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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It is now a month since the last Euro poll for an election
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It is now a month since the last Euro poll for an election that’s less than 11 weeks off
Above is the latest European Elections polling table from Anthony Wells’s UK Polling report showing just three surveys this year the last one being the ICM for the Guardian a month ago.
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There's a separate question: should we be interested? The answer is probably yes, but the counter argument can be made.
Is that "No; One is interested" or "No-one is interested". Please limit yourself to five fingers (including a thumb) per hand when answering....
:generally-correct-analysis:
Six hundred and eighty seven seats up for grabs.
Last elections held in 2009, when a 99.98% turnout was reported and the Workers' Party won 606 seats.
Kim Fat Wun, the Leader of the WP, is standing for re-election in Constituency 111, his Mount Paektu seat.
The North Korean state-run media have been promoting participation in the election by broadcasting a newly commissioned poem entitled, "We Go to Polling Station".
What do we think, PBers?
Will Kim Fat Wun hold on? Will the Workers' Party get a seats majority or are we expecting a hung parliament?
The long answer is:
While candidates could be nominated by anyone, it was the practice for all candidates to be nominated by the parties. These nominations were examined by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland and then by the Central Electoral Committee, which allocated candidates to seats. The candidate in each seat was then considered by the electors in meetings at the workplace or similar, and on election day the electors could then indicate approval or disapproval of the candidate on the ballot paper. ”
The short answer is:
Only one candidate appears on the ballot.
Seems to work. Simpler than FPTP. We should consider the same system here.
Mike Smithson
Surely the "UKIP surge" is good copy? All those colourful characters with interesting views and backgrounds......
I suspects it's much more to do with "what sells newspapers" and what their readers find interesting.
Meanwhile, the Mail does have a SIndyRef poll (I suspect more properly, "survey")
More than a third of Scottish businesses would consider moving out of the country if there were a Yes vote in the independence referendum, according to a shock new poll carried out for The Mail on Sunday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576529/Tartan-exodus-Over-big-businesses-warn-leave-Scotland-Salmond-wins-independence-vote.html#ixzz2vRvtMUj8
Does Rod Crosby have a view?
Is there anywhere I can watch live election coverage on the night, do you think? Also, are any bookmakers running odds?
Is that more or less 'routine' than the Russian army 'training' exercises taking place ?
Con 32%, Lab 39%, LD 10%, UKIP 14%; APP -20
All much as usual. Some eyebrow-raising secondaries - a big leap in approval (-32 to -20) and a big jump for Miliband (-34 to -28) and a giant Labour lead in Scotland (52-23). These tend to vary by sample more than the headline figures and are best taken with caution. Other findings generally pro-Ukraine but not wanting military action.
Seems a little odd, given we have daily polls from YouGov and regular ones from other firms.
On the other hand, the electorate are generally apathetic, and European elections have very low turnouts.
Some more details:
In the absence of any competing candidates, voters are simply required to mark “yes” next to the name on the ballot sheet.
“Let us all cast ’yes’ votes,” said one of many election banners that state TV showed being put up in the capital Pyongyang.
And they do.
The official turnout at the last election in 2009 was put at 99.98 percent of registered voters, with 100 percent voting for the approved candidate in each seat. [New Straits Times]
One explanation of why so many are recorded as voting yes is that the election doubles as a national census with government officials visiting homes to check whether registered residents/voters are present.
This exercise reveals the numbers of residents who may have escaped via China and emigrated to South Korea. As local officials are held personally responsible for all such defections, the NST reports that this leads to many local officials not daring to report people missing from their neighbourhood.
A solution better than lying may have been to give these emigres postal votes. It seems to work for Labour over here.
But it may open up a challenge to the referendum result, especially if it's close.
Electors cannot choose any individual candidate as the pecking order on the list is decided by each party.
For instance what effect have the MEPs on the fraud that is so obvious that the auditors have not be able to sign olff the accounts for years.
Also most MEPs are so silent and anonymous that they rarely raise a headline in the UK press and even their contact details ae rarely publicised - a case of enjoying the gravy train too much?
I like her and think she'll win, but a lay on Betfair might be a good trading bet.
Is it true that in North Korea, Lord Prescott is known as John Fat Wun?
In the last election the defending candidate only scraped in after a recount, taking 99.9998% of the vote.
Two candidates lost their deposits and then their lives having been fed to the dogs in the pound. The other three losing candidates were fed to the winning candidate.
This version of FPTP - Feed Pooches Toppled Politicians - is thought to have it's proponents in the UK. Said to be on the agenda for Crufts although Eric Pickles and Nicholas Soames are not on the menu .... yet !!
1. MEPs are not silent and anonymous. They are IMO from extensive contact through my NGO job much more engaged in details of issues than most MPs. The chance of getting EU draft legislation substantively changed by reasoned argument is thus much higher than in Westminster, partly because of PR and the weaker executive.
