Do the SNP justify their odds-on status? A week ago I suggested here that the 7/4 Labour price that was then available was a good value bet and was where my money was going. My reading at the time was that this was a 50-50 chance so odds greater than evens represented value. Well we’ve moved on a week, we’ve had a so-called “Glenrothes poll”, and I’ve had chance to consult the person I most trust to read Scottish politics….
If Obama wins big will UK pollsters have to change? The chart is from Nate Silver’s excellent fivethirtyeight.com and shows the Obama leads from the major national White House polls colour-coded according to whether the firms do or do not include cellphone users in their samples. You guessed it – the ones in yellow did while the one in grey restrict their samples to people who could by standard land-lines. There has long been a debate on both sides of…
Has the heart gone out of McCain supporters? One of the perils of being in the political prediction business is that what you write can come back to haunt you and I have made my fair share of wrong calls. But there is one prediction of which I take enormous pride – made here on the site just four months after Bush had been installed for his second term. In support of my argument on May 26th 2005 that people…
But are the marginals behaving differently? The Daily Telegraph YouGov poll for October is out this morning and shows almost no change on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago and is producing numbers fairly in line with other pollsters. The Tories will be relieved that the paper’s still has them comfortably in the 40s while Labour is only polling three points down on its general election level. There’s little doubt that the last month and a half…
When are they going to clamp-down on pro-Labour samples? One most Fridays when parliament is sitting BBC2’s “Daily Politics” programme announces the results of its latest ComRes poll on matters of current concern. This generally gets picked up by other parts of the media who treat it, quite naturally, like any other ComRes political poll. It’s not and the BBC should say so. For the Daily Politics polls have one fundamental difference compared with the standard ComRes voting intention surveys…
What should Labour do about those who were drawn to Tony? One of the great polling developments of the past two years is that the three telephone firms that use past vote weighting are now providing data so you can see what those who said they voted for the main parties at the last general election plan to do at the next one. I’ve extracted the above numbers from the latest ComRes, ICM and Populus surveys and have sought to…
Is the environment only something we care about when we are prosperous? The chart above is from the latest Ipsos-MORI and shows responses to the firm’s unprompted “What do you thing are the main/important issues facing Britain today” which they have been asking in exactly the same way for more than two decades. As can be expected the current top topic raised by respondents was the economy. But just look at the way “green” concerns have been declining. When your…
Should spread punters now be buying Labour? There’s a new ComRes poll out for the Independent which could make worrying reading for the Tories. Although the margin over Labour is down by just one point the last ComRes poll was showing the worst figures for the Tories of all the pollsters. As ever the Independent’s report of its poll is highly misleading because the comparisons it uses are with the last survey it published – not the last survey by…