By-Election Night continues…..
Please use this thread to continue commenting as events unfold. Double Carpet
Can you predict how the results will be spun?
Prize competition for the most amusing parody In addition to the election forecast competition I thought I’d do something different. What are we all going to be saying tomorrow morning? What will be the approach that prominent PBC posters will be taking. Now I hope that the following site regulars do not mind but they have all got their own distinctive styles and have been posting here for a long time. So how will they try to explain what the…
PBC By-Election Competition: the predictions
Who’ll have the most to smile about once the results are declared? With 74 entries received before the competition closed, the breakdowns are as follows: Sedgefield Predicted to win: Labour 70, Lib Dems 4, Conservatives 0 Average vote shares: Lab 45.8, LD 27.2, Con 16.0 Southall Predicted to win: Labour 54, Conservatives 10, Lib Dems 10 Average vote shares: Lab 35.3, LD 29.0, Con 26.8 JohnLoony average: 238 votes The full listing of entries is available here: By-Election Predictions If…
Will Gord be saying thanks to Tom tomorrow?
Does Watson’s campaign approach work? This is Tom Watson – the Labour MP for West Bromwich and campaign manager in Ealing Southall who has a very personal approach to campaigning – he gets personal. Rather than focus on policy or issues his big idea is to find what’s perceived as a weakness in the character of the opposition candidate he most fears and then attacks and attacks it. At Birmingham Hodge Hill in July 2004 he sought to destroy the…
Could the postal vote leak be pointing to a sensation?
Why have Labour called in the police if its not true? The very first intimation in February 2006 that something sensational was about to happen in the Dunfermline by election was when it started to emerge that the Lib Dems were doing well with the postal vote – which are opened and verified in front of party officials before the polls open. At the time I reported that amongst Lib Dems “There was a buzz amongst their workers after the…
Could Sedgefield be the big surprise?
Is everybody taking Blair’s ex-seat for granted? While all the attention has been on Ealing Southall could Tony Blair’s former seat at Sedgefield be the election that causes the biggest surprise tomorrow? With a Labour share in 2005 at more than 58 percent this surely should be a certainty. But therein could lie the ingredients for a shock. For it might be hard to motivate the Labour supporters to go out and vote. At the same time the impression is…
Do punters have any real idea about the outcome?
Is following the markets a good idea? Ever since the Dunfermline by-election in February 2006, when I bottled out of most of my Lib Dem position in the final half hour, I have been very wary of the predictive powers of punters as evidenced in betting price movements. Then, it will be recalled, the Labour price was 1/5 just as the returning officer started to announce the result. Crazy. What I find interesting about the current Ealing Southall market on…
Is there a lesson for Gord here from John Major?
How long can we expect the polling bounce to last? The above table, adapted from UK Polling Report, shows what happened to the polls when John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher in November 1990 – the last time a Prime Minister was replaced mid-term. With all the talk of a general election in the air a critical issue will, surely, be the expected length of Gordon’s poll bounce. Clearly new or different faces and a new approach had a very marked…