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Month: April 2019

Before we get too excited at this stage before the 2014 Euro elections Farage’s party was on 38% – 20 points ahead of Cameron’s Tories

Before we get too excited at this stage before the 2014 Euro elections Farage’s party was on 38% – 20 points ahead of Cameron’s Tories

Wikipiedia table of polling for the May 2014 Euro elections Lots of polling excitement tonight with surveys showing UKIP with a apparently avery large lead over the Tories and level pegging with LAB when the samples were asked how they would vote in next month’s euro elections. It all looks a bit gloom and doom for the Tories but if you check back to what was happening at this exact point  5 years ago  UKIP were on 38%  with the…

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Bye-bye by-elections? Part 2. MPs who resigned their seats and stood in the ensuing by-election

Bye-bye by-elections? Part 2. MPs who resigned their seats and stood in the ensuing by-election

In Part 1, I discussed how the reasons for triggering by-elections have changed since 1918. In Part 2, I will discuss in more detail the phenomenon (or lack) of MPs resigning and re-contesting their seats over principle or when they change party allegiance. In Part 1, I showed you the trends in both the number of and the reasons for Westminster by-elections over the last 100 years. Now, fast-forwarding to the present, just a couple of months ago, 11 MPs…

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The 2020 Democrat contest is likely to go all the way to the convention

The 2020 Democrat contest is likely to go all the way to the convention

Field size and campaign structure make it hard for anyone to win outright Once upon a time, American party conventions to nominate their presidential candidates were raucous, sometimes violent, often unpredictable and certainly lengthy. The Democrat convention of 1924 set the unhappy record of taking 103 ballots to select a candidate, in a convention that lasted more than a fortnight. The drudgery, sweat and fatigue would prove fruitless: John Davis would go on to lose every state outside the South…

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What could really drive LAB voters away is Corbyn ignoring the vast majority of them on Brexit

What could really drive LAB voters away is Corbyn ignoring the vast majority of them on Brexit

Does he commit to a “confirmatory referendum” or not? Next week’s Labours ruling national executive committee will be faced with demands to include a clear commitment to a confirmatory public vote on Brexit in its European election manifesto. This is something that has not appeared in draft leaflets that have been circulated within the party and have aroused fury. Ever since June 24th 2016 Corbyn and his team have managed to deftly avoid pressure from the anti-Brexiteers and have stuck…

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The Tories should take some consolation from Newport West – the disaster that did not happen

The Tories should take some consolation from Newport West – the disaster that did not happen

Betting favourite for 2nd UKIP ended with barely a quarter of the CON vote The narrative at the moment is all about how appallingly the Tories will do in the Euro elections on May 23rd. Almost no threads appear on PB these without some new prediction of the impending disaster. But are we overstating this? I think that we might be Let us look back just three weeks when we were digesting the Newport West by-election result. The UKIP candidate…

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Four weeks to go to the Euros and the polling has it very tight

Four weeks to go to the Euros and the polling has it very tight

What is extraordinary about the coming Euro elections on May 23rd is just how many different parties will be on the ballot papers. The Wikipedia polling table above seeks to include all of them and I don’t think there has been a previous election like this in modern times. The one thing that makes the coming election different from 2014 is that there will be no simultaneous local elections on the same day. This is the first time this has…

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Biden is polling far better in the national primary surveys than in the first two states to decide

Biden is polling far better in the national primary surveys than in the first two states to decide

With Obama’s former VP, 76 year old Joe Biden, today entering the race for the WH2020 Democratic nomination he does so from a position of strength in national polls of party voters. The chart shows the latest Real Clear Politics polling average national lead for Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders and Pete butcher Jack compared with the latest surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire. These are, of course, the first two to decide and where all the active presidential campaigns…

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ChangeUK is learning the hard way that there’s more to running a political party than just getting a few MP defectors

ChangeUK is learning the hard way that there’s more to running a political party than just getting a few MP defectors

The struggles of the new party The widely reported problems it is having with its selection of some candidates for the European elections together with the difficulty getting a logo registered are just indications of the teething trouble that ChangeUK is having in its attempt to establish itself as a new political force. This will likely be amplified a week today in the English local elections which cover almost all the English counties with the exception of London and a…

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