A week on Thursday we have the Shropshire North by-election to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Owen Paterson and as can be seen in the betting chart the Lib Dems are edging up. Having tipped the party strongly in the Chesham and Amersham election back in June I have to say I have less confidence about an LD gain from CON here. This does not mean I don’t think an LD gain will happen. C&A met all…
In a Tweet that appears to be in response to TSE’s header yesterday on Yvette Cooper’s leadership chances, the Indy’s John Rentoul has posted the above. For the boundary changes appear to be very helpful to the former Labour cabinet minister. Thus the possibility of her not being an MP after the next election is just 19% according to the Electoral Calculus projection based on the new boundaries. Of course if the election takes place before the changes come into…
The panto season appears to have started early this year. Appropriately enough it relates to a Xmas party which happened at 10, Downing Street around this time last year. Oh, yes it did! Oh, no it didn’t! say others – mostly unmemorable junior Ministers. And even if it did no rules were broken. A big fuss about nothing, yet others will say. Hmmm ….. those who were fined for breaking the Covid rules might disagree. The hospitality venues who lost…
One of the earliest lessons I learned about opinion polls was that an unweighted poll, no matter how large the sample size is, isn’t an accurate barometer of the public. The most famous voodoo poll was the 1936 Literary Digest poll that had a sample size of over 2 million predicted that Alf Langdon would beat FDR in the 1936 Presidential election. It was only 39% out on the actual result as FDR as won by over 24% of the…
Following her reappointment as Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper became the third or fourth favourite with a few bookies to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as next Labour leader. I’m not keen to back her, in fact I’m a layer in this market. One reason for me is that Yvette Cooper put in a nondescript performance when she was Shadow Home Secretary for nearly five years between 2011 and 2015, then as Shakira sang, HIPS Don’t Lie, then there’s her constituency…
As has been noted before on this site, the Tories are “uncoalitionable”. [uncoalitionable] A swing against the party at the next election and loss of seats could leave the Conservative Party still with most seats in a Hung Parliament and yet unable to form a government due to a lack of potential allies. Chesham & Amersham shows the Tories could be vulnerable to the Lib Dems in some seats in the South and a swing towards Labour could see the…
Last week the worst kept secret in French politics finally ended, as Eric Zemmour declared he was running for President. The far-right polemicist has raised a crescendo of media coverage, but quietly his polling might already have peaked. Two months ago, when I first discussed the French election, I argued that Marine Le Pen was a value bet so long as she could hold off Zemmour and (re)unify the French hard right. And in recent weeks, she looks to be…
There was a time when a Lib Dem lost deposit at a Westminster by-election was seen by commentators as evidence of decline. Well no more. The chart shows the party’s shares at the four English by-elections so far in 2021 which illustrates the strategy and how it is working. Given how totally dominant the Tories have been over the past decade or the main aim of what used to be dubbed the “third party” has been to try to win…