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But aren’t they being a bit premature? One of the things about the main opposition party is that it is an awful long time ago since it was able to gain a seat in a Westminster by-election – something that the Tories and LDs have done at fairly regular intervals in recent years. In 2021 alone the Tories took Hartlepool from LAB while the LDs had spectacular gains at Chesham & Amersham and Shropshire North. You have to go back…

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It’s hard to believe these days, but London used to be a swing city politically. Labour tended to have an edge, but the Tories were frequently hot on their heels. The ‘popular vote’ across local elections in the city was frequently within a couple of percentage points, such as the 1990, 2002, and 2006 elections. In 2006 the Tories even swept control of half a dozen councils off Labour and governed 14 of the city’s 32 boroughs (Labour controlled 7,…

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Can Le Pen be squeezed out of the runoff slot? The thing to remember about French presidential elections is how important tactical voting can be in the first round. A total of 12 managed to get themselves onto the ballot for the first round of voting on April 10th and the big question is whether or not the hard right candidate ,Le Penn, could be squeezed off the second round. This is why the polling can be so important because…

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17 months. That’s all it took, though to judge by the outraged comments from Ministers it may as well have been 17 centuries ago, so short are their memories. What happened 17 months ago that could possibly have any relevance today? On 8 September 2020 Brandon Lewis, then Northern Ireland Secretary, announced to the House of Commons that provisions in the Internal Markets Bill on Northern Ireland customs arrangements broke “international law in a very specific and limited way“. It…

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It is being reported in the Telegraph that the Prime Minister has blocked the Maldon MP from being appointed head of OfCom because of the risk of losing the seat in a by-election. The figures from the last general election are in the Wikipedia table above. On the face of it this looks crazy given the sheer size of Whittingdale’s majority at GE2019. The seat went leave at the referendum with a 62% vote share and the proportion of graduates,…

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But still no CON lead One of the current active betting markets has been on whether the Tories would take the lead in a published poll before March 31st. Well the time is running out and the latest poll from R&W carried out and published on Monday had LAB 5% ahead. The new Kantar poll which has LAB and CON level pegging was carried out from March 17th to the 21st so includes the day of the R&W survey. Generally…

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The Betdata chart shows how those considered by punters as being in with a chance of becoming next PM have moved in the betting over the past three months. The big story is very clear. Chancellor Sunak who was rated by the betting markets as a 42% chance at the height of “Partygate” has now edged down to just a 21% one. He’s still favourite but nothing like as strong. Johnson has made it very clear that he won’t stand…

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After the March budget a year ago Opinium found the Tory government had with a net plus six approving ministers’ economic handling. As can be seen from the chart the latest finding is for a net minus of 22%. So the total drop since last year is 28%.