Why have these names fallen off the radar?

Why have these names fallen off the radar?

Why are Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson no longer being touted for VP? Today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal leads with claims that both Obama and McCain are about to announce their VP choices in the coming week. They give a list of prospective candidates on the ‘Narrow List’ that everyone here will be familiar with from our discussions. For McCain, Governors Pawlenty (MN), Crist (FL) and Palin (AK) join Carly Fiorina (CEO of HP), fmr Governor Mitt…

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Who will exploit the cracks in the glass ceiling?

Who will exploit the cracks in the glass ceiling?

Has Hillary’s loss helped future female Presidential hopefuls? I’ll start with a controversial premise: Hillary Clinton failing to win the Democratic nomination might well have been the best thing that could have happened, from the perspective of those who like the idea of living under a female President of the United States. I have little doubt that Hillary Clinton would have beaten John McCain – largely because she was better equipped to secure Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida than Obama,…

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Tories take 22% lead with ComRes

Tories take 22% lead with ComRes

Will this add to Brown’s agony? The panel shows the details of the latest ComRes poll for tomorrow’s Independent and the 22% margin over Labour is the largest that the pollster has ever recorded. According to firm “..the Tories are mobilising their core vote much more successfully than their rivals. Some 96 per cent of people who think of themselves as natural Tories plan to vote for the party, compared with 77 per cent of natural Labour supporters and 82…

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PB Election Countdown: Representing results better

PB Election Countdown: Representing results better

Blair Freebairn helping us to understand more the battles ahead “The curse of dimensionality” is a term used by statisticians to describe the exponential increase in complexity as you add variables (aka dimensions) to a problem. So, in the interests of simplicity, political commentators rarely venture beyond one dimension; this is most limiting in the traditional reporting of swing, changes in vote share are reported using a single number. However one of the defining themes of post-war elections has been…

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Will he make it beyond the end of the year?

Will he make it beyond the end of the year?

Are we now in the final days of the Brown premiership? In the aftermath of Glasgow East the rumblings have started and the issue that’s going to dominate politics in the immediate future will be Gordon’s survival. Can he hang in there until the next election or will something bring the issue of his leadership to a head? In May I got quite a lot of money on at 6-1 and 5-1 that he would be out during 2008. That…

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Move over PoliticsHome

Move over PoliticsHome

The PB community wins the battle of the predictors Above are the final predictions from Wednesday’s PB online poll on who we thought would win Glasgow East and the Politics Home panel of 100 “insiders” and “experts”. Notice anything? Without crowing (well only a little bit) this was an overwhelming victory for the site over the PH100 which very much represents received opinion. We can feel proud this morning. Mike Smithson

Are these the people punters should thank – or blame?

Are these the people punters should thank – or blame?

Was it their “17% Labour margin” that made the SNP prices attractive? Yet again an election has shown the pollsters up and reinforced my default position when assessing all voting intention surveys – “always assume that Labour is being overstated“. The whole atmosphere in the lead up to yesterday’s Glasgow East by election was affected by the Scottish Progressive Opinion survey that had Labour 17% ahead. I was highly sceptical about their methods right from the start and it was…

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