Just three weeks and five days to go and overnight we have had the Vice Presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike pence. I didn’t stay up to watch it but by all reports the biggest moment came when a fly landed on Pence’s head and seem to stay there for minutes. From the clips I’ve seen it looked a pretty even discussion and it is hard to see how this is going to change the trajectory of the race….
After an extraordinary good run of polls for Biden tonight sees the VP TV debate with Pence facing Kamala Harris. Given what’s happened with COVID over the past few days than I’d expect Harris to press Pence hard and to get him to disagree with Trump. She’s ample material to play with. Generally this debate does not get anything like the attention of the main debates but because of the ages of those at the top of the ticket there…
In terms of the national polls Trump has taken a big hit over the past few days in the aftermath of his much criticised debate performance and his reaction to catching COVID-19. There’s a lot of discussion going on about comparing current polling with what happened at WH2020 when Trump was firs elected. I’d argue that a better comparison is the polling for the 2018 midterms – Trump’s first electoral test. The main thing that characterises that election was the…
Everything points to Biden winning big. Believe it. Why do we not believe the evidence in front of us? Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to accept the bad news it reveals; sometimes it’s because we daren’t believe the good news for fear of jinxing it; it may be that we had our fingers burnt by believing something similar in the past which then turned out differently; or maybe the outcome is so far from our experiences that it feels…
My main betting on the White House Race has been on the SportingIndex spread betting markets. I bought at 284 Electoral College Votes and the latest split is SELL 307 and BUY 313. So I could, if I wanted, get out of my position this afternoon and get 23 times my stake even if, in the election itself, Biden does worse than that. Of course if the polling continues to be as good for Biden as the latest CNN poll…
A wealth tax the most favoured way Given the huge extra government spending to deal with COVID19 and cover things like the billions which have gone on the test and trace system Ipsos-MORI finds 44% saying they are ready to pay more. But when it comes to what form of new taxation the preferred choice is a wealth tax that doesn’t exist at the moment. When asked who should pay a new wealth tax, the most popular is those with…
The big politicalbetting news is that Betfair has now reopened its White House race markets which were temporarily closed before the weekend when Trump announced that he had contracted coronavirus. The period of the shutdown is reflected in the straight horizontal lines on the above chart showing how the market has moved over over the last month. We have had so much in this past week including the first TV debate and of course that not just Trump but quite…
Only EdSec Williamson fares worse One of the ongoing polling stories since lockdown began has been the decline of the PM’s leader ratings. Whether samples are asked about satisfaction, whether they approve, view him favourably or think he is doing his job well the polling trend has been in a negative direction for the man who led the party into a spectacular general election victory ten months ago. The above survey is the monthly one of CON members mounted by…