Why is the Telegraph’s favourite party doing so badly? In last night’s by-elections, UKIP won the sort of votes which normally go to joke candidates. In Croydon LBC, Bensham Manor, they took 40 votes, 1.5% of the total, which was down from 305 in 2006. In Nuneaton BC, Bede, they won 8. They can at least take consolation from the fact that they beat the candidate for the Official Monster Raving Looney Party in Croydon. But their 8 votes in…
Is this how gains-losses board will look on May 4th? I’ve already started trying to find betting opportunities for one contest that takes place on May 3rd – the race for the mayor of Bedford where I live. Hopefully local bookies will once again be quoting prices because it looks like an interesting battle of big personalities. Last time the boss of a local newspaper group won as an independent on a very low turnout in a standalone election. The…
Why is there zilch betting interest in the Scottish and Welsh elections? These are the latest prices from Betfair on this May’s devolved elections in Scotland and Wales. As you can see the betting has hardly caught the imagination of punters with less than £400 having been traded on the Edinburgh Parliament result and a paltry £77 on Cardiff. Just look at the Scottish numbers – both Labour and the SNP are at prices much tighter than evens. That does…
So what’s going to happen in the East End? The East End of London will produce some of the most fascinating contests at the next general election. From the end of the First World War, until very recently, Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Barking & Dagenham were rock solid for Labour, at Parliamentary level. Indeed, from 1950 to 2005, Labour won every Parliamentary contest in these boroughs. That has all changed, and Labour faces real opposition in this part of the…
Are Labour’s southern Problems getting worse? Some weeks ago, I wrote about the return of “Labour’s Southern Discomfortâ€, the instinctive rejection of Labour by Southern voters, in the 1980s. This showed up markedly in May’s local election results, and is now even more pronounced in recent local by-election results. Labour support, in local by-elections, has generally held up better in the North than in the South, particularly in the North West, where the party has actually gained four seats since…
What will be the impact of the Scottish switch to PR? The next round of Scottish local elections will be held under the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional representation. First past the post has produced some very distorted results in the past, in Scottish local elections. For example, Labour won 87% of the seats in Glasgow, in 2003, on 48% of the vote, and most remarkably of all, a bare majority in Edinburgh with just 27% of the vote….
For Labour’s sake, Tony Blair must go now Regular readers of this site will know that I am not one of New Labour’s greatest fans. In fact, I would be happy to see the Labour Party go the same way as the Liberals in the 1920s. Nonetheless, I am not being cynical in offering my opinion that the sooner Tony Blair goes, the better for Labour. Tony Blair’s own opinion poll ratings are dreadful. YouGov’s BrandIndex and MORI are at…
Turnout recovers One feature of the first six years of this Government was declining turnout in local elections. Throughout the 1980’s, and the first half of the 1990’s turnout in local elections regularly exceeded 40%, historically, a high figure. After 1997, it declined steadily, reaching a low of 28% in 2000. In one by-election that year, in Liverpool, it even fell as low as 6%. This was mirrored in the General Election of 2001, when turnout reached 59%, the lowest…