Doesn’t the uniform make him look better than he is? Launched this morning is the latest Tory poster which seeks to link Brown with UNITE with the BA strike. Politically it’s clearly the right thing to do – but has the party made a cock-up in the way it’s executed. To my mind the cap and the uniform and the UNITE logo appear pretty smart and really make Brown look quite good. The idea of Brown as “captain of the…
Will Cameron be the winner of the BA and rail actions? Most national strikes have a political dimension and all involving the transport sector do. They impact on millions of voters and how those individuals view the players could determine not just who ‘wins’ or ‘loses’ the strikes but who wins or loses the election too. The biggest short-term losers in a transport strike are invariably the public, so the blame game becomes all important. Even if aircraft keep flying,…
How would the vote split? Lots of talk today about how many candidates the “others” – GREEN/UKIP/BNP – will actually have standing in the election. UKIP looks as though it will have in excess of 500 but the other two parties are probably going to fall short by quite a distance. With this segment running quite high in a number of polls the question is how would this go if potential voters have not got someone to support in their…
Click to play Is a post-election challenge now likely? One story that really has not been given the coverage it perhaps should was this moment in the commons on Tuesday afternoon when Speaker Bercow sought to prevent Tory front-bencher, Theresa Villiers, from raising Labour’s links with UNITE during a question on the BA strike. Paul Waugh of the Standard has been right on top of the story and writes of Cameron lunch in the Commons Dining Room “….. he was…
Harris poll for The Metro Mar 16 Mar 9 CONSERVATIVES 36% 37% LABOUR 28% 29% LIB DEMS 18% 18% LAB to CON swing from 2005 5.5% 5.5% UKIP/BNP/GRN all move up The gap between the Tories and Labour remains the same in the latest poll by Harris Interactive for the Metro but both main parties slip a point. It should be noted that fieldwork for the poll took place over seven days – from Wednesday last week to Tuesday this…
An example of what’s been happening But WHY are Labour panellists less keen on taking part?? The head of YouGov Peter Kellner has outlined changes that are being made to the firm’s methodology for those on its panel listed as “Labour Loyal” identifiers – those who told the pollster this is the party they identify with and that is how they voted at the 2005 general election. As has been highlighted here before the on-line pollster appears to have had…
YouGov Daily poll Mar 18 Mar 17 CONSERVATIVES 36% 36% LABOUR 32% 32% LIB DEMS 20% 20% LAB to CON swing from 2005 3% 3% The Tory lead remains at 4 points So there’s not really a lot to say. Peter Kellner has published a statement on revisions to their methodology which I plan to look at tomorrow. Mike Smithson
An invitation to participants to do a PB guest slot Tomorrow an academic conference starts in Manchester on forecasting the general election. A series of papers are going to be presented and all of them, as far as I can gather, suggest that there will be a hung parliament. I’ve already invited Matt Lebo of Stony Brook University in New York to do a guest slot on his model that seeks to predict outcomes from from prime ministerial approval ratings….