What will almost certainly be the most important and significant test of the opinion polls ahead of the General Election has been completed now all the results from the Euro Elections in Great Britain are in. We’ve been saying for months that a test of this nature is unique and incredibly valuable for political gamblers as we look forward to the next General Election. There’s no hiding place when a pollster puts out numbers that can be tested against real…
On Saturday we wondered whether the all-postal voting experiment had been an own goal for Labour. Certainly it attracted a lot of bad publicity and this might have had an impact on the overall result. But it is clear that Labour’s performance in the Euro Elections would have been substantially worse if it had not been for the experiment. Looking at the relative performance of Labour in the nine English regions that were declared last night the party’s shares dropped…
Euro results meaningless – but YouGov looks set to win the pollsters’ test For political gamblers the Euro elections results are almost totally meaningless. There were no betting markets and all they showed is that people vote differently for the European Parliament (above) than they do domestically – as is markedly demonstrated by the completely different vote shares from the same voters on the same day in the local elections. Thus in the two sets of elections on Thursday almost…
NOTE: Post updated 0815 Sunday In an astute comment last weekend the Independent on Sunday political columnist, Alan Watkins, had this to say about postal voting:- What is surprising is that the venture was embarked on at all. For the wisdom of the wise in Labour circles was always that postal voting benefited the Conservatives and the Liberals, as they were then named. That was because they were not only more conscientious naturally but more accustomed to dealing with envelopes…
If Tony Blair is to be forced from office by the result of an election then the one that takes place in the US on November 2 is likely to have a bigger impact than coming third behind the Lib Dems in this year’s local polls. Certainly Thursday’s drubbing will provide further fuel for those in the Labour party who want him out. And, of course, there have been the rumours for months that at the famous Admiralty Arch dinner…
We originally made our call on the London Mayor when Ken Livingstone was 21% ahead in the polls and when there was no threat that the Tory vote would be split by the rise of UKIP. As it has turned out the margin on first preferences was 7.46%. We thought it was going to be much closer and that the prices offered good value but in the end Ken came through. Looking at it we can only conclude that it…
The Lib Dems performance in the Labour heartlands and the spectacular victory in Newcastle make Charles Kennedy’s position as leader safe even if the Euro Elections go badly for the party. If they can take Birmingham as well, as some are predicting, then that would be the icing on the cake. They’ve needed to show that they can take Labour votes and they’ve done that in a major way. The main betting market for this is the Party Leaders at…
If it was not for the YouGov poll on SkyNews taken during the day on Thursday we would be confidently predicting a victory for Steve Norris in the London Mayoral Election – the result of which will be announced later in the day. The BBC prediction based on the local elections results thoughout England has the following vote split:- CON 38% LAB 26% LIBd 30% This is the first time that a governing party at Westminster has been forced into…