What should be the default assumption?

What should be the default assumption?

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Final Polls 1987/92/97/01/05: Polls overstating Labour: 29 Polls getting it right: 1 Polls understating Labour: 1 Have we still got to factor in Labour over-statement? There was a constant reminder from many of the speakers at this week’s conference on general election polling that in only one of the 31 final polls in the five general elections since 1987 has Labour been understated. The exception was ICM in 1997 when even with this it still ended up as top pollster….

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Is Labour right to attack on marriage policy?

Is Labour right to attack on marriage policy?

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Have Harriet and Gord found a weakness in the Tory stance? In the last couple of days senior Labour front-benchers have launched attack on Tory plans to incentivise marriage – an issue over which David Cameron appears to have strong views. The latest Labour rhetoric, as Paul Waugh in his Standard blog reports, is to revive the John Major notion of “back to basics” which appeared to rebound so strongly on his government during its latter days. So are Labour…

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Did the Tories put this up in your area?

Did the Tories put this up in your area?

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Is your seat deemed to be a key battle-ground? One thing that strikes me very strongly about general election constituency betting is that the key information that we need is on the party target lists. How serious are Labour/The Tories/The Lib Dems about fighting to defend/attack a particular seat and which are the battles that they assume are won/lost already? The problem is that this information is highly confidential because the last thing the machines want made public are the…

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Do you fancy a 20/1 shot in a 4-way marginal??

Do you fancy a 20/1 shot in a 4-way marginal??

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Daily Mail What will Esther and Chilcott do to Luton South An interesting little side story of the coming general election is what happens in Luton South – one of the seats listed here earlier in the week as being high on the target list for the Tories and one they really need to take in order to get a majority. Looking at the 2005 notionals LAB 42.8: CON 28.1: LD 22.5 this should fall easily to the Cameron juggernaut…

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The British Polling Council gets into election mode

The British Polling Council gets into election mode

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Full datasets to be published within 18 hours The president of the British Polling Council, Professor John Curtice, told a conference of academics, pollsters and journalists today that the rules on the publication by pollsters of the full datasets from surveys are to be changed for the general election. The rule that has existed since the BPC was set up in 2004 was that pollsters had two clear working days to make the dataset available. So if the poll came…

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Has Labour got most to lose from polarisation?

Has Labour got most to lose from polarisation?

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YouGov How will it split as the share for “others” gets smaller? Following Tuesday’s thread on the decline in poll shares for the other parties a key question is who will benefit the most? For working out where these votes will go could be the key element in predicting what is going to happen on the day and whether Labour will be able to stop Cameron’s Tories from forming a majority government. A problem is that there’s so little polling…

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What’s Massachusetts going to do Obama’s re-election chances?

What’s Massachusetts going to do Obama’s re-election chances?

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CNN Could be become a one-term president? The big overnight political news from the US was the dramatic loss by the Democrats of the Senate seat in Massachusetts that had been held by Edward Kennedy. Inevitably pundits are looking forward to to 2012 and asking whether this means that his chances have got worse. Before that, of course, he has to go through this November’s mid-terms which traditionally can prove challenging for the White House incumbent. It will also make…

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Massachusetts live thread

Massachusetts live thread

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Will it be a Democrat disaster in the Bay State? UPDATE: Massachusetts called for Brown (GOP) Boston Globe town-by-town results Vote count from AP Politico RCP Live Blog CNN feed Double Carpet