Could Tory punters be over-estimating their leader One of the big political betting features of the past couple of months is how much the betting markets over-stated Tory chances of retaining Chesham & Amersham and taking Batley & Spen. For long periods with the former there was a lot of money going the Tories as a 95% chance and even on the eve of the election you could have got 10/1 or better with Betfair on the LDs. This was…
Both the Mail and the Express this morning try to paint a positive picture about COVID based on the declining numbers that we have seen in England over the past few days. Such headlines like the ones above might sell more copies or get clicks on their websites but are they being a bit too premature? We have been here before, of course, only for things to have to be reversed with the relaxation in the rules leading to more…
There’s a new academic analysis just been published which seeks to measure the effect of Trump backing certain Republican contenders in the 2018 midterm elections. This is how the academics involved summarise their findings: We find that President Trump was more likely to endorse candidates with a higher pre-endorsement likelihood of winning and to endorse candidates in more competitive races, suggesting the president used endorsements strategically both to try and help Republican candidates win and to boost his reputation for…
For a non-election campaign period, there has been a rush of polls all but one of which have the Tory lead narrowing. The most striking is from Survation that a week and a half ago had a CON lead of 11% – that’s now down to just two. Redfield & Wilton and YouGov have the lead at 4% with Deltapoll putting it at 5. The one that doesn’t fit the recent narrative has been Opinium which had the Tory lead…
He wants to curb the influence of the “childless left” An intriguing idea is being put forward by J.D Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy and Republican candidate for the vacant seat for Ohio on the US Senate. In an attack on what he terms the “childless left” he’s proposed a radical scheme to give parents of children under the age of 18 extra voting power. He’s quoted in The Week as saying: “The Democrats are talking about giving the…
There’s a big piece in the New York Times this morning by Trump biographer, Michael Wolff in which he suggests that the former President will put his hat into the ring for the 2024 nomination. He writes: To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.This spring, in another of his compulsive bids for attention —…
Vaccines work and the public realise that but we cannot be complacent. As we saw with MMR causes autism hoax perpetuated by Andrew Wakefield, aided and abetted by the likes of The Lancet and Private Eye we need to be ahead of the game. If I were Boris Johnson, I’d set up a non partisan group to continually counter anti vax nonsense on social media and elsewhere, get really universally loved people like David Attenborough, Dame Judi Dench, and Jürgen…