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…
One of the frustrations for people like me who love to bet on political outcomes has been the suspension by Betfair of its £100m next president market following the hospitalisation of Trump. Given that we are just four weeks and one day away from the election I think the firm is being over-cautious. I can see the argument that we could be betting on whether Trump survives but, as someone who for a time worked for the firm, I think…
The full report can be found here.
Apropos of nothing, honest, I was reminded of two recent occasions when dead candidates won elections they were standing in. The most (in)famous was in 2000 when the recently deceased Mel Carnahan defeated the incumbent senator, John Ashcroft. A report at the time said Missouri voters narrowly elected their deceased governor, Mel Carnahan, to the Senate on Tuesday, making him the first person to win a Senate seat from the grave. In one of the most bizarre episodes in US…
Being a seasoned poll watcher occasionally you see some polling that shocks and disgusts you, for example when in 2017 a poll found 53% of Britons liked pineapple on pizza but this poll from America frightens me on so many levels, in a way no other poll ever has. 33% of of Democrats and 36% of Republicans feel justified in using violence to achieve their political goals, a staggering fourfold increase in just over three years. For a while I’ve…
OK. For a moment, I want us all to play a game. This is a very useful management technique I’ve learned, and it’s called the premortem. What I want us to do is to imagine it’s December 2020, and President Trump is re-elected – what did we get wrong, what were the signs we missed? Here are my three ways we could be wrong: We didn’t pay enough attention to approval ratings. President Trump’s approval rating has been steadily improving….