Whatever happened to UKIP?

Whatever happened to UKIP?

Have they been beaten off by the Kilroy-Silk, Sykes and Crosby shows?. Just 22 weeks ago today UKIP pushed the Tories into 4th place in the Hartlepool by-election. A couple of days later YouGov and Populus recorded Tory shares of 28 and 29%. The talk on the site and elsewhere was of a UKIP-driven “Tory meltdown” with many contributors predicting double figure vote shares for the anti-EU party. Then the tensions between Robert Kilroy-Silk and the UKIP leadeship got bigger,…

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Could Blair may face a Martin Bell-like challenger in Sedgefield?

Could Blair may face a Martin Bell-like challenger in Sedgefield?

Anybody interested in the Blair’s majority in Sedgefield market should read this by Michael White, the Guardian’s political editor. Tony Blair faces the prospect of a celebrity anti-war candidate seeking to unseat him in his constituency stronghold of Sedgfield at the coming general election if a suitably wholesome figure can be found to follow Martin Bell’s 1997 example. The chances of Britain waking up on May 6 with a Labour government but no elected Labour leader remain largely in the…

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New markets come thick and fast

New markets come thick and fast

Anybody would think that there’s an election coming up! With the bookies trying to repeat the bonanza they enjoyed with the US presidential race lots of effort is going on to create betting interest on May 5, if that is when it is. The challenge is that unlike last November the UK election is seen as a foregone conclusion – the only question at issue being the size of Blair’s majority. IG Index has just opened this a a spread…

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How to improve your YouGov ratings

How to improve your YouGov ratings

Get invited more and increase your weighting Ten days ago I reported here how in recent surveys the weighting given to Sun readers was almost double that attached to Guardian and Indy readers. After doing that piece I decided to see if I could improve the chances of me being invited to take part in polls by changing the basic information that YG have stored on me and, presumably, is used to determine which of the 50,000+ members on their…

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Will the Lib Dems get their “Ace of Spades”?.

Will the Lib Dems get their “Ace of Spades”?.

Betting opens on Folkestone How well will the Lib Dems do with their decapitation target number one – Michael Howard? Do they have any chance at all making serious inroads into the Tory leader’s majority in Folkestone? If you think that they do then a new market offers 2/1 against the Tory leader’s majority being cut. It’s 4/11 on Howards majority increasing. So the LDs don’t have to take the seat – just reduce the majority There is a similar…

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Can site regular Mark win where John Prescott hit out?

Can site regular Mark win where John Prescott hit out?

Frequent site contributor, Mark Jones – we know him a CymruMark – has asked if he can announce his canditature for Plaid Cymru in the Vale of Clwyd on Politicalbetting. Rhyl, in the constituency, came to prominence last time because it was there that John Prescott got involved in his famous punch up. Mark said: I chose to launch on political betting .com because it has become the key site on the internet to discuss possible outcomes for the general…

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CR Poll – Lib Dems down to 17%

CR Poll – Lib Dems down to 17%

Both the Tories and Labour advance Communicate Research’s monthly poll for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday shows only minor changes from last month for the two main parties. The headline figures are LAB 41%(+1):CON 34%(+2): LD 17%(-3) This equals the lowest poll figure for more than a year for Charles Kennedy’s party and reflects that all the recent campaign skirmishes have been between the two main parties. CR do not prompt for party choice and do not weight on previous vote…

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Are we being misled by the Baxter seat calculation?

Are we being misled by the Baxter seat calculation?

Working the swing out from 1997 – not 2001 The standard way of working how many seats a party will get with a given share of the vote is to use one of the seat calculators, most commonly Martin Baxter’s, which makes its prediction based on applying the suggested uniform national swing to what happened in each of the seats in 2001. But what happens if instead you compare today’s vote shares with what happened in 1997 when a much…

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