The budget – at least its been a break from Brexit My guess is that the Tories will not be too unhappy about the coverage of the budget. Mostly the papers are positive or neutral and he has managed to avoid horrors of the past like George Osborne’s pasty tax. So initially job well done and some prominence for the Chancellor who is nothing like a high profile as his predecessor George Osborne, who was sacked by Theresa May just…
With just a week to go before Trump’s first major electoral test since becoming President the latest Gallup approval rating sees a biggish drop. The chart shows that polling over the past week his net ratings edging down 4% to minus 14. This reverses a recent trend of his ratings getting better. In previous midterm the President approval ratings have been a broad indicator. Although Trump will not appear on any ballot next week his big message as he has…
At 3.30pm the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond will rise to set out his latest budget. I must say that I am still not used to this taking place in November and on a Monday. Throughout my adult life budgets have happened in March or early April and never on a Monday. We are where we are. I like the different approach to budget bets taken in the above Sporting Index set of markets. How many time will certain things happen or…
The polls turned in March which coincided with Corbyn’s response to Salisbury and antisemitism becoming a big issue October 2018 voting intention polls October 2017 voting intention polls Survation’s chart shows the timing of the switch The Survation chart shows the LAB-CON splits in its Westminster voting intention polling since GE2017 when, of course, the firm was the most accurate pollster. Since then it has generally been recording the best figures for Labour and at times, like at the…
Viewcode looks at the detailed data The main elections on November 6th are for 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, 36 out of 50 state/district Governors, and 3 out of 5 territory Governors. This is an attempt to summarise the predictors. The following figures were taken between 11pm BST October 27th and 3:30am BST (2:30am GMT) October 28th 2018. Nationwide generic ballot polls The United States is a large country with…
Old sins have long shadows. The equalisation of state pension age was first mooted in the early 1990s and was enacted in 1995. Yet it remains controversial now. The action group WASPI campaigned in the last general election and that campaign arguably made the difference in some marginals. Theresa May might conceivably have got an overall majority if it had not been for their efforts and the whole course of Britain’s departure from the EU, among other things, might have been radically different….
PB regulars will know that I am a keen spread better on political events where the more you are right the more you win and the more you are wrong the more you lose. Essentially you “buy” and “sell” a position as though it was a stock or share and watch how the market moves. At GE2017 on the Saturday after the Tory manifesto launch I “sold” CON seats at 393. They ended up with 318 MPs and my profit…
Could losing an election be the best thing to happen to the 25/1 shot? These are not normal times. In normal times, US presidential candidates are vice presidents, senators and governors: people who already have a record in high office. There have always been exceptions but even then, they usually conformed to the rule in a wider sense. Trump does not conform to the rule. Indeed, Trump fails to conform to many received rules of politics. The easy conclusion would…