Even on the final MP ballot she only got 31.6% One of the problems about the Conservative party’s system for electing a leader is that it is entirely possible for the person who is chosen not to be the choice of MPs – something that looks set to happen in the current contest. It used to be the case before the rules were changed during William Hague’s leadership that it was the MPs who made the decision and the MPs…
Generally, leaders of the opposition have a good month in August because the government is not able to dominate the news agenda as much and they can often get a look in. Not so this August because the big political story is the Tory leadership contest to choose the next PM. September is not looking good for the Labour leader either because the result of the Tory election is due on September 7th and the day will be dominated by…
Does Truss agree? There is little doubt that a big reason why the Tories did so well at the last election was because of Boris Johnson’s strategy in relation to what became known as the red wall seats. In Sunak’s speech which the New Statesman has published it appears that the former Tory Chancellor and leadership contender is completely abandoning that approach. One of the problems he has is that the poicy was always going to be difficult to sell…
We do know that the mailing of ballot packs has been put back a bit and it would be useful to know when voting actually starts. So if you are a CON member can you let PBers know? It would be great as well if someone could post a picture of the blank ballot form.
Following Intelligence from GCHQ that the ballots of Tory members could be altered through online interference there’s been a delay in postal ballots being issued. Given that everything was focused on party members getting their ballot packs at the start of this week I wonder whether the delay could have an impact. On the face of it has given more time for Sunak to overhaul the apparent big lead the Truss has built up. What has been remarkable in the…
What might be a winner with one firm won’t be with another Over the next three months, the big political betting activity will be on the US Midterm elections. On the first Tuesday in November the whole of the House of Representatives will be up as well as about a third of the Senate seats. Elections for the latter take place every two years on a six year cycle in which about a third of the seats come up each…
I know that Johnson is on his way out but what better way to get some good publicity than inviting the victorious England Woman’s soccer team to a special reception at Number 10. There’s a public expectation that they should be so honoured as we can see from the numbers in the YouGov poll. Now the decision has been made it is going to be hard to go back on it. Mike Smithson
A LAB lead varying from 1% to 14% It is very hard to draw any conclusions from the most recent polling seen in the Wikipedia table above. The reason, of course, is the very wide differences the various firms are showing. We have the UK’s most established pollster, Ipsos, which still uses the phone, reporting a 14% LAB lead while YouGov’s latest has it at 1%. One thing we are not seeing is “herding”. I’ve been writing about polling for…