Is Gordon planning to end “first past the post” voting?

Is Gordon planning to end “first past the post” voting?

Who would gain and who would lose if the voting system was changed? There is said to be information coming out of the Brown camp that one of first acts he is considering as Prime Minister will be to abolish first-past-the-post for Westminster seats and replace it with the alternative vote system of proportional representation. Under this voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate in a constituency gets more than half the votes cast, the one…

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Frank Luntz boost for Barack Obama

Frank Luntz boost for Barack Obama

The celebrity pollster gives his verdict on the junior senator for Illinois The Republican pollster whose “focus groups” on BBC’s Newsnight programmes have become a regular part of the political scene in the UK has given Barack Obama a big publicity boost in a new book that has just been published and is covered in today’s Sunday Telegraph. Terms like “the new JFK” have been tagged to many politicians in the 44 years since the killing in Dallas and Luntz…

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Will the 2006 betting sensation stop Nick Clegg?

Will the 2006 betting sensation stop Nick Clegg?

Is he campaigning to join the fight after Ming goes? Tonight the “Chris Huhne for Next Lib Dem Leader” show comes to Bedford where I live. It’s not actually billed as that but that is what it is. For he’s the main guest at the local party’s annual dinner – one of dozens of invitations he is attending at the moment part, apparently, of a strategy to get himself better known amongst the membership for when the party votes on…

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Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

What about the the Metropolitan Boroughs? Labour’s loss of support in the 36 Metropolitan Boroughs over the past 10 years has been striking. Back in 1996, Labour received 53% of the vote in local elections in these boroughs. In May 2006, the party received 34% of the vote, a fall of 19%. Back in 1996, Labour won 75% of the seats that came up; last year, the figure was 47%. Labour held 31 of these boroughs, compared to 15 now,…

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Is Miliband planning a secret bid?

Is Miliband planning a secret bid?

Is there more to Mary Anne Sieghart’s piece than just wishful thinking? In her column in the Times this morning the leading writer, Mary Anne Sieghart, is suggesting that the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, is planning a secret bid to take on Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. She writes: “..No one wants to talk about this publicly, and some fear doing so even off the record. Supporters of Mr Miliband know that his best hope is to reveal no…

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So will it be First Minister Salmond?

So will it be First Minister Salmond?

How good are the pollsters with their Scottish surveys? The Channel 4 poll by YouGov was given a lot of prominence yesterday because of its fairly strong indication that this May might see a change of power in Edinburgh. This shows that the outcome of the election in terms of seats could be SNP 45 seats: Labour 42: Conservative 18: Liberal Democrats 14: Green Party 7: Others 3. As the election gets nearer there are going to be a lot…

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Can the UKIP caravan really damage Dave?

Can the UKIP caravan really damage Dave?

Do the peer defections have the capability to open up splits? It is perhaps an indication of the complete lack of PR skills of UKIP that news of the defections to the party of the two Tory peers came out on a Tuesday when there was so much other political news about that it got buried. If the party or Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and Lord Willoughby de Broke, had any nouse they would have done it on a Sunday…

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Does opinion really change by all that much?

Does opinion really change by all that much?

Do we make too much of each minute swing? Last week I had an enjoyable session with the YouGov boss and writer, Peter Kellner, when we talked about a new development his company is planning and, of course, the way the polls are going. He made a point that seemed to ring very true – that people’s political allegiances do not change by anything like the magnitudes that are reflected in the polls. Things really are much more stable than…

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