A cautionary tale from Peter the Punter Take care, political punters. The bets you think you may have struck with bookmakers may not be as watertight as you think. In the Republican Caucus for Kansas held on Feb 9th 2008, Mitt Romney was hot favorite to win ahead of his main rival, Mike Huckabee. The first indication on this Site of a possible upset came at 8.11pm (GMT) with Jfsl posting at 165 – “Fox predicting Huckabee will win Kansas. 
Can we repeat our 2007 success? One of the down-sides of political betting is that unlike racing or football or other sporting events you very rarely get the chance to cheer your choice on while an event is running. It’s all rather cold and mechanistic apart from, that is the budget. Above is a list of spread markets from Sporting Index. Here you look at the list and decide whether Darling is going to say more or less of the…
Will the First Lady records substantiate her “experience” claims? After managing to turn up the heat last week on Obama’s experience the media narrative has turned the other way and what she says she did as First Lady is being put under the microscope. One of the specific claims that is under scrutiny is her statement: “I helped bring peace to Northern Ireland”. A comment from the unionist leader at the time and Nobel Prize winner, David Trimble, is causing…
But Cameron sees an increase in his personal ratings The Populus survey for the Times has just been published and shows a significant increase for Labour and, as predicted here this morning, a boost for the Lib Dems. These shares are with changes on a month ago CON 37% (-3): LAB 34% (+3): LD 19%(+2) The numbers are fairly similar to that which the pollster found at the start of January, immediately after the Christmas break. The Lib Dems will…
The View from East Anglia East Anglia is a part of the country that the Conservatives have increasingly come to dominate over the past 50 years. For many years after the war, Labour provided a real challenge to the Conservatives in this region, both in rural constituencies, like North, South, and South West Norfolk, Eye, and Maldon, and in urban areas like Norwich, Ipswich, and much of South Essex, with its new towns. Labour’s (and pre-war, the Liberals’) rural strength…
Will the week’s media spotlight have produced a higher LD share? Here’s a ballsy prediction that could fall flat on its face – the Populus poll for March that should be due out this evening will not show a reduction for the Lib Dems but will have the party holding its own or moving forward. On the face of it this would appear counter-intuitive given some of the savagings Nick Clegg has had to endure over the past few days…
Could he be the only one to break the Clinton-Obama deadlock? It was bound to happen but it does sound plausible – there’s now discussion from respected bloggers that should the Democratic nomination remain deadlocked then there could still be an opportunity for the ex-VP and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore. Taegan Goddard on “Political Insider” writes: “It’s clear that for either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination, they’ll have to win the…
Has Gord anointed Balls as the next Labour leader? After more than a decade of serving under the ex-public school boy and Oxford graduate, Tony Blair, it’s suggested this morning that Gord has decided that Labour’s next leader should be Ed Balls – who went to a £10,000 a year public school as a day pupil and then onto Oxford. According to Iain Martin in the Sunday Telegraph Brown is planning to hand-over to his former top aide and now…