2. They don't get reported unless they do something stupid, because the media think the public aren't interested. The media are probably right, but that is not really the MEPs' fault. (In a minor key, backbench MPs have the same problem - to get coverage, you need to do something mad or vehemently criticise your party.)
3. The auditors say the frauds are happening at local (national) level, mainly in Southern Europe - they don't sign off the accounts because they aren't convinced by the 27 national returns. Complaints should be addressed to the national governments, unless you favour much stronger powers for the EU to send tax-hunting hit squsds into each country. Nobody - not even UKIP AFAIK - is alleging there is fraud in Brussels.
Even so this wasn't competition between candidates of different parties. Its aim was to combat bed blockers, the lethargic and corrupt. Young Komsommol candidates were encouraged to stand against the old order.
It initially did capture public attention and enthusiasm. I remember all the offices tuning into tv broadcasts and taxi drivers stopping to get the latest results in the first contested elections.
It didn't take long though for the excitement to abate. By the time of Yeltsin's second election to the Presidency ten years later and with communism dead hardly anyone was taking any notice.
Somewhat like finding out as a teenager that your parents still have sex in their forties or that the royal family actually use a lavatory - You knew it was likely but certainly didn't want to be confronted by it just before Sunday church !!
As the rules are set by Westminster, the headline is nonsense (except insofar as the referendum's very existence owes something to the SNP, of course).
What is it with the SNP and legal advice?
Not one for conspiracies..! – the obvious answer is the general lack of interest this particular election generates year after year. Frustrating as this may be for punters, from the media’s prospective we are still relatively some distance from the election as ‘news’ stories go; I do expect some polling to be carried out however, closer to the date.
Dear Dear, can the unionists get any more desperate. Next they will want to count the dead as NO votes. They do not seem to be very confident.
I joined this site in early 2005, just about the time Yougov started polling. When their first Scottish VI polls came out, putting the LDs on about 20% in Scotland, they were dismissed as "voodoo" polls in certain quarters.
This would mean Stuart could vote, and Sean Connery, and the Gloucestershire CyberNats.
Everybody wins
It's a point of view, I suppose.
For 15 years you can continue to vote in UK General Elections and European Parliamentary elections, as long as you register as an overseas voter. (You cannot vote in UK local or mayoral elections, elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales or the London Assembly.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26502420
'Ore' not.
:can-of-worms:
* Or whatever the rUK English choose to have....
Although I wouldn't be surprised if Andersdotter was a _member_ of Anonymous.
I seem to recall that it actually followed UK constitutional law on that. And that was agreed in the Edinburgh Agreement. This was all well aired a year and a bit ago at the time of the Agreement, though I must admit I cannot remember the ins and outs. I suspect the opportunity to mention Messrs Logan and Murray is part of the news coverage.
There are obvious defects with the complainants' argument, not least that the vote would also have to be removed from English, Polish, etc. incomers on the same logic (if the EWNI aren't voting in EWNI, then why should they vote in Scotland?). I do notice however that they seem to be using a different argument from the prisoners' case - freedom of movement for a start.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/19/prisoners-fails-ban-voting-scottish-independence
http://www.express.co.uk/scotland/439004/Flat-refusal-of-star-Alan-Cumming-s-referendum-vote-plan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10684414/s-Tories-stumble-Labour-is-quietly-preparing-for-office.html
Posted-to-add: <blockquote> seems broken....
Tom Gordon @ScottishPol 2 hrs
The England football team are "shit" says ex Labour Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy. Discuss http://tinyurl.com/o59dnxz
The amounts for legal tender are stated below.
Notes:
In England and Wales the £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes are legal tender for payment of any amount. However, they are not legal tender in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
(Similarly, Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in England & Wales and legally can be refused)
Coins:
Coins are legal tender throughout the United Kingdom for the following amount:
£20 - for any amount
£5 (Crown) - for any amount
£2 - for any amount
£1 - for any amount
50p - for any amount not exceeding £10
25p (Crown) - for any amount not exceeding £10
20p - for any amount not exceeding £10
10p - for any amount not exceeding £5
5p - for any amount not exceeding £5
2p - for any amount not exceeding 20p
1p - for any amount not exceeding 20p
http://www.royalmint.com/aboutus/policies-and-guidelines/legal-tender-guidelines
http://www.itv.com/news/wales/update/2014-02-17/ukip-leap-to-second-place/
So Plaid C would lose their only seat.
Malcolm, in leaving Scotland they may have abandon the source of light and life that is wee Eck, but that doesn't mean that emigrees are equivalent to the dead...
;-)
Sterling isn't an asset - it isn't a thing - it doesn't belong to anyone. It is only a scrap of paper which the UK government has promised to underwrite to a certain cash value.
Of course iScot can continue to use it without any reference to rUK if you want. But if you want to benefit from the unconditional guarantee provided by rUK then you will need to agree terms and conditions with them.
