What should the Lib Dems do when the Tories are advancing? The latest Lib Dem approach to taxation and public spending is very different from what we are used to from the party – remember the penny extra in the pound for education and them being the only party at previous elections prepared to increase rates for the well off? This is going to cause fierce debates within Clegg’s party but I wonder whether the new young leader is sensing…
Should we be taking the SNP at 13/8 before it gets tighter? In the past few days the price on the SNP in next Thursday’s Glasgow East by election has been steadily tightening and now the best bookmaker price you can get is 13/8. I had been holding back my personal betting but I’ve now come to the conclusion that current prices might not last and have put a few hundred on the SNP. Although I still make Labour the…
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Surely the price should have moved out much more? As we end the parliamentary year I thought it would be useful to look at how punters have seen the next general election since the market was opened just after the last one in May 2005. The chart tracks the betting prices on “who will win most seats” expressed as an implied probability. The remarkable thing, given all the gloom and doom about Labour’s prospects from the Westminster village, is how…
Is this why you have to be careful about extrapolation? One of the main innovations in modern polling is the mechanism to ensure a politically balanced sample by asking how people voted last time and then attaching a weighting. Sometimes this can produce very strange results and there have been none stranger than what happened for former Lib Dem voters in the ICM Glasgow East poll at the weekend. Here, for some reason, the pollster only found six people who…
Is 10/1 good value on the newt-lover returning in 2012? I’ve just finished the book by the BBC’s Giles Edwards and the Telegraph’s Jonathan Isaby on Boris V. Ken: How Boris Johnson Won London. This is a highly readable account of both the background to this year’s race and the fight between two men for the most powerful elected position in UK politics. It’s a great holiday read for political anoraks and gives a good flavour and some interesting insights…
Are we seeing a re-run of the politics of the 60s and 70s? With council workers starting two days of strikes this morning there’s almost a 1960s and 1970s feel to the way the political scene is evolving. For in the run-up to the last time that a Labour government lost power, in 1979, it was public sector industrial action – the so-called “winter of discontent – that dominated the agenda and paved the way for Mrs. Thatcher. Only five…
Why my money’s on 45-50%? Ladbrokes have just put up a new Glasgow East betting market on the level of turnout that we can expect. This is timely because much of the comment about the seat has suggested that the proportion voting could be very low indeed. It was just 48.2% at the general election and there have been predictions of it dropping to the low 20s – particularly because election day takes place during the main Glasgow holiday period….