John Hemming’s guest piece: Mosaic and general election betting

John Hemming’s guest piece: Mosaic and general election betting

Lloyd George was a trailblazer in a number of ways. As Chancellor he introduced the old age pension, unemployment benefit and financial support for the sick. As Prime Minister he led the country through most of the First World War. After the war he introduced political funding systems much like those seen today – by selling honours. One of his key areas of trailblazing was to approach politics from the perspective of winning the general election, rather than building a…

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Sean Fear’s local elections column

Sean Fear’s local elections column

Turnout recovers One feature of the first six years of this Government was declining turnout in local elections. Throughout the 1980’s, and the first half of the 1990’s turnout in local elections regularly exceeded 40%, historically, a high figure. After 1997, it declined steadily, reaching a low of 28% in 2000. In one by-election that year, in Liverpool, it even fell as low as 6%. This was mirrored in the General Election of 2001, when turnout reached 59%, the lowest…

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Meta-gambling

Meta-gambling

Prescott, the cowboy and the casino Something is pleasingly self-referential about betting on gambling itself. For some time, one of the bookies offered a market on whether it would win a licence to operate in Finland – they can’t, presumably, have taken much money on it, but the concept was a neat hedge against the profits at stake in winning the licence. And now through Betfair (look under Politics >> UK >> Super Casino Licence) you can bet on the…

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Stephen Tall’s guest slot: another Lib Dem election?

Stephen Tall’s guest slot: another Lib Dem election?

Past precedent, future Presidents… For those feeling starved of party election contests, the Lib Dems might just have a morsel to stave off the hunger pangs pending the Big One, Labour’s Brown v Someone battle. Simon Hughes (pictured), the current party President, is nearing the end of his first two-year term of office, and is eligible for re-election for one further term. The question is: will he re-stand, and if he does will anyone challenge him? When last the post…

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The Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize

Who will be the 2006 laureate – or laureates? An interesting market which politicalbetting contributors were discussing yesterday for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced on 13 October. Like many of the bookies’ novelty markets, there’s room for oddsmakers to have some fun. One doubts much money is being taken on Hugo Chávez or Oprah Winfrey. The favourite, at 5/1 with Paddy Power, is Martti Ahtisaari (pictured), the former Social Democrat President of Finland who has taken various…

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Elephants in the conference room

Elephants in the conference room

The market is writing off the old men of the Parti Socialiste The British press has revived its irregular interest in French politics over the weekend, enjoying what can be painted as some bitchy speeches from the platform at the Socialist party’s “summer university” in La Rochelle. The ire of the party’s senior “elephants” is mostly aimed (or at least interpreted to be aimed) at Ségolène Royal (pictured). According to the polls, Royal is the runaway preference of the electorate…

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Labour’s NEC elections

Labour’s NEC elections

A guest contribution from Andrea At the beginning of August the Labour NEC election results for the CLPs division were announced. Members can elect six members to the party ruling body and 16 candidates were contesting the election: the two main slates, “Grassroots Alliance” (the Left wing slate) and “Labour First” (the so called “loyalist” slate), were joined in the race by a handful of independent candidates. The result showed 4 candidates (Black, Shawcroft, Willsman and Wolfgang) from Grassroots Alliance…

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Marvels of modern polling? Exit polls, part 1

Marvels of modern polling? Exit polls, part 1

Part 1 of a two-part guest series by Harry Hayfield. Part 2 can be found here. Exit polls came to fame in 1952 when following a long study of the American electorate, NBC fed the information into a computer and after a few moments said “Eisenhower to win”. As the results came in, the computer was proven right and the sceptics wrong. In our elections, exit polls have only really been around since 1970 when the BBC commissioned a poll…

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