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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The other story from the latest Ashcroft marginals’ polling – the sharp decline of UKIP
Apart from the problems facing Nick Clegg and the latest on the CON-LD battles a striking feature of the latest wave of Ashcroft seat polling was the decline of UKIP.
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Meanwhile, on the topic of nuclear weapons:
Russia has threatened to use “nuclear force” to defend its annexation of Crimea and warned that the “same conditions” that prompted it to take military action in Ukraine exist in the three Baltic states, all members of Nato.
According to notes made by an American at a meeting between Russian generals and US officials – and seen by The Times newspaper - Moscow threatened a “spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military” if Nato moved more forces into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-threatens-to-use-nuclear-force-over-crimea-and-the-baltic-states-10150565.html
Oh and their poll watch is out of date.
Wtf?
68 of the party’s MPs were revealed to have employed staff on zero-hours contracts over the past two years;
22,000 more of the contracts were handed out by Labour-run councils, including Doncaster where Mr Miliband is standing for MP;
Employers and legal experts said his crackdown would cost scores of jobs;
Statisticians accused Labour of using ‘unjustified’ propaganda;
City of Chester-down 5%
Croydon Central-down 6%
Halesowen-down 9%
Nuneaton down 5%
South Swindon down 4%
Wirral West down 2%
Worcester- down 4%
What's interesting is that the fall in the UKIP share hasn't improved the Conservatives prospects in most of these seats or in the LD seats released yesterday.
https://fullfact.org/factcheck/economy/zero_hour_contracts_facts-41165
Labour claim: “There are three times as many zero hour contracts now as 2010”
This is unjustified.
Is there any truth in the claim that Farage made a 3 hr private visit to Ed’s home the other night? - Might have some bearing on how this evenings debate is played out between the two.
50 hours 50 minutes 50 seconds
Ukip officials refuse to comment on late-night Nigel Farage visit to Ed Miliband's home. Lasted 3 hours, say sources
https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/583164471016841217
It was a April Fool.
A long shot I know, but what chance that there's a few charities still not taken over by Labour, that are willing to go on record as to how many jobs they will lose under Ed's proposals?
Even if they are not taken over by Labour, they are going to be fellow travellers, and even if by some miracle they are not, they will be very nervous of offending what might well be the next government.
Mr Clarkson has a new-found sympathy for environmental issues, interfaith dialogue, and intersectional feminism and has made friends with columnist Polly Toynbee’ – As if…!
Their Guardian Glasses were good too - filtering out hateful Daily Mail stuff....
Dunno how Cameron should play it really. Farage will attack him more than anyone 'cos he hates him and the tories are ukip's threat. Silly ass really because after a probable rise tonight they'll get squeezed again & their real enemy's the left. Some ukippers are so bitter. They remind me of that movement in the CofE called Forward in Faith, or Backward in Bitterness as it used to be known in the vestries.
Big prob for Cameron is that everyone may attack him. But his lectern position is brilliant in one way - on the flank with all the wannabes fighting in middle. Downside of that is getting left out.
Think the LDs may do well though & they're the big unknown. Nick Clegg is a good debater, remember. Cameron & Clegg might pact up a bit which could suit both of them. Clegg needs Cameron's coat tails - coalition success sorting out the country etc.
What Cameron really wants is what Indigo said: the rest of them to kick off against one another.
The 'true believers' will have their faith enhanced by Nigel's 'triumph/bullying' (delete as appropriate), while the rest will probably go 'they're all as bad as each other - pity I can't vote for one of the sensible women.....'
Personally I can't see Ukip making a big breakthrough unless we have a very large recession. I'm sure that won't happen any time soon....
Who is to blame for Council cuts:
Central Govt: 40 (-5)
Councils: 30 (+4)
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/qor6izxq75/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-010415.pdf
There is no chance of Islington Liberal Ed, and his largely Islington Liberal cabinet making Labour remotely attractive to the WWC, they made a half-hearted attempt with wheeling out Prescott, but his is too peripheral, because Ed is embarrassed about him.
For five years teachers have complained about the damaging and ill-considered changes forced upon them by the Conservatives. So why does it appear – based on grumblings heard in staffrooms and across social media – that Labour has yet to secure the teachers’ vote?
