Sean Fear’s local election commentary

Sean Fear’s local election commentary

HOW RELIABLE IS THE NEWSNIGHT PREDICTION ? A week ago, Newsnight produced an analysis of local by-election results by Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings, which received considerable publicity. Studying this year’s local by-election results, they suggested that the national equivalent vote shares which the parties would win on May 4th would be CON 33: LD 29%: LAB 28 (compared to 34%, 27%, and 33% respectively in 2002). On that basis, Labour could expect to lose about 100 seats nationally, the…

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How Labour voters are 23% more likely to be polled

How Labour voters are 23% more likely to be polled

Introducing PB.C monitoring on poll sample distortion Here’s a statistic that everybody interested in political opinion polls should take into account: If you make a completely random unsolicited phone call and manage to persuade the person answering to tell you how they voted in the General Election there’s a 44.7% chance that it will be Labour. This compares, of course, with the 36.2% of voters who did actually vote for the party last May – so the proportion telling pollsters…

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Could “Cash for Peerages” bring down Blair?

Could “Cash for Peerages” bring down Blair?

Have honours been abused to boost a controversial education policy? Until the arrest yesterday of the City Academies fundraiser, Des Smith, I thought that Tony Blair would escape from the “cash for peerages” row relatively unscathed. After all the Prime Minister has survived an awful lot, from Bernie Ecclestone through to David Kelly and the Hutton hearings, that those legendary Teflon qualities would see him through almost anything. Now I am not so sure. For abusing the honours system to…

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Prodi betting continues as the confusion goes on

Prodi betting continues as the confusion goes on

More than £150k in matched bets since Tuesday morning The thousands of punters who flocked to put money on the Italian General Election on Monday night might have to wait some time for their winnings. The refusal of Silvio Berlusconi to accept the result and demand further scrutiny of contested ballot papers could leave the result in limbo for weeks. Just like in the aftermath of the Bush-Gore race for the White House in 2000 punters will have to be…

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The Milburn Candidature: Punters underwhelmed

The Milburn Candidature: Punters underwhelmed

..and Gordon says he hasn’t been told the date Until the succession issue has been resolved almost all senior Labour figures are going to have to negotiate themselves through fierce leadership-related questioning whenever they agree to be interviewed. And even after they have left the studios their every word will be subject to intense scrutiny by journalists looking for a story – particularly on quiet news days. Even Gordon Brown is not immune – all reporters seemed to want to…

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The surprise Italian betting bonanza

The surprise Italian betting bonanza

More than £1,000,000 matched on Betfair market It might have been the closeness of the result or the fact that both candidates for PM were relatively well known in the UK but the Italian general election has attracted a vast amount of interest and a lot of money has been staked. Overnight alone on the Betfair market the total of matched bets chalked up has been over £700,000 taking the total to just on £1,100,000. These totals have only been…

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The Italian Election – new thread

The Italian Election – new thread

Who’ll be ahead in the Camera in the morning? With traffic on the site reaching record levels I’m opening up a new Italian election thread to ease some of the strain on the PB.C server. With thousands of people trying to open up a 400-comment thread at the same time it is inevitable that things will be slow. Please post here from now on. Many thanks – and good luck. Mike Smithson

The Italian Election goes to the wire

The Italian Election goes to the wire

Will “Lucky Tony’s” friend manage to squeeze in? An evening of high tension in Italy has led to hectic trading on the Betfair market as the prices on Silvano Berlusconi and Roman Prodi has moved from one to the other as more information came in. As soon as the polls closed the exit surveys seemed to show that Prodi had it and prices swung sharply his way. Then as real results started to emerge there’s been huge swings. At one…

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