Can anybody spot the value bet? Over the weekend the ever resourceful Shadsy at Ladbrokes introduced his general election vote share handicap. Essentially there are three runners – the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems – and you have to work out who’ll come out top applying the handicaps as set out. So the Tories start at scratch, Labour at +15 percentage points of the GB vote share with the Lib Dems on +22 points. So if the result was…
Will Hague’s opposition thwart Tone’s EU hopes? With just one country left to ratify the Lisbon treaty we are getting closer to the moment when the EU will be appointing the first President of the EU council who is likely to become referred to as the President of Europe. The big question, and there’ quite a bit of betting on this, is who is going to get it? Can Tony Blair, Labour’s star three-times election winner who was ousted to…
How do you rate the chances of Gordon Brown leading Labour at the General Election? There’s a 51% chance or more that he will There’s a 50% chance or less that he won’t
A guest article from Peter Ould It’s commonly asserted that BNP voters are most likely to be disaffected Labour supporters. For example, Iain Dale on Saturday noted that the places that the BNP have done well are all strong Labour constituencies. Equally, some Labour commentators have blamed the rise of the BNP on the lack of an effective Conservative opposition. Which is it? To examine both these propositions I decided to look at some polling data. Taking the four polling…
Or is Brown’s party just clutching at straws? According to Gaby Hinsliff and Henry McDonald in the Observer this morning ” a private analysis by Labour strategists suggests that the blues could be denied up to 50 seats at the election because of UKIP supporters splitting the Tory vote. The figures in Labour’s study, if that’s not too grand a term, “..are based on 100 “supermarginal” seats where its MPs are holding on with majorities of less than 2,000.” Certainly…
Adrian Short Overnight continuation thread
ConservativeHome ..Or are site readers just echoing back Tim’s views? One of the big political stories of the week which could have an electoral impact was David Cameron’s comments about all women short-lists. The reaction on a number of Tory-blogs, particularly from Tim Montgomerie’s ConservativeHome has been electric. There’s been post afer post about the subject and with many commenters being hostile as well. Yesterday we had one of ConHome’s “polls” with the summary results appearing above. This has been…
Who’s got this right? Herdson or Peter the Punter Earlier this week, I had an e-mail exchange with Peter the Punter following a bet we made a week last Monday as to whether Gordon Brown would go within the week, where we both set out our thoughts on Brown’s chances of survival through to next May. The first e-mail is from me in response to a question that Peter asked – whether Labour would sleepwalk to a sub-200 seat total,…