Has the heart gone out of McCain supporters? One of the perils of being in the political prediction business is that what you write can come back to haunt you and I have made my fair share of wrong calls. But there is one prediction of which I take enormous pride – made here on the site just four months after Bush had been installed for his second term. In support of my argument on May 26th 2005 that people…
Unregistered pollster suggests a Cameron majority of 118 After a few weeks when every poll has had been presented as part of Brown’s great recovery, even if this wasn’t quite supported by the facts, we have a survey that suggests that all might not be well for Team Labour. BPIX in the Mail on Sunday has these shares with comparisons on the previous survey at the start of October – CON 45%(-1): LAB 31%(+1): LD 13%(nc). The commons seat projects…
Is American polling about to experience the 1992 catastrophe? Let’s recap what we know. Every pollster in America has Barack Obama in the lead, and the vast majority of the state polls in key states imply that he should win the Electoral College quite handily. I want to begin with a premise that if John McCain wins, we won’t have seen a measurable 2-point a day shift in the polls – a Republican victory in the race for the White…
Peter the Punters offers his “money-making” guide Two weeks ago we ran a piece on Ladbrokes’ innovative market, the McCain Firewall Finder, which challenged punters to find the highest State in the list below that John McCain would win in next Tuesday’s election. This generated some lively discussion and apparently quite a few bets, according to PB regular Matthew Shaddick [Shadsy] who devised and is running the market on behalf of the Magic Sign. In view of this interest and…
Venerating past vote recall Many a navel has been gazed into, and many a hand wrung, about the impact of past vote recall on political polls. The common practice is of course for voting intention polls to be weighted by a formula that includes past vote recall to ensure that the sample is politically representative. For voting intention polls this is entirely justified. However, some people incorrectly believe that without being weighted by past vote recall, readers of other types…
What lessons can we learn from last time? At 1.05am EST on November 3rd 2004 the US news channel, CNN, showed the above graphic on the screen illustrating the result of an exit poll in Ohio, the key state that Senator John Kerry had to win if he was to beat George W. Bush for the Presidency. The message was clear. Kerry was ahead in Ohio and the chances were that the state would give him enough votes in the…
Who’s going to win the Glenrothes betting war? There are more betting opportunities on next Thursday’s Glenrothes by election and this one, from PB’s spread-betting sponsor, Sporting Index, allows you to have a punt on which party will end up third. Thus if you bought the Tories at 3 points and they did make it to third then you would win twice your stake unit. If they lost you would lose three times the amount. Sounds complicated? Well the firm…
But are the marginals behaving differently? The Daily Telegraph YouGov poll for October is out this morning and shows almost no change on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago and is producing numbers fairly in line with other pollsters. The Tories will be relieved that the paper’s still has them comfortably in the 40s while Labour is only polling three points down on its general election level. There’s little doubt that the last month and a half…