One of the things about American politics that looks very odd from a British perspective is that each of the 50 states can have very different election rules for what is the same national contest. So in the state of Georgia nobody can win an election unless they come out with 50% or more of the vote. This means that if no candidate achieves that threshold there has to be a runoff election 4 weeks later which is what is…
The Tories are at 32% Inevitably given the way the polls have moved to LAB in the last couple of months that the party is now rated as a 67% betting chance to win most seats at the next general election In fact it was only in August that LAB went into the favourite slot in this betting market after the Tories have been up there since getting started in April 2020. I think it is far too early to…
The Republican front-runner is just 44 Joe Biden and his party came out of the Mid Terms better than most predicted and this has reinforced the suggestions that he will seek a second term at the 2024 presidential election. To retain control of the Senate three weeks ago with possibly an increased majority was a huge achievement for the Dems but his name was not on the ballot as it would be in a White House race primary. I simply…
Recently I worked out I had a relationship that lasted substantially fewer days than the premiership of Liz Truss, once I overcame the embarrassment of having such a short relationship I started to wonder what the future would hold for Liz Truss, the country’s shortest serving Prime Minister. There’s this market from William Hill about whether Liz Truss will still be an MP after the next general election. The economic herpes that is inflation alone makes backing No a very…
Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at the reasons why I’m doubtful about Labour winning a majority (which doesn’t mean I’m not laying a Tory majority), one of the reasons is Brexit. Looking at those findings from YouGov, these type of findings aren’t atypical about Brexit from various pollsters. 2% of Brits think Brexit has gone very well, whereas 7% of Brits say they have seen a UFO, so yes, more than 3 times the number of Brits…
We have not looked at the above polling for quite some time and this is unique in that those sampled are not giving a list of issues from which they can choose. Instead they are asked to think of their main concerns completely unprompted. Arguably this gives a better picture. This is very dangerous territory for the government and it is probably one of the reasons why the Tories have been struggling so much in the voting intention polls. People…
The best figures for LAB since Tony Blair I just love the way that the pollster Ipsos manages to dig up historical comparisons and gives us a framework for judging how the parties and individual politicians are doing at the moment. Ipsos, of course, has been polling since the 1970s and has a huge archive of historical polls. As can be seen the proportion of voters who think that the opposition is ready to form the next government is at…
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” (Huxley) As with history, so with investigation reports. On the Today programme, Mark Rowley, Met Commissioner, said 100 officers were on restricted duties “because frankly we don’t trust them to talk to members of the public”. 500 officers were subject to misconduct investigations plus another 3,000 who also could not be deployed because of injury, mental…