As Osborne prepares to give budget speech ComRes/Mail poll on likely measures just published pic.twitter.com/pMCexzsjPk — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 8, 2015 Wouldn't it be great if this time Osborne did not use that tired cliche "hard working families"? — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 8, 2015 Osborne starting his 7th budget pic.twitter.com/wdCyDkMxh3 — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 8, 2015
Gordon Brown’s 2001 exemption rule has a huge loophole which should never have been agreed From 1980-84 a big part my then job at the BBC was to deal with the PR and political issues relating to the corporation’s prime income source, the TV licence. None of the challenges that was as sensitive or as problematic as what should be done about the oldies who were required to pay the same fee as everybody else. There had been a long-standing…
Screen grab of Betfair GE2015 outcome market timed 2.26am May 8th Two months to the day after the election and people are still talking about the outcome which I would argue was a bigger shock than what happened in 1992. Then there was just one poll that was showing a Tory lead. In the run up to May 7th quite a number of the phone polls had reasonable CON margins including a couple which had a blue lead of 6%….
Sundays are only day people who work in shops can bank on some time with their kids. I will oppose this all the way > http://t.co/U99cf1XAvA — Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) July 7, 2015 Methinks this might be a mistake The big battle on Sunday trading was fought in the early 90s and the current arrangement under which the opening hours of large supermarkets was restricted to six hours was very much a compromise. We are now more than two decades…
Without published polling punters are flying blind The charts above are from Betfair and show the movements in the betting price, expressed as a percentage, on the betting exchange. Frustratingly there is no specified time axis but this is the best that’s available. Unlike prices from the standard fixed odds bookies the betting exchange reflects what is actually happening in terms of the prices that punters are ready to back and lay at. Overall the big driver ha been the…
An invitation to PBers to join an academic/Ipsos-MORI post GE15 conference next week After every election since 1979 there’s been a joint academic and MORI (now Ipsos-MORI) conference to look by at what happened and the lessons for the future. The 2015 one takes lace next Monday and Tuesday in London. The organisers tell me that PBers are very welcome to apply for tickets. The only cost might be a small catering charge. Full details and links can be found…
But can we read anything into these numbers? Following their entries into the race all four contenders set up dedicated campaign Twitter accounts and the numbers in the chart above show how many followers they have attracted. All of these were created at about the same time so comparisons are valid. The question is what can we read into the numbers? What I find interesting is that the contenders perceived as being the most left and right wing are the…
So what’s the next move? We really are moving into the unknown