What should ministers do when everything’s bu**ered up? Like many PBers, no doubt, the inclement weather is having a big impact on my life. As I write this it is -11C outside, our pipes are frozen up so that we’ve no water to even flush the loos, and for the third day running we might have to postpone our long planned family Christmas get-together. These are just about the worst winter conditions that I’ve experienced in the UK in my…
Could we see posters like this? A big question hanging over politics is the possibility of a formal Lib Dem Conservative pact at the next general election. How likely do we think it is? Whether you are a political punter or involved in politics, until this question is resolved, it is impossible to make any long term predictions. Senior Conservatives have certainly been flirting with the idea in public. To date Nick Boles MP has been the ringleader. In his…
Oldham E & Saddleworth result – general election Party Votes % Change on 2005 Phil Woolas Labour 14186 31.9 -10.7 Elwyn Watkins Lib Dem 14083 31.6 -0.5 Kashif Ali Conservative 11773 26.4 8.7 Alwyn Stott BNP 2546 5.7 0.6 David Bentley UKIP 1720 3.9 1.8 Gulzar Nazir Christian Party 212 0.5 0.5 Are the blues being given permission to vote yellow? The big overnight Old & Sad story is a report from Melissa Kite in the Sunday Telegraph saying that…
Poll/publication Date CON % LAB % LD % ComRes/IoS-S.Mirror(Online) 17/12/10 37 39 11 ComRes/Independent (Phone) 29/11/10 36 40 12 ComRes/Indy on Sunday (Online) 19/11/10 37 38 13 ComRes/Independent (Phone) 31/10/10 35 37 16 ComRes/Indy on Sunday (Online) 15/10/10 40 34 14 ComRes/Independent (O) 01/10/10 39 36 15 ComRes/Independent on Sunday (O) 16/09/10 37 35 15 ComRes/Independent (Phone) 05/09/10 38 34 18 ComRes/Mirror/GMTV (Phone) 15/08/10 39 33 15 ComRes/Independent (Phone) 08/08/10 39 33 16 ComRes/Independent 27/06/10 40 31 18 And the…
How do they motivate the voters at Holiday time? It is unlikely that Saddleworth in January has ever been mistaken for Barbados. It is also unlikely that there will be a surge of enthusiasm in the next two weeks from local voters to discover the intricacies of the various candidates’ policies in the forthcoming by-election to succeed Phil Woolas. The combination of these two things will make the Oldham East & Saddleworth election different from the norm and the parties…
Oldham E betting LABOUR LIB DEMS TORIES Ladbrokes 2/9 (1/7) 9/2 (5/1) 10/1 William Hill 1/5 (1/7) 4/1 (7/1) 10/1 (8/1) Victor Chandler 1/6 6/1 10/1 Smarkets 0.31/1 100/15 10/01/10 Betfair 30/100 (1/5) 24/5 (10/30) 81/5 (7/1) Doubts about Tory commitment sends punters to the yellows There’s been quite a lot of movement on the by-election markets in response to the growing narrative that the blues are not really trying – reinforced during the afternoon by ambivalent comments from the…
ConHome If so – should you be doing the same? According to Jonathan Isaby in ConservativeHome there are signs that the Tories are not really trying to win the Old & Sad by-election. He writes: ..I am detecting increasing concerns from various quarters that the party machine is not putting its all behind Kashif Ali’s campaign to win the seat in which he was less than 2,500 votes behind the winning candidate in May. Many of those I have spoken…
But was the poll as bad for EdM as first reported? One of the great things about Ipsos-MORI is that their polls are generally accompanied by a mass of data and analysis that go well beyond the standard voting intention questions. The above chart is from this weeks survey for Reuters and sets out how those sampled responded to a range of standardised questions about Cameron, Miliband and Clegg. Miliband’s position on most of the measures is basically down to…