… Welcome and join tonight’s big political conversation Here are a couple of tweets from with the past half hour. Speculation in Brussels that Cam is delayed because he is having to clear his lines with Clegg — Tim Shipman (Mail) (@ShippersUnbound) January 30, 2012 Santorum and Gingrich both beat Romney 1 on 1 in Ohio and Missouri. One will have to drop out if Mitt’s going to be stopped — PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) January 30, 2012 Have a good evening….
Is he in danger of losing losing the E-petition war? Back in the summer Guido launched a campaign to get capital punishment restored for certain cases of serious murder and he set up a petition on the Number 10 e-petitions site. The aim was to reach the threshold of 100,000 within six months so it would become eligible to be debated in the commons. His move received a fair bit of attention in the media and also prompted a rival…
Should the franchise be extended? With suggestions from the SNP that the franchise should be extended to 16 year olds in the referendum there was a good article over the weekend by Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University. He sifts through what polling there is and concludes “…we cannot presume that the opinions of younger people on independence are in fact particularly distinctive at all.” Curtice goes on:“…But whatever their views, 16 and 17-year-olds can only possibly make a difference…
Some ugly polls for Gingrich this morning. Our forecast has Romney +13 in Florida, 95% chance of winning. nyti.ms/ywKYEp — Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) January 29, 2012 Last Sunday he was 8% ahead With Florida going into its final day of campaigning tomorrow it looks pretty certain that Mitt Romney will chalk up his second victory which should, surely, provide him with a solid platform to go forward. Nate Silver has produced his latest forecast – 95% chance of a Romney…
And Miliband moves up from last week’s record low This week’s leader ratings from YouGov are just out and all three main party leaders see improvements on a week ago. Camerons “Well/Badly” figures are 46/47 making a net minus 1. Last week it was minus 3. Ed Miliband is on 20/68 which is a net minus 48 compared to 53 last weekend. The improvement is still not enough to be scoring better than Nick Clegg who has had the best…
… The big news today, of course, has been that the chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton has given up a £1.4m shares bonus due next month. This will probably end the row which has caused problems for both government and opposition. Meanwhile it costs nothing to join tonight’s conversation in the PB NightHawks cafe. Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH
Mitt up by around 10 points on the first round of calls for our Florida poll…this one may end up being a snooze — PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) January 28, 2012 Santorum has the best favorability numbers out of all the candidates in Florida but still not picking up much support — PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) January 28, 2012 Bc he’s so well liked everywhere I think Santorum would actually be biggest long term threat to Mitt, but Newt would have to get out…
Could Dave seal the first Tory working majority since 1987? One market sadly missing at the moment that on which punters can predict how many seats a party will win at the next election. Before 2010, odds could be had both on the exchanges and with bookies, and punters could also buy and sell seats on the now defunct Spreadfair. That’s a shame because there’s a great deal of uncertainty about what might happen in 2015 – or perhaps earlier…