Tory lead down to 5% but nearly 60% say Gord is doing badly A new YouGov poll reported in the Sunday Times this morning has, with changes on the last survey by the pollster nearly a fortnight ago CON 40% (-3): LAB 35% (+4): LD 15% (-1). There’s very little other information in the paper except that “six out of 10 people believe the prime minister is doing badly”. We don’t know when the poll was carried out or any…
Guest slot by Peter the Punter Ok, 2007 is all but over and it’s that time of year when all good punters cast a critical eye back over their records and ask themselves where it all went wrong. My own soul-searching takes very little time because it’s all too obvious. My total profit from Political Betting came to approximately £10,000, which is about £12,000 more than I made from the horses and other forms of gambling. Since the time and…
Is Iowa down to a battle of money? With just five days to go before the critical Iowa caucuses the heavyweight campaigns for the Democratic nominations are throwing everything at the state to ensure that their candidate comes out on top in the first test of opinion in the 2008 White House Race. ABC News has been reporting overnight how Obama is trying to totally dominate the TV screens on Wednesday evening – on the night before the caucuses. One…
Who were those who cashed in on the afternoon of October 6th? While going through some of the old threads during the key moments of 2007 I came across the following discussion, reproduced below, which got by-passed by the dramatic news of Gordon’s general election U-turn on the afternoon of October 6. For it suggests that a gambler or a group of gamblers who had inside information about the Prime Minister’s decision sought to turn what they knew into cash…
Will McCain and Clinton be the main beneficiaries? With exactly one week to go before the first test of opinion in the 2008 White House race the big question this afternoon is how will such a global event impact on Iowa and New Hampshire – the first states to decide on the candidates? As the Politco site observes – “Bloody images of Pakistan in turmoil, which will dominate newspapers and TV news just as Iowa voters are making their final…
Defeat threatened on terror limits and John Rentoul says “it’s all over” On what must be the first “conventional” front page in a long time the Independent, the normally left-leaning paper, reports a ComRes survey of Labour MPs which suggests that the government is heading for a commons defeat if it presses ahead with plans to extend the limit on detention without trial to 42 days The survey found at least 38 Labour MPs would rebel against – four more…
When David Steel played the toupee card Lots has been written about the nastiness of this year’s battle for the Lib Dem leadership. Certainly the “Calamity Clegg” revelation appears to have been a pivotal moment. But was it as dirty as when David Steel beat John Pardoe for the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1976? In that battle it was thought that Pardoe was the choice of party activists while Steel had the “establishment” and the “armchair members” on…