Will the towns of England seal Brown’s fate?

Will the towns of England seal Brown’s fate?

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Out at last – the PoliticsHome Marginals MegaPoll We’ve now got the latest PolticsHome marginals poll which covers 238 constituencies with a sample of 33,610 voters. Apart from the scale what makes this different is that there is a two-stage voting intention question to try to tease out the potential for tactical voting. The 2008 version was based on fieldwork at the end of July of that year when Labour was at it absolute lowest so today’s findings suggest that…

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Have the Irish fired the starting gun in the EU Presidency race?

Have the Irish fired the starting gun in the EU Presidency race?

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Can Tony live up to his 6/4 favourite status? Several bookmakers have dipped their toes into the water with markets on over who will be the first permanent President of the European Council but so far not many punters have been tempted. What’s the point of locking up your stake in bets on something that might not come about? For whether there’ll be such a role has always been dependent on the Lisbon treaty being ratified by all the EU…

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Labour re-gains some ground in today’s tracker

Labour re-gains some ground in today’s tracker

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CON 41% (+1) LAB 29% (+3) LD 17%(-3) But stand by for some bigger polling developments tonight Sorry not to have put this up earlier – but I’ve been working on some really big polling news that hopefully I’ll be able to report later. Here is the Friday YouGov tracker based on fieldwork carried out last night and this morning. It shows a Labour recovery and the Tories putting on a point. So the bad news of the Sun’s defection…

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The spreads move back to all-time Labour low

The spreads move back to all-time Labour low

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SportingIndex Punters seem to be following the tracker Before Gordon Brown’s conference speech began to affect YouGov’s daily tracker ratings the SportingIndex spead market on the number of seats the parties will win at the next election had moved to what I think was a record low of 198 – 203 seats. Immediately after the the first poll to take the speech into account had Labour just seven points behind the market moved back up again a couple of notches….

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How voting splits according to newspaper type

How voting splits according to newspaper type

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YouGov Will those Sun shares change as we get to polling day? In the aftermath of the Sun’s switch from Labour there was quite a bit of focus on how influential newspapers were on their readers – but little of it was backed by hard evidence. In the data from the latest YouGov tracker the pollster featured the above set of cross-tabs which I do not recall seeing before – linking newspaper type to voting intention. As can be seen…

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And tonight’s Marf cartoon

And tonight’s Marf cartoon

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So should Boris have gone on Eastenders? Overshadowed, at least in the eyes of political anoraks, by the Labour conference, the Sun’s ditching of Labour, and the daily tracking polls the big political story for many people tonight has been Boris’s cameo appearance on BBC1 Eastenders. It will certainly raise his profile and, no doubt, will reinforce the “good old Boris” rhetoric that we saw in his election last year. But should a political figure do this? I like the…

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What a difference a day makes?

What a difference a day makes?

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CON 40% (+3) LAB 26% (-4) LD 20%(-1) Labour’s YouGov tracker deficit doubles After the euphoria amongst Labour supporters last night and some corresponding gloom from Tories today’s YouGov daily tracker moves the party shares back to the sort of territory that we’ve come to expect in recent months – Labour in the mid-20s and the Tories in the low 40s. Most of the online questionnaires would have been filled in last night after a day that was dominated by…

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Is Cameron preparing to take on his party over Lisbon?

Is Cameron preparing to take on his party over Lisbon?

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Daily Express How would a referendum U-turn go down in Manchester? Tomorrow the Irish vote in their second referendum on the EU Lisbon treaty with the results being known the following day – just as delegates to the Conservative conference begin arriving in Manchester. The story featured above from the Daily Express gives a sense of the minefield Cameron might have to negotiate should, as expected the Irish vote YES. With the Czech government said to be on the point…

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