The pressure mounts with 3 days to go The message from the betting markets is that punters are staying with the Tories to hold onto Old Bexley and Sidcup in the first of the party’s two December by-election defences. As can be seen from the Smarkets chart BJ’s party is currently rated at a near 92% chance on the betting exchange. On the ground the word is that the Tories are taking nothing for granted and top figures, including the…
This is the second part of a thread on estimating Conservative seat numbers at the next election. It contains statistical analysis: those not interested can skip to the Conclusion. Model The data in the previous part of this thread does seem to support our hypothesis that extreme results for the Conservatives are unlikely: in all bar one of the twenty-two elections, they have won between 25% and 75% of the seats, and in fourteen of them, their share has been…
One of the interesting bets currently available is on the likelihood of a Conservative overall majority at the next election. The markets were pricing this at 36% on 19 November, down from evens in July. The general consensus is that an election is highly unlikely for eighteen months at least. Long-term readers of this site may recall me arguing that you can’t predict the result of an election from mid-term opinion polls or leader ratings. Nevertheless, the decline in the…
This must be the the worst finding for the Tories in years because it really reflects a huge change in public opinion. In the poll from Opinium Labour has a 2% lead but Starmer has a big gap on approval and is in positive territory. Mike Smithson
The chart illustrates what has been a quite remarkable recovery since Starmer became leader on April 4th last year. He’s taken his party from a polling deficit of 26% to being just ahead in several current polls. A lot of this, of course, has been about the detoxification of the party from the disastrous leadership of his predecessor who led Labour at GE2019 to its worst result since 1933. Corbyn undermined so much and the polling at the last election…
It’s “fill your boots time” What is it with Mayoral Elections? My favourite bet of 2021 was laying Brian Rose for Mayor of London at single figure odds, despite his literal 0-1% chance of victory. Now 2022 looms and another inexplicable mispricing has appeared on the Mayoral ballots in May. Is this a trend? South Yorkshire is a very Labour area. It comprises 4 areas, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and Sheffield. You may recognise those 4 areas as all having Labour-majority…
The polling has a different picture The former head of political research at the BBC, David Cowling, has issued his latest polling table showing the results of all the surveys on how Scottish voters think another independence referendum would go. The last such vote was in 2014 when it was rejected by a margin of about 10%. As can be seen from the polling table there has been some movement from that point and there have been a couple of…
The awfulness of the tragedy in the Channel inevitably gets a lot of coverage this morning and one of the issues is that there appears to be no obvious solution. The idea that British troops or other forces should patrol French beaches doesn’t seem feasible. The French government is hardly going to allow armed forces from a foreign power to enter its territory. The real tragedy is that the people involved are so desperate that they are prepared to take…