News is just breaking that the former chief whip, Geoff Hoon along with the former cabinet minister, Patricia Hewitt, have sent a message to all Labour MPs calling for a secret ballot to resolve the leadership issue once and for all. The fact that Hoon is a former chief whip gives this an added credence. Is there real momentum behind this? Developing.
Ipsos-MORI How good a pointer are these numbers? A lot is talked about polling comparisons between now and the run-up to the May 1997 general election when, of course, Mr. Blair won a landslide victory. It can be challenging finding comparable data because of the considerable changes in polling over the past thirteen years. The table above, however, is one where we can make a direct comparison because it’s based on MORI questions which have been asked in the same…
New Statesman But is there more going on? The above is from the New Statesman blog which also says that all is now well between Tessa and Number 10. Mike Smithson ***Political Website of the Year***
What do we make of Paul Waugh’s post? This was posted by Paul Waugh on his Evening Standard blog within the past hour:- “….In the last few hours, the rumours have been swirling around again that a Cabinet minister could quit in protest at Gordon’s leadership. The plotters have certainly asked a sympathetic minister to do so – but whether he will do so is another matter. When I just confronted one Cabinet minister – who had been described in…
Who’s got the strongest mandate? Labour or the Tories The above seat calculation is from UKPollingReport and shows what happens if you put the vote shares of C39-L33.3-LD20 into the seat calculator. The outcome, based on a uniform national swing calculation gives Labour the most commons seat on fewer than a third of the votes and well behind the Tories on 39%. So in these circumstances what should the Lib Dems do? Nick Clegg seeks to answer the whole hung…
Will Tory fundraising make victory more likely? Perhaps the key element of the first day of the campaign was the realisation that the Tories have got a lot more money to play with and are ready to invest heavily in outdoor advertising. We got the first taste yesterday with the NHS poster campaign said to be costing £400,000. What a contrast with Labour’s news in the Times this morning that it is facing potential bankruptcy and is expecting to be…
What does this say about current surveys? The table above shows all the published opinion polls in the January before the last election in May 2005 and compares them with what actually happened. First thing to note is the methodological changes that three of the firms have made which makes direct comparisons more difficult. YouGov introduced a new party ID weighting structure to deal with their pre-May 2005 tendency to over-state the Lib Dems at the expense of Labour. ComRes…
And could Cameron be creating hostages to fortune? Wow. What a busy morning. Is it going to be like this right through to the general election day whenever that is? What’s caught my eye is this Tory NHS poster and the way all the emphasis is put on Cameron – “I’ll cut the deficit. Not the NHS” Is this going to be a common element in other campaign material? Clearly this has been through the focus groups and reflects what…