politicalbetting.com

WHY DO LOCAL ELECTIONS MATTER TO NATIONAL PARTIES? Local councils have had their independence curtailed under successive government. Three quarters of local government income comes from Government grants, while local councils themselves are required to jump through endless hoops set up for them by central Government. In some European countries, politicians become well known as the mayors of major cities, before embarking on national political careers. That would be almost unthinkable in this country. Although many members of Parliament have…

Read More Read More

Who’ll take control of twelve key councils? Whether it is the pressure from PB.C users or not I do not know but the UK’s main betting exchange has now opened markets on twelve key councils. They are:- Carlisle Cheltenham Chester Ealing Hillingdon Islington Leeds Manchester Norwich West Lancashire Winchester

Why is he focusing all this effort on the wrong target? If Gordon Brown is, as has been reported, the driving force behind the Dave the Chameleon campaign, why is he investing Labour’s precious campaign resources and air-time on the Tory leader when, notwithstanding the party’s second place in Moray, the real threat at the moment is coming from the Lib Dems? For the remarkable feature of the polls in recent months is how resilient the Lib Dem vote has…

Read More Read More

Will their troubles take the pressure off the leadership? Another month is nearly at an end and I am another month closer to winning my bet that Lucky Tony will still be in his job at the end of next year. May 4th 2006 was always going to be a tricky hurdle to negotiate. Within a few days of Lucky’s General Election triumph last year so-called “smart opinion” had it that if Lucky did survive 2005 then Labour’s losses in…

Read More Read More

When are we going to see betting on next week’s elections? With so many unpredictable factors and the main polls painting completely different pictures there looks as though there will be shocks of some sort in next week’s local elections. A lot could depend on the outcome for the three main party leaders. For Ming Campbell a successful May 4th will be the ideal start to his term as party leader. But what are we to make of the polls?…

Read More Read More

ICM has Lib Dems up three – Labour down three The monthly ICM poll for the Guardian this morning records a big increase in Lib Dem support at the expense of Labour. The shares are compared with the last ICM poll three weeks ago CON 34%(-1): LAB 32%(-3): LD 24%(+3). This is a huge boost for the Lib Dems ahead of the local elections less than two weeks away and is the biggest ICM share for the party for two…

Read More Read More

How the party’s “Dave the Chameleon” boosts the Tories In 1997 when Labour won its first land-slide victory more than 80% of the population were without multichannel television and had to rely on just four channels for their information and recreational needs. Audiences for the then main TV news bulletins – BBC1 at 9pm and the ITN News at Ten – were vast compared with what their equivalents get today. We’ve now reached a stage where two out of every…

Read More Read More

Boundary Changes : The Great Leveller or An Unfair Advantage? Since the Second World War there have been seven boundary changes to the United Kingdom parliament. Some have been caused by changes in the UK constitution (for instance the reduction of the Scottish seats) and some have been caused due to the underpopulation of urban centres and the overpopulation of rural areas, but do these changes favour any one party or do they reflect the whole country? Ted Heath won…

Read More Read More