Is this the most worrying trend for the coalition? PB regulars will know that the one economic tracker that I keep a close eye on is the Who is to blame for the cuts? which YouGov has been asking at least twice a month for nearly two years. We hear it time and time again – the most central piece of rhetoric that comes from coalition ministers is that drastic action had to be taken because “of the mess left…
Betfair Politics The news tonight that ex-senator Rick Santorum is pulling out of the race sets the seal on what everybody has known since the Wisconsin primary last Tuesday – Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee. For smart punters who like to trade this presents a great opportuntiy for currently the UK’s main betting exchange, Betfair, prices Romney as just a 30.1% chance to become the next president. In my judgement, backed up by a four figure bet,…
How can he compete with the likable Boris? There’s a new ComRes poll for the London mayoralty which has, in the final two forced choice, Boris beating Ken by 53% to 47%. More interesting, given the importance of leader ratings in predicting outcomes, are the like him/like his party responses with ComRes using the format that was developed by Ipsos-MORI. As can be seen Boris has a massive likability lead over Ken and if the official LAB man makes the…
Meet my 250/1 long shot for City Hall Have you noticed how over the past few days there’s increasing talk about the challenge from the ex-senior civil servant with powerful friends, Siobhan Benita, for Mayor of London? This is from a two page report from Rachel Sylvestor in the Times over the weekend: Siobhan Benita is the one to watch. This former civil servant who resigned from the department of health over Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms is attracting support from…
Welcome once again to PB’s overnight open thread in the relaxing atmosphere of the PB NightHawks cafe.
Will we ever see a result like this again? I hope you are watching the re-run of the results programme on the BBC Parliament channel. As can be seen from the screen-shot above the exit poll was very much out – as were the final opinion polls. Only one of them, Gallup, showed a Tory lead and that was of just 0.5%. In the end the blue team won a majority and a GB vote lead of 7.5%. This was…
Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter . . . twitter.com/pollreport/sta… — PollingReport.com (@pollreport) April 8, 2012 A slightly different poll for Easter Monday A very common form of questioning in US polling which we hardly see in the UK is the favourable/unfavourable format. This has become the standard for candidate ratings and here the ABC/Washington Post survey applies it to high-tech companies. That Google has a slight edge over Apple is interesting – I’d have guessed the other way round particularly following…
Mail on Sunday Could it be pressing for a pre-election change Sometimes the most important factors about a poll are not the findings but how the commissioning newspaper is covering it. That, I’d suggest, is the case today with the Mail on Sunday’s April survey by Survation. By any standards the coverage, seen in the panel reproduced above, is not very friendly and suggests that the paper would not be too upset if Cameron stood down. Simon Walters writes ..Perhaps…