The answer, according to National Union of Teachers general secretary, Christine Blower, is that many of her members remain politely but firmly sceptical of Labour and its shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/02/teachers-dont-like-the-tories-so-why-isnt-labour-benefiting
a) There is an EU referendum and it looks like a fix, such as including EU residents in the vote, or votes for kids or whatever, or even worse the referendum gets weaselled.
b) A significant Islamic terror campaign which the government of the day reacts in a timorous and inadequate manner which is perceived by the voters as political correctness.
c) Financial turmoil in the EU which we end up carrying a lot of the bill before despite assurances that we would not because we are not in the Euro.
d) The ongoing CSE investigations engulf the large parties in scandals and resignations.
This time he is one of 7 (and not nearly as interesting as 7 of 9) and like Cameron he is not in the next debate at all. He has got a slot on the QT but by then a chunk of votes will already have been cast.
How does he make his party relevant? So far the media are largely ignoring him and the polling is somewhere between catastrophic and abysmal. The very future of his party is at stake with the role of third party almost inevitably going to be ceded to the SNP. He needs something truly magical to happen tonight and it is going to be hard.
The balancing act of claiming Labour and tories are going to the extremes really isn't going to work well when greater extremes (UKIP, Greens arguably the SNP) are immediately visible making the 2 main parties already look centrist. Where is his USP? He has to surely focus on the success of the Coalition and how the Lib Dems will act as a moderator in a government of either colour. If he starts moaning about the Coalition the last few that care will be wondering what the point of the Lib Dems is.
I don’t think Miliband understands what he wants to fix.
Shadsy has a few 1-50 or 1-100 shots for an annual 10-20% return, that's way better than I'll get from the bank. Examples are Tories to win in Woking or Wiltshire (they are only 1-20 to keep Hague's seat in Richmond!), or Labour to win in the Liverpool seats.
What is the historic chance of one of a dozen of these failing to come in on the night? Obviously it only needs a single mistake at those odds and you're screwed...
Even if he did want to fix it, its next to impossible if both parties like the arrangement, all that will happen is either there will be a lot of people on 1hr contracts, or a lot of people setting up service companies with which they will have 40hr contracts, but which will take whatever contracts are available on whatever terms, so there will be a zero hours business-to-business contract, or a contract for specific services (ie. specified as a deliverable, rather than a number of hours)
The Lib Dems are the closest threat to Mr Lord in Woking, so I expect the Tories should hold the Parliamentary seat fairly comfortably. It is, however, hard to say who will come second.
The in-but-out-but-in-but.... stance on the Coalition has been a fundamentally stupid piece of positioning, tied to the old way of thinking that the LibDems could ride two horses in different directions.
I don't think it's complicated for Nick Clegg. He has to be noticed. He has to take some risks. It almost doesn't matter what risks, so long as he takes them.
I am still sort of expecting that someone is going to detonate a ukip horror story timed to damage farage in the debates.
It'll be interesting to see how UKIP do in areas they aspire to gain not necessarily this time, but in the future, particularly northern areas. I still reckon that 2-6 seats is entirely possible. Double figures would be fantastic.
His act is limited to a false bonhomie coupled with a pretentiousness about how the country's woes can be so easily fixed.
I suspect that more and more people are beginning to see him as the pub bore.
"I will try and answer the questions as best as I can and make sure that the Liberal Democrat voice is heard loud and clear in the cacophony of other political voices that will be represented on that stage."
Personally, I am not expecting anything too controversial from Clegg’s performance tonight, and certainly nothing as dramatic or entertaining as a wardrobe malfunction.
I would have thought even at 1-20 there is still some value there (barring a massive local scandal, which becomes less likely the closer we get to polling day).
https://yougov.co.uk/#/centre
[edited to put in the missing 'times']
I was thinking more about the very safe seats where no-one will be paying attention - the likelyhood of a Boris (or even EdM) being undone by an organised campaign or scandal must be higher than in the surrounding seats, surely?
To contradict myself, Cameron is 1-500 in Witney - anyone with a hundred grand spare that they want to lend Shadsy for 5 weeks?
I finally took the Telegraph 'which party for you survey?' and got ...
