A month after the local and Euro elections there is no sign that UKIP support is anything but solid

A month after the local and Euro elections there is no sign that UKIP support is anything but solid

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Ashcroft National Poll, 20-22 June: CON 28%, LAB 33%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 17%. Full details on @ConHome, 4pm — Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft) June 23, 2014 So far predictions of its demise have been premature A very large number of people predicted after the May 22nd elections that as we got closer to next May’s general election then UKIP’s totals would start to fade away. Well it is now a month after we were digesting those results and the picture is…

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YouGov has Tessa Jowell leading the way in London as next LAB candidate for mayor

YouGov has Tessa Jowell leading the way in London as next LAB candidate for mayor

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YouGov London poll has Tessa Jowell as most favoured LAB candidate for London Mayor. My money's on Sadiq Khan pic.twitter.com/nPofYMyxvW — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) June 23, 2014 One of the great political betting events is the fight every four years for Mayor of London and the next contest is just 22 months away. Coming up in the next few months will be Labour’s selection process for their nominee who, given the party’s huge success in the capital on May 22nd,…

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Welcome to SMERSH: Building a New, Better, Election Forecasting Model

Welcome to SMERSH: Building a New, Better, Election Forecasting Model

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Regular PBer’s will know that five years ago I built VIPA, a model that attempted to look at proportionate swings on a party-by-party basis to model results. This model was – to be quite frank – stolen by Nate Silver, and he used it with much bally-ho. While VIPA did a better job of predicting the 2010 election than UNS (it was noticeably more pessimistic on the LibDems than UNS, for example), it was not perfect. And so, 11 months…

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Free schools could be a bigger negative for the Tories than EdM is for Labour

Free schools could be a bigger negative for the Tories than EdM is for Labour

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Fewer than one in four voters back Gove’s flagship policy Maybe it is because free schools have been making the news because of the Birmingham developments and the row between Michael Gove and Theresa May but the blue team will be disappointed by the response to this key policy area in today’s YouGov. The actual wording of the question was whether those pollsed supported or opposed “The creation of “Free Schools” – new state schools set up by parents, teachers…

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After a year of edging down LAB is starting to move upwards

After a year of edging down LAB is starting to move upwards

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Today’s YouGov has CON 32/LAB 38/LD 8/UKIP 14 The chart above is based on the YouGov monthly averages for the past year plus, for June, an average of the past 15 polls. As I’ve written many times before there are so many YouGov polls (five or six a week) that looking at averages is the best way of observing the trend. Thankfully the firm is making the calculations and is now publishing them. I used to attempt this task myself!…

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EdM might not be polling well at the moment but the idea that David M would have done better is fanciful rubbish.

EdM might not be polling well at the moment but the idea that David M would have done better is fanciful rubbish.

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Quite simply David M showed he was crap at politics I was very taken by this comment from Edmund in Tokyo on the previous thread on why David Miliband would not have been the winner that his protagonists say he would:- 1) David Miliband wouldn’t have been able to bury the Iraq episode like Ed has. It would have been a serious ongoing problem, even worse as Iraq falls apart, and crippled his ability to win over the 2010 LibDems…

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England’s early exit has strengthened No

England’s early exit has strengthened No

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The World Cup will all be forgotten by September And so England will head home from the World Cup after the first round for the first time since 1958.  The result may be disappointing for England fans even if the standard of play – bar a few lapses – was generally better than expected.  Lapses, however, count dearly at this level.  How the results are seen in other parts of the UK is another matter.  In large parts of Wales…

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PB gathering – Ilkley, Yorkshire: Monday July 7th 2014 starting 6.30pm

PB gathering – Ilkley, Yorkshire: Monday July 7th 2014 starting 6.30pm

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The Flying Duck Ilkley As has been mentioned several times on the site the next PB get-together will be at the Flying Duck pub in the heart of Ilkley in Yorkshire. It’s in the town centre not far from the station. At that time of the evening on a Monday night it should be reasonably quiet. At the moment I have no idea who many might be attending – it could be half a dozen or several times that. The…

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