AV referendum question – actual wording on the ballot (ICM 10,011 sample poll) YES % NO % All 59 41 Scotland 65 35 North 62 38 North West 57 43 Yorks 57 43 East Midlands 56 44 West Midlands 57 43 Wales 59 41 Eastern 59 41 Greater London 60 40 South East 61 39 South West 61 39 Would a delay in the timing favour the NOES One of the consequences of the big Labour filibuster in the House…
Could we see another speaker being forced out? The above is a quick Google News search that I did earlier this evening on the speaker, John Bercow, and as can be seen he’s involved in quite a range of different controversies which will just add to the “whispering campaign” amongst Tory MPs that is said to be going on. Their complaint is that he’s being unduly helpful to Labour and over-harsh the government, particularly members of the party that he…
How did you actually vote in the by-election (Populus) CON 2010 % LAB 2010 % LD 2010 % Conservative 49 0 3 Labour 5 91 29 Lib Dem 33 5 55 UKIP 9 1 7 BNP 2 1 0 GREEN 1 2 4 OTHER 3 0 2 Is UKIP starting to benefit from the coalition? The Tory peer and benefactor, Michael Ashcroft, funded a call-back poll in Oldham E and Saddleworth and the key voter churn figures are featured in…
The LibDem Collapse, Fact or Fiction The latest polls indicate that if another general election were to be held tomorrow Labour would sweep back to power with a majority (assuming uniform swing) of 46 over all other parties. The Conservatives would lose 45 seats, despite maintaining their 2010 share of the vote. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile would lose 41 of their 57 MPs, leaving them representing a paltry 16 Constituencies. In 7 short months since the 2010 election, 6 in…
I am delighted to announce that Nick Sparrow, formerly the head pollster at ICM, has accepted an invitation to write some articles on polling for PB. To my mind Nick is the UK’s leading political pollster and in the mid-90s pioneered the system that we now know as “past vote weighting” to ensure political balanced samples. It was he who argued that the 1992 general election polling debacle was the result of samples based on demographic weightings alone no longer…
Is the answer a blue-yellow incumbents’ pact? One thing that strikes me following Old & Sad is that Labour is in a stronger position to gain seats in parliamentary by-elections than any opposition party has been for decades. For where SNP/PC considerations don’t apply the red team will always be the unequivocal choice for those wanting to oppose the government. The protest vote won’t be split. Normally they’ve had to have a spat with the yellows over who is best…
Can Labour’s peers stop the bill? The marathon and unprecedented overnight sitting of the House of Lords is still going on. As I write at 6.25am, Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader and not someone known for his brevity, has just got to his feet so one can assume that there’s a lot of life in this yet. Whenever things have been put to the vote the government has had comfortably majorities. The debate on the government’s plans for an…
After her return last week Marf, PB’s cartoonist, is hoping to make contributions to the site on a regular basis – tonight on the NHS changes. Welcome back Marf – we really missed you. Mike Smithson