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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Populus online has CON closing the gap to just 5 pc – but are Tory members raising their expectation too high?
At this precise point ahead of GE2015 in Jul 2008 William Hills made it a 40% chance that CON would win a 100+ majority
The bet was a loser
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Tick tock ....
But Tories may be raising their expectations too high?
And ICM was rubbished as an outlier, then YGov started to show leads down to 3/4/5pts.
This is clearly all MOE and nothing for Labour to be concerned about.
Really. Let's talk about Opinium. Or ...
I recall when @NickPalmer used to talk about Labour being at least 10pt ahead and how consistent that lead was. Now its what? 5ish pts? And in the depths of mid-term?
Come on Labour - pull your fingers out and give HMG a run for their money.
5 more coalition years please..
Our local out of hours doctor surgery provides the same service - if your call sounds mildly serious you come in and see doc - if worse than that you go to A&E.
Call person is linked to facility that will provide the service - and also keeps minor cases out of the emergency waiting room.
Works really well.
This was back in the early 2000s and I waited for about 30 mins at 8am for the call to be answered.
I think its a good idea in principle, but the demarcation point is too blurry. There's a fuss in the Mail today about how 111 is failing critically ill patients - well you shouldn't be ringing 111 if you're that ill. FFS.
Given that immigration is a very hot button for many Kippers - I can see soft voters thinking the Tories are literally putting money where their mouth is.
The number of vans is less than a dozen but its gained huge traction. Vince has been moaning about them being *racist* - how objecting to illegal immigrants is racist is beyond me and feels very 2010.
Though UKIP were falling back before that insanity so it probably didnt have much of an impact on polling.
Are the latter raising hopes too high? Not really, you have to be optimistic otherwise you talk yourself into failure. The general mood in the party seems to be one of cautious optimism, based largely on the improving economy plus a sense that the leadership has a better grip on messaging now, but I don't think anyone believes this is going to be anything other than a tough gig.
I suspect they'll be back around the Euros.
The fun will be if they poll better than the Tories.
I suspect all the political focus post Euros will be on Scotland.
Re the conhome poll. I've said it before conhome isn't respresentative of conservative members.
Kippers were extraordinarily successful in Euro2009 and it added bugger all to their subsequent success afterwards. The rise of UKIP now is down to recent news like the Rotherham fostering story and much better campaigning re the EU vs Tories - and its already falling away as the Tories get smarter messaging.
The government is being quite clever by concentrating on 'illegal' immigrants. These must be from outside the EU, which is where I reckon the crux of the beef with immigration really is.
Farage makes little distinction between perfectly legal EU immigrants and those from outside the EU. They are all the great unwashed for him.
I reckon many people's experience of EU immigrants is quite positive and the less swivel eyed don;t go all the way with Farage here.
This might explain why he's dipping in the polls?
"It is not quite clear what Google did to David Cameron, but the Prime Minister seems to be exacting some sort of revenge...."
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/8972161/net-loss-2/
"When to use it
You should use the NHS 111 service if you urgently need medical help or advice but it's not a life-threatening situation.
Call 111 if:
you need medical help fast but it's not a 999 emergency
you think you need to go to A&E or need another NHS urgent care service
you don't know who to call or you don't have a GP to call
you need health information or reassurance about what to do next" http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Emergencyandurgentcareservices/Pages/NHS-111.aspx
If you need medical help fast, that is a complete and succinct definition of an emergency: without telling us what a 999 emergency is this tells us nothing.
If you think you need to go to A&E the rational thing is to go to A&E; in how many situations is the person answering the phone going to say that you think you need to go to A&E but you are mistaken?
It is just an added layer of do-it-yourself triage.
Both wouldn't be conducive to a successful Tory general election campaign.
BBCPanorama @BBCPanorama
The sale of 10k online dating profiles to Panorama is to be investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office bbc.in/13r5eTF
I expect a Yes vote.
Poles for example are largely Catholics, set up churches and are law abiding sorts who don't attract negative publicity as pirates like Somalis do.
I rarely trip across negative views of Sikhs or Hindus or Chinese or Koreans. But lots of ones about those from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Romania et al.
There is nothing racist in this - people from these countries either look very similar to each other or totally different - but are judged by how they behave when here. So if those from Pakistan are seen as culturally backward and Romanians as pick-pockets - its not racist since we don't bracket Indians or Poles into the same groups.
