Is the Cameron bike back on the road? Two threads this morning with the publication of two key polls – one from ICM on national voting intention and a YouGov survey of Labour and TU members ahead of the deputy leadership election. After a period of solid good media coverage for Labour and two weeks of public infighting amongst the Tories over the grammar school row the ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph this morning shows a huge boost for…
This survey, in the Sunday Times today, clearly is a big boost for the education secretary, Alan Johnson, who will surely now move into the favourite slot. My only observation is that the poll closed on May 29th before the big Newsnight debate and is a bit old. Johnson will surely move in the betting. Mike Smithson
Has the past fortnight underlined the challenge for Brown and Cameron? The mathematics of the next general election are straightforward – there are more votes to be gained by appealing to the centre ground in British politics than anywhere else. The Tories need to be winning back the voters who moved to the Lib Dems and Labour during the 1990s. The objectives for Brown’s party, meanwhile, are to get back the 6-7% of the national vote share that moved to…
Is Labour Losing The Former Mining Areas? One friend of mine drew my attention to the fact that Labour had fared badly in local authorities across the old coalfields, on May 3rd. Coal mining bound voters to the Labour Party, being hard, dangerous, work, carried out by a completely unionised workforce, in tight-knit communities, most of whose inhabitants rented their homes from the National Coal Board. The comfortable capture of the Forest of Dean District Council, for the first time,…
Should you cover yourself on Harman/Blears? Even though the latest YouGov Labour members poll on the deputy leadership battle closed on Monday there’s no sign yet of the findings being published. In any case the survey took place before Tuesday’s key televised hustings which might have had an impact. Meanwhile I have been going back over the polling data that we do have to see if there are any further clues that might point to the winner. For, as many…
Should we be betting on a 2007 election on Betfair’s new market? Is it worth betting on a 2007 general election on the new date market that’s just been opened on Betfair? You have to select in six month bands going through to January 1st 2010. There’s little money on offer at the moment but this will build up as the market becomes known. What are the chances that the author of the new book on Courage, Gordon Brown will…
Brown’s party boosted by big increase in intention to vote News of the final poll for May is just out and shows a big move to Labour. The headline figures from the Ipsos-Mori poll are with changes on last month CON 37% (-1): LAB 35% (+4): LD 18% (-2). Like all Ipsos-Mori polls the figures shown are based on those who say they are “certain to vote” and given what has happened with other pollsters it had been expected that…
What’s his reward for delivering Brown his coronation? Looking back over the past three months the move that secured the leadership and Number 10 for Brown without the bother of a contest was the appointment of Jack Straw to run the Chancellor’s campaign. At the time Straw himself was being tipped as a contender and everybody assumed that he must have been promised something big. But what was that going to be for the former boss of both the home…