Above are the latest odds for the SNP leadership election and as can be seen this is now a two horse race between Yiusaf and Forbes. In the absence of any SNP members polling this is about the best info there is and the question is have punters got this right or not. I think Forbes is the better one when it comes to how they come over and how I think they would perform in elections. Mike Smithson
Before the weekend my old friend Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was in town as part of his party’s local elections campaign and I managed to speak to him about the party’s objectives at the next general election. His big challenge is one of visibility and that has been seriously undermined by the rise and rise of the SNP in Scotland. Under the Commons rules the third party leader gets to ask two questions at PMQs every week while…
39 of the 40 seats polled were won by CON at GE2019. The other one, Hartlepool, was picked up by the Tories in a by-election. The numbers here are very striking even though there has been a narrowing of the LAB lead since the last R&W RedWall poll. The big thing, of course, is that the LAB leader is no longer Corbyn and the Tories were very able at exploiting the “threat” he posed in the GE2019 campaign. For all…
The voting polls have continued to be miserable for the Tories and we are not seeing any real sign of a change since the Windsor agreement last week. You can just feel the frustration from the Tory camp at the moment that apparently nothing they can do actually shifts the vote share polling numbers. In the leader ratings Sunak continues to trail Starmer and as to the best PM polling questions again the Tory leader finds himself in second place….
This won’t help the Tories win LAB/LD switchers This polling shows quite a sharp divide between Tory voters and LAB/LD ones on what is increasingly becoming a big issue for the Tories as they try to turn the voting polls round. This might be a possible turnout driver for the Tories but that is about all. LAB and LD voters are much more opposed. I would also argue that this is just the sort of policy that could boost the…
Could Uxbridge be the next by-election? The above betting market on whether there will be an Uxbridge by-election is just about the one place at the moment where you can take a punt on Boris Johnson’s political future. He of course is the sitting MP here. We are getting very close to the point where the Commons Privileges committee which is looking at some of the statements that Johnson made on lockdown issues it’s final report and recommendation. The committee…
As we approach the third anniversary of the lockdown YouGov have polled on the government’s handling of the pandemic. With fewer than one in five saying the government’s approach was too strict there’s a decent enough vote for the Tories to successfully campaign on their Covid-19 record but Boris Johnson and rule breaking Rishi’s antics means if the Tories want to campaign on their Covid-19 record it will lead to attacks over all those parties which will be suboptimal for…