Who’ll win the polling battle of Scotland?

Who’ll win the polling battle of Scotland?

Are punters right to put their money on YouGov? For nearly six years a battle has reigned in the UK polling industry over the internet pollster, YouGov, which first appeared at the 2001 General election and has now become a serious force within the industry. It’s methodologies have been very different and has attracted an enormous amount of criticism – usually from parties which have not shown up well in its surveys. In the run-up to the 2005 General Election…

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French election competition – round 2

French election competition – round 2

Can Ségo still beat Sarkozy Predict the winner of the French Presidential Election and their share of the vote to up to two decimal places. Your score will be the difference between your prediction and the actual result. If you predict the wrong winning candidate, a penalty of three percentage points will be added to your score. The entry with the lowest score will win the competition. Tie-breaker What will be the highest percentage vote score by either candidate in…

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Will retaining Scotland be Blair’s final victory?

Will retaining Scotland be Blair’s final victory?

Could Tony’s leadership close with a dramatic triumph? Two polls by mainstream pollsters suggest that Labour is closing in on the SNP in the final phase of tomorrow’s Scottish election and hold out the prospect of Blair’s premiership ending on an electoral high. As has often been said here – “nobody ever got rich betting against Tony” ICM in the Scotsman found that the SNP is still ahead – by 2 per cent on the constituency vote and 1 per…

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Poll puts Obama ahead for the first time

Poll puts Obama ahead for the first time

A new poll tonight from the US firm, Rasmussen, has put the black senator from Illionois, Barack Obama, ahead for the first time in the race for the Democratic nomination. The pollster notes that most of the survey took place before last week’s TV debate of all the democrat challengers in south Carolina. A general view was that Hillary Clinton came out of that on top. Rasmussen has been the most Obama-friendly pollster for some time and this latest survey…

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What’s a good outcome for the Lib Dems on Thursday?

What’s a good outcome for the Lib Dems on Thursday?

Will Ming’s party consolidate its second place position? With the big battle going on in Scotland and the attention on the Labour leadership the Lib Dems have been struggling, even more than usual, to get the attention of the media in the run-up to Thursday. That’s nothing new and is not necessarily a problem because local elections, where you can put a huge amount of resource in to key ward contests, suit their style of campaigning. Unlike Labour, which is…

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How should we judge the performance of Team Cameron?

How should we judge the performance of Team Cameron?

What will be the Tory vote share on Thursday? There’s no doubt that all the parties will be spinning like mad in the next couple of days to talk up the prospects of their opponents and to dampen down expectations about themselves. We have this silly game every year so that whatever the outcome all the parties can claim that they have done better than expected. Yawn…Yawn. But what performances should we be expecting and what, in particular, will be…

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Betting strategies for a big political week

Betting strategies for a big political week

How prices change in the final few days One of the features covered in my book “The Political Punter” is what happens to betting markets in the final few days before an election when the small body of knowledgeable political gamblers is joined by many in the wider betting community. They tend to follow favourites resulting in the prices of the most fancied options getting tighter and others moving out. So according to the book “If the person or party…

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