Chesham and Amersham: The by-election campaign that was almost totally ignored by the media

Chesham and Amersham: The by-election campaign that was almost totally ignored by the media

Comments 0 Comment

The above chart shows party by party the vote changes that took place in last month’s Chesham and Amersham by-election compared with what happened there just 18 months earlier at GE2019. It was a sensational outcome and one that, if you look at the betting where the Tories were rated as a 95% chance even until the final week, was a bonanza for smart punters. A big reason was that the election was, and still continues, to be ignored by…

Read More Read More

By-election shock results

By-election shock results

Comments 0 Comment

Did the betting markets fail in Chesham & Amersham and Batley & Spen? Two big by-election shocks in the space of two weeks. Did the pundits and betting markets underestimate the eventual winners as the Conservatives failed to win both Chesham & Amersham and Batley & Spen? First, an explanation of what I mean by betting markets. The days of only ‘bookies’ deciding what the odds should be are long gone. The odds you’ll see on exchanges like Smarkets are the result…

Read More Read More

Welcome to the next stage of COVID – The Government versus the Scientists

Welcome to the next stage of COVID – The Government versus the Scientists

Comments 0 Comment

With most of the media, in England at least, focused on tonight’s event at Wembley, the huge divide between the ministers and scientific advisors is probably not going to get the attention it deserves. Ministers appear to be heading for the moves on July 19th when the expectation has been that this was going to be “Freedom Day”. People are planning their lives around this and I just wonder whether this will be another “Boris Christmas break” that at the…

Read More Read More

Why the LDs and LAB could be the main beneficiaries of compulsory voter ID

Why the LDs and LAB could be the main beneficiaries of compulsory voter ID

Comments 0 Comment

BoJo’s move could hurt the Tories most The above chart by Deltapoll should be a warning to Mr. Johnson about the dangers to his party of pressing forward with voter ID. It was published 2 years ago and shows the constituency relationship between having no passport and voting leave. As can be seen there is a correlation – the smaller the proportion with passports in a constituency the greater the chance it voted Leave. I have not been able to…

Read More Read More

Whatever else BoJo might have done he’s failed to convince many on Brexit

Whatever else BoJo might have done he’s failed to convince many on Brexit

Comments 0 Comment

The polling continues to find more saying it was “Wrong” than “Right” In the months after the referendum we used to cover this polling from YouGov at regular intervals. The pollster has been using the same tracker question since July 2016 and for the past two and a half years the findings have almost all been that those sampled think Brexit was wrong. The chart shows some of the splits from the polling which has broadly followed the same pattern…

Read More Read More

Why Labour would be crazy to replace Starmer

Why Labour would be crazy to replace Starmer

Comments 0 Comment

Last Thursday’s by-election result in Batley and Spen should help quieten down the Starmer should go narrative that was building up particularly in the media. This has been a product of the extraordinarily difficult period that the LAB leader has found himself in after securing the job two weeks into the first lockdown in April last year. Since then the politics have almost totally been about controlling COVID and we have been in an unusual political situation because everything is…

Read More Read More