Home of the web’s best political conversation Why not relax, and converse into the night on the day’s events in PB NightHawks. If you’re a lurker, why not change the Status Quo,and become a poster. Don’t worry, delurking won’t lead you to the Wild Side of Life, after your first post, you’ll want to post Again and Again. The round up of recent events (click on the links below, and it will bring up the relevant link) Budget 2014: the…
Betfair boost for Osborne ahead of budget Based on last trades punters make him favourite for next CON leader pic.twitter.com/TvpMG9rx0U — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 18, 2014 Not convinced – I still reckon Hamond Above are the latest trades on Betfair’s Next CON leader market and as can be seen there is a new favourite – George Osborne. This has probably come out of the recent Michael Gove initiatives which are seen by many as a way of undermining Boris. Trading…
There’s a new Survation poll out this morning where the sample is restricted to those in employment either full-time or part-time. It was commissioned by Unions 21 but the target sample was all those working not just union members. There is nothing to compare this with in the past so it is hard to say whether there is a trend or not. Of those sampled 73% said they’d seen wages fall relative to the cost of living in last 2…
Gove's comments about Etonians at top of the Tory party. The head is not amused. See http://t.co/LfLHY4RqS8 pic.twitter.com/7nK9l06xmq — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 17, 2014 The Speccie’s Isabel Hardman has the story. The only problems for Number 10 is that this keeps the story running and it gives the impression that there are splits at the top. Maybe, as was being suggested at the weekend, senior Tories have given up on GE2015 and the focus now is on who will succeed…
The above finding from today’s Popuus online poll is not surprsing particuarly as public sector worker have been facing many of the impacts of the coalition’s efforts to reduce the deficit. I’ve not been able to find comparative GE2010 data from Populus but without success. Ipsos-MORI, though, reported in April 2010 that public sector workers split CON 33/ LAB 22/ LD 37/ UKIP 2. This is not directly comparable with Populus but perhaps does provide a pointer. Mike Smithson 2004-2014:…
ICM Guardian poll March 2012 And in this March 2012 poll UKIP was on just 1% If it should be that the Conservatives are not in government after the next general election then a lot of the blame will be attributed to the March 2012 budget and the way the government reacted in the weeks and months that followed. Until that point in the electoral cycle, as the ICM poll for March 2012 illustrates, the Tories were doing quite well…
During today’s interview with Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics, the issue of where Nigel Farage wants to stand at the next election cropped up again and for the first time he gave an answer “I want to fight a marginal” he declared. Now, there has been a lot of discussion in the past about what constitutes a marginal (with experts ranging in opinions from a 5% lead to a 20% lead), but my own personal thoughts are that a…
After a big week politically and some generally better ratings the Tories have closed the gap by 1.4% in the latest PB weekly average. We have been producing this weekly since the start of the year to help us better follow trends from the five times a weeky YouGov polls. This is a big move upwards which would have been greater if today’s poll for the Sunday Times had not had LAB back up at 40 with the Tories at…