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Betfair Politics The 4/7 betting favourite continues to defy the polls We are less than six weeks away from the point where real voters in real elections in the US start to vote to choose the Republican nominee for next November’s presidential election. For once those first results in the January 3rd 2012 Iowa caucus start to come in then the whole process will come alive and, if previous elections are anything to go by, change the whole dynamic. Very…

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Will the Autumn Statement feature another U-turn? One of the early announcements the government made after coming to office was that in future the state pension would rise in line with whichever was the highest of the inflation rate, the increase in earnings, or 2.5% – the so-called Triple Lock. At the moment, it’s the inflation measure that’s highest and even using CPI, rather than RPI, that still lands the government with a hefty 5.2% increase. It’s a lot of…

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Click to play Henry G Manson looks to next week’s strike In the 5 months since the last round of industrial action in June Ed Miliband has had ample opportunity to develop a stance of the forthcoming strikes over pensions. There was plenty of choice. This was a chance for Labour to develop an alternative policy or to defend the past reforms from a Labour government that made public sector pensions more affordable. The Labour leader could have tackled some…

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Is it set to rise further? The latest Ipsos-MORI issues index is out and the big movers have been fuel prices, up 4 to 9, and the EU/Europe/Euro which has gone from 4% in October to 8% now. This is its highest level since 2005. For much of the period since then the level of concern recorded by MORI has been in the 2-3% range. This polling is unique in that respondees are not prompted at all during their face-…

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If it’s Thursday then that means two things to the political classes – Question Time on BBC1 and, of course, the local council by-elections. To me these are important for what they say about local party organisation and just how motivated activists are. There are five tonight and there’s a good preview here with all the facts and figures on the Britain Votes site. One of them has been caused by caused by the resignation of a Tory councillor who…

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Ipsos-MORI.com How long before they’re in the minority? Above are two MORI charts from the latest survey covering leadership ratings. As can be seen there has not be much movement overall but within the data from those saying they are Labour voters we see a trend continuing. Satisfaction with Ed Miiband is on the decline while dissatisfaction continues to increase. On a more general level on the last thread I was asked why there is a such a large discrepancy…

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Is the surge to “others” on the wane? Just published is the Ipsos-MORI Reuters political monitor for November and the VI figures are above. As can be seen the split is with changes on last month  CON 34 (nc): LAB 41 (+3): LD 12 (nc).   So the very high others figure of October is on the decline. The firm always produces two sets of VI numbers – one of all those who expressed a preference and the other of those…

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Is their still hope for my 200/1 long-shot? Back in November 2008, only a week and a half after Obama won the White House race, I placed a bet of £50 with Ladbrokes at 200/1 that ex-governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman, would be the next president. I abandoned hope for the bet a few months latest when Huntsman, who is also a former diplomat, accepted an offer by Obama to be the US ambassador to China. He served in Beijing…

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