Heavy betting on Gordon Brown this morning made him favourite to be Labour leader at the General Election. This is the first time he’d been ahead of Tony Blair. The move was short-lived for technical betting reasons and not politics Two bookmakers were offering odds on Blair going that were so out of line with the betting exchange prices that it was possible to bet against Blair in one market and bet on him in another and be sure of…
How will MPs react if they are on the “at risk” list? For on that Sunday, three days after the voting, the results of the 2004 Euro Elections will be announced. And the form in which these will be presented will be to itemise, party by party, what happened in every single Westmister seat. The aggregate results from each region are used to determine who gets elected. So sitting Westminster MPs will be able to look at the precise result…
The General Election, party leaders and Tony Blair political betting markets could be affected by a new YouGov poll in the Mail on Sunday this morning. This suggests that Labour would do substantially better at the General Election if Tony Blair stood down to make way for Gordon Brown and puts the Prime Minister under more pressure. With Tony Blair still there the YouGov figures show a CON-LAB split of 40-36, which is an increase of one point for both…
A big gap is opening up on both sides of the Atlantic between men and women over their support for the incumbent political leaders. Both Bush and Blair are supported more by men than women and in recent months this trend has become more pronounced. A BBC report this week quoted Deborah Mattinson, Opinion Leader Research as saying that many older female voters were disillusioned with the political process and the Labour government in particular. “Back in 1997 it was…
There’s speculation by Simon Carr in the Independent this morning that Tony Blair might be planning to step down in the summer – after his 10th anniversary as Labour leader. This date has been mentioned before and in December there was much talk of some deal being done with Gordon Brown at that famous reconciliation dinner hosted by John Prescott after Gordon Brown returned from maternity leave. It will be recalled that Brown returned to work with a series of…
Given the core mathematics of the next UK General Election that make it so difficult for him to lose why is Tony Blair making such a big deal of the June 10 elections for the European Parliament? Why is he mortgaging his short-medium term political future with the commitment for the referendum on the Euro constitution? Sure June 10 2004 is not going to be a good day for Labour. The last time the Euro seats were fought, in 1999,…
If Blair is considering an October election then the latest opinion poll figures, from Populus in the Times, could be seen as encouraging. But this is only because the next General Election will not be fought on a level playing field. The scales are tilted very firmly in favour of Labour. These are the figures together with the seat distribution, using Martin Baxter’s excellent online calculator, assuming a uniform national swing. LAB 34% – 346 seats CON 34% – 202…
The former Cambridge and now City mathematician, Martin Baxter, has cut his forecast of the Labour majority at the next General Election from 42 to just 30 seats. His April prediction is based on the March opinion polls and produces the tightest margin since Tony Blair came to power in 1997. CON 229 seats from 36.63% of the vote LAB 338 seats from 35.10% of the vote LDs 48 seats from 21.09% of the vote. Baxter has factored in the…