Ming backers should check out this Tory poll

Ming backers should check out this Tory poll

Why I’m sticking with YouGov? With a sharp move back to Ming Campbell on the Lib Dem betting markets there’s a lot of focus on the one members’ poll that has been published during the campaign – the survey by YouGov commissioned by a rich Huhne supporter. This showed on first preferences Huhne: 38%: Campbell 34%: Hughes 27%. The run-off figures based on second preferences, eliminating Hughes were Huhne 52%: Campbell 48%. Much has been made of the fact that…

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The PB.C Lib Dem Leadership Prediction Competition

The PB.C Lib Dem Leadership Prediction Competition

Paul Maggs has devised and will manage the following competition. Simply predict: 1. Who the new leader will be? 2. The percentage of the first preference votes your predicted new leader wins 3. The percentage of the overall votes (after re-distribution of second preferences) your predicted new leader wins You may make your predictions to one decimal place Scoring Your score will be the difference between your prediction and the actual result at both stages of the voting (regardless of…

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The Great Hughes 2nd Preference Gamble

The Great Hughes 2nd Preference Gamble

Why did Ming’s lead on Hughes 2nd preferences drop 19% in three days? At this stage in the Tory leadership contest there’d been seven Tory member polls and the only outstanding issue was whether or not the 39 year-old’s share would top the 66% mark. Contrast that with the Lib Dem race where the only members’ poll in a newspaper was on January 7th – a few hours before Charles Kennedy’s announcement. This showed that Hughes was being beaten by…

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ICM: Brown rated a “good PM” over Cameron by 45-32

ICM: Brown rated a “good PM” over Cameron by 45-32

But were too many Labour supporters in the sample? In an interesting ICM poll in today’s News of the World Gordon Brown is rated against David Cameron on a whole series of measures including who would make a “good Prime Minister”. In spite of what some of the headlines are saying the question of who would make “best Prime Minister” was not put. This is not a conventional opinion poll; no questions were asked about voting intention; the only options…

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Were the Indy and the Guardian at the same meeting?

Were the Indy and the Guardian at the same meeting?

Is Ming Campbell at 6/4 the value bet? The seemingly never-ending saga that is the Lib Dem leadership contest takes on another bizarre twist this morning with both the Guardian and Independent reporting on separate surveys of attendees at Thursday’s London hustings meeting. The challenge for anybody trying to predict the outcome is that the two ex-broadsheet papers come out with completely different findings. The Guardian spoke to 422 people who were there and found Huhne had 152 first preferences…

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Contrasting LAB-CON figures from Mori and YouGov

Contrasting LAB-CON figures from Mori and YouGov

But good news for whoever wins the Lib Dem contest Two new polls this morning paint a very different picture of how the Tories and Labour are doing but both show a Lib Dem recovery. Mori in the Sun has with changes on the pollster’s last survey a month ago CON 35 (-5): LAB 38 (nc): LD 20 (+3). YouGov in the Telegraph has with changes on the pollster’s last survey 12 days ago CON 38 (+1): LAB 36 (-3):…

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Has Cameron found an ace with the environment?

Has Cameron found an ace with the environment?

But leading Tory donors are not happy When David Cameron was first elected Tory leader just two and a half months ago he raised a few eyebrows both within and outside his party when he appeared to make the environment and global warming his first priority. For this has just not been perceived as a Tory issue. It was Margaret Thatcher, after all, who was attributed with the comment in 1986 that “any man who finds himself on a bus…

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Will activists still be “processing” postal votes this May?

Will activists still be “processing” postal votes this May?

Who’ll lose most if “vote farming” is banned? With the outcome of this May’s local elections taking on an increasing importance a key factor could be whether there is a clamp-down on party workers getting involved in the postal vote process. For when turnout drops to 30% or below winning the postal vote battle becomes even more crucial. Now, according to a Guardian report, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives are pressing the government to put a “national concordat”…

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