1. blood and perhaps even descent (obvious practical and political problems, not least in defining who is a Scot in the first place - Tony Blair vs Alastair Darling springs to mind). Some in Labour briefly tried to argue for qualification by descent, IIRC, but someone else in Labour must have been sensible and had a word ... even if Ms Lamont recently asserted that Scots were genetically incapable of reaching a political decision, or words to that effect.
2. actual Scots citizenship = Scottish passport holder (but we don't have that yet, so can't go by that ... not being independent ...)
or 3. residence - for simplicity using the existing criteria as per UK law - which is precisely where we are.
There may also be real problems with parliamentary jurisdictions and so on, according to the
interesting suggestions here :
http://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2014/03/09/expat-groundhog-day/
In practice, they are honoured by the Bank of England as a courtesy, though there's on reason for that to continue after independence.
And the guarantee works both ways. I have not seen anyone address the point of whether EWNI would be any more able to cope with the constraints posed by a currency agreement than Scotland would, given the state of the public finances. Malcolm, in leaving Scotland they may have abandon the source of light and life that is wee Eck, but that doesn't mean that emigrees are equivalent to the dead...
;-)
I trust that you are aware that the 'Yes' result in the original seventies referendum was infamously subverted by a Parliamentary amendment which, inter aliis, counted non-voters and the recently dead as all voting No. Forgive me if you are - but it may help others not familiar with the allusion.
Friends, Allies, Currency, Credit rating, International Law; all of these things will be unnecessary in the Utopian Republic of Eck, under the Beneficent Hand of President for Life Salmond.
"Comrades! This is your captain! It is an honour to speak to you today! And I'm honoured to be sailing with you on the maiden voyage of our Motherland's most recent achievement. And once more, we play our dangerous game. A game of chess... against our old adversary... the English Navy! For 300 years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game... and played it well. But today, the game is different. WE have the advantage! It reminds me of the heady days of Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce, when the world trembled at the sound of our war drums. Now they will tremble again - at the sound of our silence. The order is: engage the silent drive!
"Comrades! Our own fleet doesn't know our full potential! They will do everything possible to test us, but they will only test their own embarrassment. We will leave our fleet behind! We will pass through the English patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock and roll...while we conduct missile drills! And when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, while we sail to Dublin, where the sun is warm, and so is the...comradeship. A great day, comrades! We sail into history!"
If you take a £5 note into the Bank of England they will give you 5x £1 coins (I tried it once...)
The only value of Sterling is the value of the UK government's promise. There is no intrinstic value to it - so it's not an "asset" in the way malcolm thinks.
Arguably there may be some intangible brand value (in the way that the name "UK" and the Union Flag have value) but it's difficult to calculate and apportion that value.
Should the EU join the Russian Federation? 21%
Should the EU become part of an Independent Scotland? 4%
Should the EU continue to be administered as part of Ukraine? 15%
Should the EU be equally divided between the UK and Russia? 43%
Don't know/Don't care? 17%
Only one trouble; Brown sold our gold at rock bottom prices, and where do we get the rest of the gold we'll need? Oh well! Good to dream.
On a different topic I saw in the newspaper that some Tory twit in the FCO was helping the unionist case today. David Lidington warned that if we are impertinent enough to vote YES then from that day the FCO and all government ministers will immediately stop acting in Scotland's interest, regardless that we will still be part of the UK till negotiations are completed. Better Together , my arse.
Especially considering the imminent danger of a Labour govt.
Er, cough, splutter, bluff, bluster,...
No problem, I am sure Eck's never ending supply of non-existent legal advice will sort this one out for you.
Goodness, if you want to get me started on one of my 'specialist subjects' I could witter for hours.
Without going into too much detail, there are a number of very interesting commentators, like Jim Grant, who believe the long-term and inevitable consequence of massive amounts of QE (aka 'money printing') will be a return to the gold standard.
Although that's probably out of the question, there is a distinct chance of them getting their best voteshare in Scotland since the 1960s - they scored 45.6% in 1997, so they only need a bump of less than 4% from 2010 to top that. If they manage to split the lost Lib Dem votes equally between themselves and the SNP, they might just manage it. That would be quite the turn-up after all the talk of Scottish Labour being in historic meltdown.
It's Commonwealth Day here tomorrow and we've got the Bank Holiday so I'll add this to my background reading list for the day. Thanks Robert.
Interpol "concerned" passengers were allowed to board Malaysian 777 with stolen passports...
If you take a £5 note into the Bank of England they will give you 5x £1 coins (I tried it once...)
Unlike with Barclays if you take £100 of notes in for £1 coins they charge you £1.50
Why do I have to change my password very time I log in if have cleared the cache? I always change it to the same as it was before.
If you're a betting man I'd be happy frame a bet around Labour's vote share in Scotland in the 2015 GE.