Focus shifts to the cost of the war Much of the political damage done to Labour by the Iraq war is personally associated with Tony Blair. Many in the Labour party — whatever they think of Blair, Brown or indeed anyone else in the Cabinet — will be relieved at this aspect of Blair’s resignation when it happens: at least, they assume, the successor will not have been tarnished by the war in the same way. Conversely, the other parties…
Earlier in the week, Rupert Murdoch gave an interview to one of his own papers in Australia. Asked if there was a chance he would support the Conservatives in the next general election, he answered with a Majoresque “Oh yes”. The role of Murdoch’s papers in swinging British elections, particularly the Sun, has passed into political folklore. “It Was The Sun Wot Won It”, the paper itself proclaimed after Major’s victory in 1992. More recently, and particularly since Murdoch’s mid-1990s…
Nobody can win in West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is unusual in having evolved a multi-party system in local elections. This is unusual under first past the post elections, as there is pressure on the voters to choose between two alternatives, in order to provide one party with an overall majority. Four out of five Metropolitan borough councils, Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale, are now under No Overall Control. What’s more, there is little prospect of that changing in future elections….
History shows the challenge facing the Tories RodCrosby has done an analysis of by-elections swings, and the Swing-Back to governments’since the War. Using the Butler swing between Labour and Conservative, the Swing-Back is defined as the difference between the average swing to the Opposition in by-elections and the swing to the Opposition at the subsequent General Election. So, for example the average Butler swing from Labour to the Tories in by-elections 2001-2005 was 7.9%. The swing the Tories obtained in…
Somebody has just emailed me to say that according to Alexa.com Politicalbetting is today the “….82,376th most visited site in the entire world“. I have no idea how this is calculated but apparently nine people in every million web users world-wide have been here today….and I thought it was just Andrea! Thanks to everybody for their support. Mike Smithson
New poll shows Ming’s party continuing to recover The second YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph in a week has the following shares with comparisons on the poll published on Monday – CON 39 (nc): LAB 33 (+1): LD 18 (+1). It really is rather odd that the paper feels it necessary to commission two polls from the same pollster in less than a week and then to publish it on the morning of the by-election news. What’s the Telegraph…
But will Blaenau and Bromley be dismissed as just by-elections? By the tests set in my article just as the polls were closing the overnight by-elections brought terrible news for both Brown/Blair’s Labour and David Cameron’s Tories. They also showed that the Lib Dems are able to pack a huge punch in a Westminster by-election whichever party is defending. The straight politics make Labour’s results marginally, but only marginally, worse than the Tory performance in Bromley. For Brown-Blair’s party threw…
Which party’s done best in “expectation management”? So the polls are about to close, the counts will soon be starting and most normal people will be off to bed without any thought about the events during the day in Gwent and South East London. Now the big question is how the electoral health of the parties will look after the spinners have done their “explaining” and the radio and TV news teams have decided how to present what’s happened. This…