UKIP - 60%
Conservatives - 55%
Liberal Democrats - 53%
Labour - 47%
Green Party - 40%
I expected to be a bit NOTA but the only surprise was the Green vote which was quite high.
Tribally, I can't vote Tory. I'm too old to vote Green. I've always voted Labour or LD before but just for fun I'll vote Ukip as I should. I've become the dice man. I expect my IQ has dropped dramatically.
The Labour candidate, a granny with a predilection for kicking opponents, is certain to win anyway.
Ukip and the other minor parties will drift down as the BBC concentrates on the big two but black swans may be hovering.
I'm expecting a Farage bounce unfortunately which should then fade over the next 5 weeks. But the tories will be delighted at setting the agenda and winning the first few days.
I guess Cameron's calling card re Farage is the In-Out EU referendum. Assuming he gets that across it really only leaves Farage moaning about dirty foreigners. Given how employed-up Britain currently is that also should be fairly easy to lance.
Do you know any British student fruit-pickers? Nope. Me neither.
Even when we compliment the Nats they find something to complain about.......
That surprised me.
When the Industrial Revolution hit Wales, people came from many places to the Valleys to work in the coal mines and iron and steel mills - much of which was exported globally. By the 1920s and 1930s, new and cheaper sources of those raw materials and finished products had been found outside the UK and so those industries slumped.
Post WW2 provided a new impetus for those industries due to destruction from bombing and war, but soon oil, gas and electricity ( as well as the Clean Air Act) replaced the need for coal and those industries slumped again - almost to extinction. Even the miners who took over pits could not make them work long term.
However, the people who lived through those times showed a pride in their work and a hunger for education for themselves and their children. Today it would appear that much of that pride and hunger has been lost (to the detriment of the UK as a whole and to their communities). It has been replaced by a complacency that HMG will keep us in enough comfort to live and many people have lost that motivation for self-improvement for themselves and their children.
But few politicians are awake to the fact that the world does not owe anyone in the UK a living and this is shown by the near dinosauric policies of many of our political parties. The world has moved on and there cannot be any return to the past and we have to try and shape our circumstances to the demands of the global and technical revolution that is going on around us.
Some PBers are developing business globally whilst others want to revert to past times and privileges that are no longer there and so mirror the political party leaders. Will we see any real thought innovation for GB at the debate tonight - I sincerely doubt it.
I wd prefer if county was not better off rather than allow immigration to keep rising - @Nigel_Farage @BBCr4today
James Chapman (Mail) @jameschappers 17m17 minutes ago
Extremely difficult, tetchy #todayprog interview for Farage, who is already accusing BBC of "clear bias" #GE2015
Robin Brant @robindbrant 15m15 minutes ago
think @Nigel_Farage will want to be more in control of his performance on TV debate tonight than he was in that @BBCRadio4 today iv #ge2015
Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage 14m14 minutes ago
@robindbrant Maybe we'll have a moderator who doesn't display glaring establishment party bias tonight, eh?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-threatens-to-use-nuclear-force-over-crimea-and-the-baltic-states-10150565.html
Still wanting to scrap Trident, Nicola?
Where there isn’t a fierce constituency fight going on, the non-marginals in the red and blue heartlands, then UKIP might fare better. That is precisely what happened to the LDs in 2010. The Cleggasm did happen – but not in seats where it was going to affect the result.
This is why the Tory vote will be more efficiently spread than previous elections, so the risk of the Conservatives winning on votes but not on seats diminishes (but probably doesn't disappear).
http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/uk-general-election-predictions/
Cameron has missed a trick here I think. He is so desperate to distance himself from the kippers, when in reality they are mostly picking up votes in the south in safe Tory seats and wont make a lot of difference, that his misses the opportunity to reduce the Labour vote in the Midlands and the North which in turn increases his chance of a majority. If the kippers were doing a bit better and took 6-8 seats from Labour in places like Heywood and Middleton he would be much closer to a majority.
They are a creation of the media, for the media. Half the campaign days in 2010 the media led with the build up to the debate, the debate itself and the fallout from the debate before starting the cycle again. Meanwhile the leaders spend time preparing instead of campaigning - while the media talked about themselves instead of what was actually happening in the campaign itself.
And as the queen owns all the mute swans, does that mean that a black mute swan event has actually been ordered by her majesty?