Can Huckabee raise the money to build on his Iowa success? This is a picture of the rail road station in Hope, Arkansas – a small town that calls itself a city and has a population of just 10,467. Just about its only claim fame is that it is the birth-place of the Bill Clinton, who, of course, went on to become state governor before running successfully for the White House in 1992 and 1996. Extraordinarily Hope is also the…
How would more devolution affect Labour south of the border? The announcement by Scotland First Minister, the SNP’s Alex Salmond, that there’s to be a “national conversation”, a distinctly new Labour term, on the future governance of Scotland could present a real challenge for Brown. For on the one hand he wants to head off the SNP pressure and might consider more devolution – but how does he do that without the role of Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster becoming…
Was Mitt’s Iowa victory worth $800 a vote? The major event in the campaign for the GOP nomination for next year’s White House was the so-called Ames Straw Poll that took place at the weekend. This is a gathering of Iowa Republicans where voting takes place on which candidate attendees would like to see win the nomination at the Iowa caucus in January – the first of the fifty states to complete its process to decide which to back. Mitt…
Is the Guardian splash a gift to the beleaguered Tories? An extraordinary piece of journalistic digging by the Guardian this morning suggests that since Brown became PM on June 27th his government been able to announce new spending of £39.32 billion pounds and that this flurry of activity has been behind the bounce in the polls. The new spending includes an extra £7.7bn for defence to 2011; £15bn to improve the railways; £4bn extra spending on early years education over…
Could Brown risk an October election based on this data? The full detail from yesterday’s ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror is now on the ICM website and, as I usually do, have clipped the voting intention the above voting intention data categories by what respondents said they did last time. My rationale is that the views of declared actual voters and how their allegiances are churning give a different picture compared with the headline figures – which include the…
Why are the polls failing to move the markets? Before the 2005 general election there was not a single period when Labour had the poll leads it is enjoying today when the Commons seat spread betting markets were showing anything other than that Blair was heading for a substantial majority. Looking over the records an average Labour poll lead of about 6% prompted the markets to show a Labour majority in the 70-100 seat range. Yet today with an average…
The polling feast continues.. Normally this is a time of year when we have to put up with a polling-free period. In August 2006 just two national surveys were carried out and we had to wait until the final week of the month before we got the figures. This year, with a new prime minister and change in the air, the polls are coming thick and fast and on top of the Sun’s Ipsos-Mori survey, the YouGov poll for the…
But how much is down to not weighting by likelihood to vote? A new YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times has Labour 10% ahead and the vote shares back at 2001 general election levels. These are the shares compared with the last YouGov poll at the end of July – CON 32% (nc): LAB 42%(+1): LD 14% (-2) So the big change has been a drop in the Lib Dem share to 14% – a level they were at in…