The money goes on a Tory majority of 56 seats

The money goes on a Tory majority of 56 seats

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How gamblers are seeing the election There’s hardly been any movement for months on the PB Index – the site’s attempt to extrapolate a general election result from how political gamblers are risking their cash on the party seat markets. Here it’s all about the balance of money with some punters wanting to sell and others wanting to buy. The PB Index is worked out by taking the mid-point spreads on the Betfair party line market and the spread betting…

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Will it be YouGov that “starts the campaign” – next month?

Will it be YouGov that “starts the campaign” – next month?

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What’ll the daily tracker do to the election frenzy? There has been nothing official from the firm but I’m hearing a lot of murmurings to the effect that the online pollster will be starting an election daily tracker – possibly next month. Apparently this will operate on weekdays only at first stepping up to seven polls a week as we get closer to the big day. The firm experimented with a tracker during the conference season in late September and…

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Can Brown pin his hopes on a shock result?

Can Brown pin his hopes on a shock result?

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Is it only the Blue Team that can defy the pollsters? As we ponder whether there are historical precedents for a party to defy the polling and go on to win an election it’s hard to find examples in the Red side. For the shocks that most stand out to me were 1970 – the first I covered as a professional journalist – and 1992 when I was a candidate. In the former Heath’s Tories came to power against most…

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The Tory winning margin: What pollsters’ predict

The Tory winning margin: What pollsters’ predict

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Will this help you with the new betting market? This morning, after the slight kerfuffle over what had been said at the polling conference in London, I decided to contact the heads of all the seven main UK political polling operations to put the question to all of them that had been asked last week – what lead, if any, do you think the Conservative will have, in terms of a percentage of the GB vote, at the coming general…

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How many of these will be blue when the results come in?

How many of these will be blue when the results come in?

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York Outer – 0.44% (Lab 27%) Romsey & Southampton N: 0.46% (Lab 10.9%) Cheltenham: 0.66% (Lab 11.8%) Eastleigh: 1.12% (Lab 21.1%) Westmorland & Lonsdale: 1.7% (Lab 7.8%) Hereford & N Herefordshire: 2.4% (Lab 10.2%) Carshalton & Wallington: 2.93% (Lab 17.3%) Taunton Deane: 3.3% (Lab 12.1%) Chippenham: 4.7% (Lab 16.8%) Leeds NW: 5% (Lab 31.9%) Torbay: 6% (Lab 14.5%) Sutton & Cheam: 6.2% (Lab 11.8%) Camborne & Redruth: 7.1% (Lab 25.6%) Richmond Park: 7.1% (Lab 9.25%%) Cheadle: 7.4% (Lab 9.9%) Portsmouth…

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Was Steve Richards being misleading?

Was Steve Richards being misleading?

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So what did the leading pollsters REALLY say? Along with OGH (Mike Smithson) and one or two other PB’ers, I attended the excellent polling conference held at the sumptuous British Academy on Pall Mall last week. Nearly all of the “big hitters” from UK opinion polling were there – names such as John Curtice, Peter Kellner, and Andrew Cooper who should hopefully be familiar to most readers of this site. Subjects included past vote weighting, telephone and internet polls, and…

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Has ICM adopted PB’s turnout weighting plan?

Has ICM adopted PB’s turnout weighting plan?

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Is this putting the squeeze on the “others”? Well done to Anthony Wells as UKPollingReport for spotting this but ICM seem to have introduced a significant methodology change in this week’s Guardian poll which looks as though it will reduce the shares it reports for UKIP/BNP/GRN. For the firm has introduced a change that I’ve been pressing for since 2007 – that greater weight be given when assessing likelihood to vote to those respondents who have a record of voting….

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Why we need more polls of the marginals

Why we need more polls of the marginals

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Why survey the 5/6ths that don’t matter? As we look forward to the coming battle why is it that we have our fixation with national polls when what really matters is the state of opinion in the 100 seats that will determine the outcome? Both big parties, though they won’t admit it, are no longer pumping extra resource into seats held by Labour where the 2005 majority is less than 4%. It’s the seats above that which are key and…

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