Independent Labour candidates twelve seats in Wales. I mention this not from any particular desire to talk about 1918 in Welsh politics, but because it marks the last occasion to date when Labour failed to top a…
In 2019 the Conservatives won an 80 seat majority with an 11.5% popular vote lead. Since then their polling lead has floated between 20% to around 0%. Right now it is mid to high single digits, though polls are a bit all over the place at the moment. They will probably win a majority again at the next election. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement, yet the betting markets will give you up to 2/1 on this outcome. Why? The…
Richard Tyndall on the Australian government move against Facebook So one day, when this terrible virus is finally under some semblance of control, we will be able to go back to the pub. We will be able to do something that we have been unable to do for far too long – socialise face to face with our friends. Hopefully we will be able to resurrect the Political Betting pub nights and prove to each other we really are human…
Some posters to this site have argued that leader or government approval ratings can be a better guide to general election results than the voting intention question, if not immediately before the vote, then early in the Parliament or in mid-term. I have been meaning for some time to put this to the test. I have used the IPSOS-MORI opinion poll and approval ratings data, which goes back to 1977, covering 11 general elections. Conclusions I have found: three years…
1) An elected executive based on defined positions such as Education, Health, Police, Immigration etc. where each position is directly elected after: Candidates are winnowed down to three runners. Each has their specific proposals costed by the Civil Service. Each proposal has to have a statement of the improvement it is expected to bring and a tangible way of measuring progress along with expected timescales. Measurement to be done by the Civil Service. The advantage of this approach is that…
When YouGov published their multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) election model during the 2017 General Election campaign, it’s fair to say that it was met with a great deal of scepticism (though not from Alastair Meeks). Sure, expectations about the size of the Conservative majority had been scaled back, but a hung-parliament? Labour gain Canterbury? No chance… In the end the Tories did a little bit better than the model predicted and Theresa May clung on to power. But the…
A guest slot by Richard Tyndall Trump’s second to last tweet before he was banned permanently from Twitter began with the sentence: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future.” “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future.” Ignoring for a moment the fact that Trump…
The Integrated Review: Fighting the Last War But One Rather than actually deliver the 2020 Strategic Defense and Security Review the government took the innovative view that the nation’s strategic goals and security needs could be better met by delaying it a year and giving it the pithy title of The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Foreign Policy and Development. The review has now been scheduled, with a high degree of precision, to be delivered in ‘early 2021’. Part of…