How will the internet affect the election?

How will the internet affect the election?

Has the power moved from the party spinners to the bloggers? The January ICM survey for the Guardian discovered that the proportion of adults with internet accesss is now, at 69%, more than two-thirds of the population. Those who have it at home was down at 56% – the balance get their access at work. So we are going into an election camapign with what for many people is a new means of communication which challenges the traditional agenda-setting monopolies…

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Scottish Boundary changes finalised

Scottish Boundary changes finalised

Could Tony Blair regret giving up 10 Labour MPs? With just three months to go before a May 5th General Election the order confirming the Scottish Boundary changes has now gone through Parliament. This reduces the number of Scottish seats at the next election from 72 to 59 and has been designed to bring the average size of seats north of the border into line with the rest of the country. At the 2001 General Election Scottish seats had an…

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UKIP poll collapse

UKIP poll collapse

What’s happened to Kilroy-Silk’s “bloody rightwing fascist nutters” ? With Robert Kilroy-Silk due to launch his new Veritas party tonight the full extent of the damage his departure has done to UKIP is only now becoming clear. All the data from Sunday’s three opinion polls has been made available and shows that Mori had the party on 2% while with Communicate Research and ICM the UKIP shares was down to just 1%, or less than the party achieved at the…

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New YouGov poll gives Labour 2% lead

New YouGov poll gives Labour 2% lead

How much is immigration helping the Tories? A new YouGov poll revealed today on the pollster’s website shows a one per cent boost for the Lib Dems at the expense of the Tories compared with the survey that was published in the Daily Telegraph on Friday. The figures are: LAB 35 (nc): CON 33 (-1): LD 23 (+1).. These are small changes which could, as YouGov boss Peter Kellner writes in an article, be put down to sampling error. In…

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Was Labour’s poster – a “gaffe” or a “£5m publicity coup”?

Was Labour’s poster – a “gaffe” or a “£5m publicity coup”?

Who’ll come out best in the Milburn-Crosby show? We’ll have to wait until the early hours of May 6th when the results from seats with large Jewish populations like Finchley and Golders Green are declared before we can completely put the lid on the Labour poster affair. If the party’s performance is disproportionately worse in these seats then no doubt some erudite commentator will be recalling the little row that’s been going on since Friday and which has now led…

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Will Blair get his Bagdhad bounce?

Will Blair get his Bagdhad bounce?

But why aren’t the markets moving in his direction? After the success of yesterday’s elections in Iraq can Tony Blair now draw a line under the war and its aftermath and start to relish in what some have described as his “Bagdhad Bounce”? For if there had been any doubt at all about whether he will be returned with another huge majority it has been over his decision to take the country into the war without UN sanction and against…

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Posting Arrangements

Posting Arrangements

As we get nearer the General Election there will be more active moderation in order to ensure that the site remains a place where people from all parties can feel comfortable discussing the effect of issues in relation to political outcomes on which betting takes place. We should try not to get into debates on the issues themselves, particularly if they are controversial, and we should avoid being offensive to others who make comments We have slightly changed the posting…

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Enter the era of dog whistle politics

Enter the era of dog whistle politics

Sending a message that’s only heard by the target audience The real reflection of the state the Tories are in is that if they make the magic number of 200 seats it will be seen as some kind of victory. Yet even at that level Tony Blair would be returned with an overall majority of more than 70 – sufficient to sustain the party for a full third time. It’s against this background that the poll moves after last week’s…

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