Is Gord 10% ahead or 7% behind? No doubt in the next few days we will see another round of “economic confidence” polling where respondents are asked to rate who they trust the most. There’s a tendency for so called “expert” commentators to regard poll findings such as these as a commodity – that they are all the same and that one can be compared with another. That is total tosh and the following examples show how these non-voting findings…
Was it Morus’s argument that caused November 6th to be chosen? During my visit to Westminster today I got talking with one key player who is close to the Brown camp who believes that it was highly likely that Morus’s post in mid-August played in key part in determining the date for the Glenrothes by election. This is the fight in the adjoining constituency to Gord’s which if it went to the SNP would be highly embarrassing to the Prime…
Back in the chamber after 30 years I’m in London today visiting the House of Commons to watch PMQs and the statement that follows. This means that my oversight of PB will be limited to what’s possible on my mobile phone and I won’t be able to produce any proper posts. This will be my first time back watching PMQs live since 1978 when I was a journalist at Westminster with the BBC. In those days the TV cameras were…
Will de-humanising his opponent reinforce the racist vote? One thing that became clear during the second 90 minute presidential debate is that John McCain is not going to do anything in public that hides his clear animosity towards his opponent. Clearly his camp has worked out that “Obama-hate” is going to be the best way of getting the Republican vote out on November 4th and McCain’s whole demeanour seemed geared to that end. And who is to say that it…
Is there anything the 72 year old can do to get back into the race? All eyes in the American presidential election will be on Nashville tonight where John McCain and Barack Obama take part in the second presidential debate. After this there will only be one event left. After the first encounter between the two senators most pundits scored it at about even. That, however, was not the verdict of the public and in the voting intention polls that…
This is an original cartoon by Marf for LondonSketchBook.com Can Darling-Brown do anything to restore stability? With a package expected to be announced this evening the big question is whether it will be enough and will bring stability to the financial system. Clearly this has been the most dramatic day so far in the crisis with huge drops in the value of bank shares and hundreds of thousands of UK savers facing big worries after the Icelandic bank, Icesave stopped…
Could the move to Gord be in the heartlands – not in the marginals? Firstly the caveats: As I’ve been saying for weeks polling during the conference season is almost always very odd and we need to wait until the end October surveys at the earliest before we can start drawing conclusions. Secondly looking at sub-samples in polling data can often deceive. But on Saturday the Guardian’s polling writer whose judgement I respect, Julian Glover, produced an analysis on the…
Will ministers be thanked or get the blame? Reproduced above are some of the front pages this morning – different papers all telling the same story. Could October 6th 2008 go down as reference point we will look back to in the years to come – or is there much worse on the way? Who knows? We are in uncharted territory and for those who like forecasting elections and betting on political outcomes some of the certainties appear to be…