Could Clinton’s sustained attacks impede Obama? The final debate ahead of the critical March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio has ended with Hillary not managing to make the knock-out blow that she needed to. My view was that she probably won on points – but only by a narrow margin. The questioning by MSNBC’s political team was much tougher than we have seen. At one point I thought that Hillary “had” her opponent when he was pressed about an…
Is the Mayor being hit by all bad publicity? A new YouGov poll for London ITV News has Ken fallen 5% behind Boris in the race for the London Mayoralty. These ae the shares compared with the last proper survey from the firm in December – JOHNSON 44%(nc): LIVINGSTONE 39%(-5): PADDICK 12%(+5) The YouGov boss, Peter Kellner has confirmed to me that the survey took place from Tuesday to Thursday of last week and involved a sample of 1,003. In…
Is this the woman who will join Obama on the ticket? Unless there’s a dramatic turnaround in Hillary’s campaign in the next few days then in the middle of next week speculation will turn to who the junior senator from Illinois will choose to be his running mate. There has, of course, been talk that it should be Hillary herself and certainly that would please large sections of the party. But after the campaign that we have seen and her…
Why don’t Ken’s voters back him on the congestion charge? By far and away the biggest political betting event in the UK this year is the London Mayoral election on May 1st. Five million people will be able to vote and the outcome will set the scene for the coming general election. But as we’ve noted before – there has been almost no polling data on which to make predictions. We’ve had just one survey in 2008 and only 240…
Did Cameron benefit from the Auschwitz row exposure? A new poll by ComRes for tomorrow’s Independent shows a three point move back to the Tories since last month. The shares are CON 41% (+3): LAB 30% (nc): LD 17% (nc) If the pollster was following its normal pattern then the fieldwork would have taken place from Friday until Sunday when one of the big political stories was the row of David Cameron’s Auschwitz trip press release. My theory, as regular…
Peter the Punter looks at possible new developments (1) The day after Super Tuesday, Mike and small group of us PB camp followers met in a café near Leicester Square and despite suffering election night fatigue, alleviated only slightly by some rather nice red wine, a number of ideas emerged, the more sensible of which Mike asked me to mention here. Social Events PB Parties have proved very popular and been well supported. Naturally we are not limited to one…
Is this approach really going to keep her voters on side? With just one week and one day to go before the crucial Texas and Ohio primaries Hillary Rodham Clinton has stepped up the rhetoric with this speech overnight. It look as though the strategy is to do everything she can to get her core voters, mostly elder women, out to vote. Could it be that like in New Hampshire in early January this will boost turnout. The trouble is…
But does talk of “change” work when you are bidding for a third term? With the fight the Democratic nomination hardly being off our screens during 2008 it is perhaps not surprising that Obama’s rhetoric, the phrases he uses, the way he constructs sentences and most of all the words themselves should start to have an influence in UK politics. Just take the following high-blown quote from a statement that a group of Labour supporting academics, writers and artists, have…