Why so much variation over the Lib Dem number? Whenever I go anywhere, like yesterday during a very enjoyable visit to Westminster, virtually everybody I speak to asks me the same question – “Which pollster do you think is best?”. My answer, as always, is ICM because the record since the mid-90s shows that the firm’s methodology is more likely to pick up the most accurate Lib Dem share. This matters because it has a big impact on the Labour…
Some words of comfort from Michael White With George Osborne continuing to make the news there’s a good analysis of his position from Michael White of the Guardian in which he suggests that the Shadow Chancellor’s biggest problems are on his own side – not the attacks from Labour. White writes: “..Much more important to my mind than Labour attacks is that the people pushing hardest to get Osborne out are on his own side. And most of them are…
Are the Tories being out-classed in the spin wars? One of big decisions that Gord took during his summer holiday was to beef up Labour and the government’s whole PR operation in order to compete with the Tory threat. Result: the return of perhaps the most successful political spin team ever – Mandelson and Campbell. And over the past six weeks we have seen a transformation in the way Team Brown is getting its message across and its ability to…
Wikimedia Commons A guest article from Balakirev With oil prices in a slump, the rouble tumbling and domestic stock exchanges closing for days at a time, it’s tempting to imagine that the swaggering Russia visible over the past year or so is about to be replaced by a staggering Russia. Well, not quite and certainly not yet. But there are strong signs that it has finally sunk in with Moscow’s leadership that it is not immune from the swirling economic…
Why the default assumption is against Labour With two polls this morning showing very different outcomes and both apparently have taken place at the same it’s perhaps a good moment to bring PB’s “Golden Polling Rule” out again. Just to recall YouGov in the Sunday Times has the Tory lead narrowing to 5% while ComRes in the Indy on Sunday has it increasing to 12%. Eh? For based on the polling record at every single major election since the 1980s…
CONSERVATIVES 43% (+4) LABOUR 32% (+1) LIB DEMS 12% (-4) How can we explain the contradictory findings? So what are we to make of all of this. First we get the YouGov poll covered in the previous thread where the Tory lead is down to 5%. Then we see the latest ComRes poll for the IoS which reports a Tory share of 43% and a lead of 11%. My guess is that a much larger proportion of the ComRes fieldwork…
CONSERVATIVES 41% (-1) LABOUR 36% (+3) LIB DEMS 14% (-1) Labour back to General Election level of support The first of tonight’s new national opinion polls is just out and has Labour narrowing even further the gap with the Tories. The five point margin, if repeated at a general election, puts a general election well within hung parliaments territory. My comparisons above are with the last poll from the pollster. No doubt the Sunday Times will follow its normal and…
Will George Osborne be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer? With all the talk swirling around George Osborne’s ‘breach of convention’ by commenting on the sharp decline of the pound against the dollar and euro, and what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign led by the Telegraph newspaper to see him moved, I decided to check Betfair’s ‘Next Chancellor market’. George Osborne is still the favourite if you consider the last traded price (3.8 for Osborne, 5.1 for Ed Balls),…