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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As Dave and Ed limber up for their final PMQs the last four polls have their parties level pegging
This is extraordinary. In all the time I’ve been covering polling I cannot recall a sequence like the one we are seeing this week. Four polls on the trot all reporting LAB and CON with the same vote shares.
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Neutrals? Only you Mike
75 hours
Very odd polling indeed this week - I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories but…!
EdM + Scotland + improving economy + cautious campaign = Tories getting most seats, surely.
The Tories can only throw it away from here.
On the other hand, if you are a Tory voter the government has delivered for you by and large over the last five years. Why wouldn't you go out and vote Tory again?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/03/24/23/26F6A18B00000578-0-image-a-47_1427240889365.jpg
That said, some people must be paying attention, and my chart below does appear to point towards a definitive slippage away from UKIP and the Greens, in favour of Tory/Labour/LibDem.
Who is the better PM
Who is the better chancellor
Will the economy be better under cameron and osborne or miliband and balls
Would you be better off under cameron and osborne or miliband and balls
Will the country be better off under cameron and osborne or miliband and balls
Is the country better or worse than in 2010
The voting intention of 35/35 dosent make sense. Labour are going to be slaughtered.
I watch the behaviour and attitudes of the Party Hierarchies to get a feeling of what they think is actually happening from their own inhouse polls and door knocking results. I suspect that they are all getting different answers from the Pollsters but are not quite sure how to proceed.
The parties cannot be critical of the published Polls, as since the media pay for them, the politicians would be torn to shreds as unbelievers in the truth, honour and respect of the press (sorry, I couldn't stop giggling for several minutes after re-reading the paragraph).
323 is the effective number. If Labour / Greens / SNP / SDLP / Respect add up to 323 then Ed is PM. Doesn't matter if the Tories are on 300 seats vs 260 Labour.
Media can spin a coalition of the losers / moral mandate meme all they want, at the end of the day it's just the numbers. With the Lib Dems dying, even staying 300+ isn't going to cut it for the tories.
I don't see a plausible result that doesn't have Milliband in power.
(I have no skin in the game, no longer live in the UK, I'm just about the betting)
'Just wait, after May day people will start paying attention and the Tory vote will reappear'
My tip of the week suggestion this time is for the Tories to recapture the Rochester & Strood seat they lost last November after Mark Reckless defected to UKIP and successfully defended the seat in the subsequent by-election with a modest majority of a little over 2,000 votes.
The recent polls are suggesting that UKIP has lost a significant share, perhaps as much as a third of their support since then, added to which the Tories will benefit considerably from the inevitably very much higher turnout in the forthcoming General Election (65% in 2010), compared with the 50% who voted at the by-election.
Taken together therefore, Reckless looks likely to be roundly defeated in six weeks time and on this basis the best available odds of 5/6 (1.83 decimal) on a Tory win from those nice people at SkyBet appear to offer sound value.
As ever DYOR.
Although it does require a turkey to vote for Xmas. Much more likely is a SNP flounce during the 2016 Holyrood elections
They seem to have these two day aberrations in some of their data, but worth keeping an eye on, just in case.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32038485
You may be constitutionally correct - it is unlikely to be de facto accurate. Whoever wins the most seats will be PM.
What will happen after May 8 if there is a change in the leadership of the losing party/ies running into the autumn election. More betting opportunities?
I do not find this surprising. Con/Labour switchers have always been non existent. In fact Tory support has been remarkably solid losing less than 10% points at its worst. The downside of this is there is not much to swing back and what there is has largely occurred now.
As Mike has been pointing out throughout this Parliament the most important polling information has been and remains the switch of the red Liberals to Labour. This is the source of almost all of Labour's anaemic recovery from 2010. They have persuaded almost no one else. This will hurt the Tories in marginals with a significant 2010 Lib Dem vote waiting to be squeezed.
Will this be enough to offset the Scottish losses and make Labour the largest party? I suspect so but it will be close. Whether that actually matters in terms of putting a government together is another question.
Bring down Cameron + Cripple Miliband = "Go away Scotland" mandate at the next election for anyone brave enough to moot the policy.
