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…
This could be about the narrative – not the numbers Firstly can I make clear that the last post was by my son Robert and not me – as some on the thread suggested. I have not changed my mind from Wednesday and believe that in spite of the apparent mathematical disadvantage that Hillary might just still do it. A good test of US opinion is the Iowa Electronic Market – an institution that was set up by the state…
Hillary has a plan; win the popular vote and persuade the super-delegates that she is not just the better candidate but has a moral claim to the nomination. Should the gap in pledged delegates be less than 100, then this might just work. The only problem she has is that the maths is hard; very hard. Excluding Florida, Hillary needs to pull back 410,000 votes between now and the final primary. (And she’ll be hard pressed to include Puerto Rico…
Just over a fortnight ago I suggested that the picture of John McCain being hugged by George Bush might come to haunt him. Well within two days of him securing the GOP nomination it is already starting. Above is Democratic party general election ad seeking to get over the close links between Bush and McCain. The closing sequence is that hugging picture. The linkage with Bush that his opponents are trying to establish will be one of the key determinants…
Why the new confidence on the spread markets? While all main focus has been on the US elections there’s been a quiet move to the Tories on the spread betting markets on the number of seats the parties will get at the general election. This is the form of betting where you “trade” on the seat numbers and where, if you predict it right, you can make short-term profits to pocket now even though it is at least a year…