Are we about to enter the year of limbo? One of the consequences of Tony Blair’s desire to leave during the summer could be that we won’t see Brown, or whoever, facing Cameron across the dispatch box until October 2007. For if Blair actually steps down to allow his replacement to be in place at the end of July then the first weeks of the new Prime Ministership will be during the parliamentary vacation. We will then have next year’s…
Are we going to get a poll that will confirm or refute Frank Luntz? In terms of political betting the key focus this morning is not on anything coming out of the Tories at Bournemouth – but on whether Gordon Brown will face a serious challenge in his quest to succeed Tony Blair and if so by whom? For we are talking here about who will be the next Prime Minister and we might get a better indication of how…
Meanwhile the young leader plans to attack Brown for being “weak” There’ll be a bit of a relief as the Tories gather in Bournemouth this morning that the second poll to come out since the Labour conference still has the party in the lead. The survey by ICM in the Sunday Mirror, has with changes on the last poll by the firm CON 36 (nc): LAB 35 (+3): LD 19 (-3). Fieldwork began on Thursday, a day later than yesterday’s…
Has Election Night Special Had its Day? One of my pet hates is the BBC’s Election Night Special. It’s not too bad for General Elections, but their coverage of local elections is woeful. One spends hours watching talking heads, trying to spin the results on behalf of their respective political parties, and all piously agreeing with each other about how dreadful the British National Party is. Amid all this verbiage, one then gets about ten minutes of Professor Anthony King,…
Lib Dems suffer most from Blair farewell conference boost On Tuesday in the aftermath of Tony Blair’s extraordinary farewell speech I predicted here that this would “give the party a small but significant boost in the polls and … might even see Labour back into the lead..” And so it has happened. A Yougov survey for the Telegraph that was mostly carried out in the immediate aftermath of the Blair speech has these shares this morning with comparisons on their…
Blair and Reid the big movers For all the reported infighting at Labour’s Manchester conference the latest BrandIndex figures from YouGov show a boost for all the main party leaders during the week. These are based on five-day rolling averages of more than 600 online interviews a day until yesterday – so the full impact will not be seen until after the weekend. John Reid, who spoke yesterday, got a huge boost and if that continues over the next few…
Day by day – how punters views changed I’ve been working with the Guardian this afternoon on help with a graphic on how gamblers have changed their views on Gordon Brown’s leadership chances as the week has progressed. The only problem I’ve had is that they’ve wanted the prices in old fashioned fractional odds – not the decimal-type that we tend to use here. So if it is used tomorrow it will be a bit different from my chart above…
Creating and Managing A Betting Bank You like a punt and think you have spotted an opportunity – but how much do you stake? Of course, it’s entirely up to you but I reckon a systematic staking plan will help to improve your betting. Begin by creating a Betting Bank. I mean by this a separate sum of money, ring-fenced from your daily budget and preferably kept in a separate account. Its size will depend not just on your means…