I have actually bet on the election outcome (first time ever I've placed a bet - and I'm 66 next month
Which would be a safer bet; if Rochester is lost then the other seats are unlikely to come in.
But I think Rochester will be a kipper hold.
Tories have every reason to, and are pretty solid. Much of Labour's new support didn't vote Labour in GE2010, and are highly sceptical about Miliband. So their sole motivation is to stop the Tories.
I'm not sure that's enough, but we'll see.
The Scottish weighting was slightly dubious too (Yes yes I know it isn't weighted for Scotland to be accurate...) - overall I read the Conservatives slightly ahead from last night's Yougov but obviously that's swamped by MoE on one poll.
If the kippers come second in 50-100 seats this time around as seems likely, GE2020 is going to be a completely different kettle of fish.
Alex Salmond is really doing his best for the Tory campaign in England. His announcement that the SNP would block a minority Tory government should go down like a bag of sick in the southern shires.
I'm not sure the 2nd election hammering is a foregone conclusion either, Miliband may be difficult to envision as PM, but when you see him in a government limo driving from the Palace to Downing St it becomes a whole lot easier.
And with a Euroreferendum out of the way (assuming a Tory govt), and Cameron replaced, what would a UKIP party offer?
The SNP are left leaning, but broadly pro-business, I wonder what they will make of the sort of big government, politically correct, red-tape nightmares that Hattie regularly tries to foist on the country.
If Cameron wins the EU referendum by say 55/45 (that number sounds familiar) it is going to be the rallying cry for every "we was robbed" grievance merchant within 1000 miles (that sounds familiar as well). The 45% who wanted OUT might decide to try and get it through the ballot box instead. Conversely five years of EdM euro-idiocy will stiffen their vote quite considerably I would expect. I don't by the died off bit, there will be just as many people with blue rinses in five years time as there are now, different people, but lots of people get more conservative, and more insular as they get older.
Where does my personality fit in?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31816926
The deals to keep your own MP's in line, while getting backing for C&S from minor parties and disillusioned members of the other side is a nightmare while the strain on your own MP's puts them in hospital/coffins etc.. An attack minded opposition would make being in government a living hell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1854
Aye, the plane crash will overshadow everything. Tricky for Miliband. He won't want to have the final PMQs just be sombre, but diving in without any mention of the crash would look crass. Probably a 2/4 or 3/3 split, I'd guess, with the latter questions of a party political nature.
Should the Tories fail to retake R & S then they are in very serious trouble. I'd expect them to secure a comfortable majority of between 1,500 - 3,000.
Either we'll have Coalition 2.0 (still an absolute majority in that scenario) or a Tory minority with confidence and supply.
Apart from which, while I know that Westminster is a very different place from the 70's, where MP's in hospital (some of whom were literally on their death beds) were sent by ambulance to cross into the Westminster courtyard so that their vote could be counted.
While technology has brought more changes in the chances of MP's not getting caught by the respective whips offices in rebellions before they happen.
All whilst looking after their own constituency work, trying to sort out who the powerbrokers are and what opportunities there are for their own advancement.
But they didn't. And it's not as if Nick Clegg was an obvious left-winger back then either, certainly not compared to Charles Kennedy.
I think it's much more complicated than that, but can see why Labour want to bank on it.
310 is the magic number to be sure of carrying the EU referendum Bill. 315 seats if they want to implement the vast majority of their programme.
If the Tories loses seats in May and there’s a Labour minority government then I suspect that “fighting like ferrets in a sack” will be a mild way of describing the Tory benches! They might actually split.
cough cough
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11492825/What-happens-on-a-night-out-with-5000-American-sailors.html
It's in the mutual interest.
norman smith@BBCNormanS·54 secs54 seconds ago
Labour @JimForScotland says will pay for 5,000 Scottish jobs with £1 billion from tax on City bonuses
If we have, say, Tory 290, Labour 260 &c then I would expect Miliband to offer a Grand Coalition & Cameron to refuse it (and regret it later, but, hey, that's life).
I question whether the Kippers are simply returning to their former polarisations as the election approaches, or whether they have noticed the disaster that a populist party has foisted upon Greece. Front National and Podemus seem to be in similar decline.