Is this going to be Clegg’s final week pitch? I’ve long taken the view that the most critical four and a half minutes in this election campaign will be the three 90 second wind-up statements by Brown, Cameron and Clegg at the end of tomorrow night’s debate. Each one will use it as a straight appeal setting out the core reasons why voters should support them and their parties. What they say will frame the final days of campaigning. So…
538.com Nate Silver’s view of the Uniform National Swing Nate Silver, the elections expert behind the renowned US polling site, Fivethreeeight.com, has been taking a close interest in the mathematics of the UK’s uniform nation swing mechanism for converting poll shares into seats won. He argues: “…. these forecasts are based on a questionable assumption and may understate, perhaps substantially, the magnitude of gains that might be realized by the Tories and by the LibDems. In particular, they are based…
The piece by Anthony Wells on postal voting and opinion polls on UKPR is a good reminder that things can now get a bit complex given that perhaps one in five of all votes will be made by post. What happens when the pollster calls or someone fills in an internet form when they have already voted? Almost all the firms adapt their voting intention question to take into account this possibility but they cannot report them separately. As Anthony…
Top 5 postal voting seats 2005 Postal ballots issued LAB-LD swing required 2010 Newcastle North 45.4% 8.5% Stevenage 45% Rushcliffe 39.9% Newcastle Central 36.7% 11.5% Newcastle East 35.4% 10.5% National average 12.1% …is this why Cleggie headed first for Newcastle? I was very struck on Friday with the oddness of Clegg’s travel schedule on the day after the Sky News debate in Bristol. On the face of it you would have thought that he’d have headed out to some of…
Could this be a trap for the Tory leader? As we get closer to each of the debates all three participants have been positioning themselves on issues that might come up. Thanks to David Blackburn on the Speccie CoffeeHouse blog for highlighting this one – Nick Clegg’s offer yesterday to hold a full “in or out” referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. This, of course, has been one of the key demands of UKIP – and could supporters of…
Will this reverse the polling surge? One of the ongoing moans of the Liberal Democrats was the challenge they face in getting the attention of the media. Well they can’t complain this morning. For now the attention is moving off the volcanic dust story Nick Clegg faces the full force of the tabloids with one paper after another firing salvo after salvo at him and his party. The question is whether it’s going to have an impact? Are the papers…
What will the next seventeen days bring? Our chart shows the dramatic movement in best betting prices on a Tory majority over the past extraordinary week – a period when the views of the election outcome from punters and pundits alike changed so dramatically. As someone suggested on an overnight thread – the Lib Dems have gone viral and we’ve no idea where this will end. Certainly the prospects for the Tory majority look a lot thinner this morning. For…
Could his call be counter-productive? The Indy’s front page features a plea from Baron Adonis, a former Liberal Democrat councillor in Oxford and ex-PPC, to supporters of the party he defected from to support Labour on May 6th in order to stop the Tories. His first target of supporters of his former party in Labour-Tory marginals because, “a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote which helps the Tories against progressive policies.” That’s fairly standard rhetoric and is central…