It's easy to see how the Tories get back voters who were supporting them before the omni-shambles, and UKIP always looked like it would get squeezed, but that's not enough: They need some new support, or for Labour to lose either Gordon Brown voters or lefty LibDems. Those two look pretty solid, so where is the extra Con support going to come from?
When you boil it down to individual marginal constituencies, and take the lib to lab swing into account, you just have to think there will be enough votes to get labour over the line.
A free at the point of use healthcare system is surely not sustainable now we're all living almost forever needing more and more care and with the cost of all the treatments out there nowadays for things which used to kill us quite cheaply.
A left of centre party needs to change things to incorporate some kind of fees and insurance with big safety nets, the tories cannot, they dare not. It's Nixon to China in reverse.
"It's Nixon to China in reverse."
Tories will be giving pandas?
To answer Edmund in Tokyo's question, if Labour's support holds up in the polls up to 2015 (which personally I doubt it will, given the current answers to subsidiary polling questions) but the coalition continues to be seen by a plurality as the better bet economically, that plurality of voters who are distrustful of Labour's economic abilities will seek to ensure that Labour doesn't get back in. In most seats, that would mean that the Conservatives would benefit from a polarisation of opinion. So we might well see an apparent return to two party politics, with the Lib Dems doing reasonably well in seats where they are already in contention.
This might all yet change. Ed Miliband may yet persuade the public that he isn't a muppet or the Conservatives might again decide to snort the cocaine of Europhobia. Or the economy might falter again and the public might change their minds about the relative economic abilities of the Coalition and Labour.
It's all left to play for.
Cameron needs to hold his 2010 seats and win around 20 more to govern alone for five years. There are worse positions to be in.
Peace in Vietnam, the end of conscription, good relations with China, détente with Russia, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, affirmative action, school desegregation, expansion of welfare, and he would have passed universal healthcare if Ted Kennedy hadn't blocked it. Can anyone think of a leader with as many progressive achievements?
In all seriousness - NHS Direct or 111 is a very solid idea - making it work is the tricky bit. It's attempting to plug the gap between GP surgeries, A&E and guessing at home.
I'm all for it - it clearly has had problems for a long time [my own experience included], but as a concept its sound.
"The Fifty Shades of Grey effect could be to blame for an increasing number of handcuff-related emergency call-outs over the past three years, London Fire Brigade said today.
Firefighters have been called out to 79 incidents of people being trapped in handcuffs during that period and the brigade advised people to "keep the keys handy."
Third officer Dave Brown, said: "Some of the incidents our firefighters are called out to could be prevented with a little common sense. I don't know whether it's the Fifty Shades effect, but the number of incidents involving items like handcuffs seems to have gone up." http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-07-29/fifty-shades-effect-sees-handcuff-accidents-soar/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23489702
(Or I might be misreading what is just a headline atm)
https://twitter.com/LewisWhyld/status/361809058828800000/photo/1
Are all cat videos banned or just ones from me?
Some problems here, firstly the wheels are coming off the wagons that Cameron has set in motion, two, Cameron is now on holiday and is laughingly "in control" wherever he is, and lastly, Cameron's history is that after any spurt of energy, he goes back to sleep again.
Not that Labour is much better, all the shadow cabinet seem to be too busy sunning themselves to take advantage of any Tory Party problems.
PS: Anyone catch Boris's appearance on the athletics TV programme on Saturday. Seems he was quite the sprinter in his younger days with the 100 metres his favourite. Just crossed my mind when watching that it would have been quite useful if in any possible contention with an irate husband.
Reusable and cheap, although you should always keep a sharp pair of scissors handy in case of emergency.
"Once upon a time there were only workers and owners, but then the age of the manager dawned, explains Lucy Kellaway.
There are five million managers in the UK today, 10 times as many as there were 100 years ago.
Even if you don't actually manage anyone, your title pretends you do. A conductor is a train manager. An administrator is an office manager. A technician is an IT manager.
Any self-respecting executive will now have an MBA, a shelf full of management books, and a vocabulary stuffed with "key deliverables" and "scalable solutions".
And yet we were able to get through the industrial revolution without having any "masters of business administration" at all. No-one thought of management then - the word manager wasn't widely applied to business until the 20th Century.
It also has a meaning, in popular early 19th Century culture, of dishonesty. A manager was someone who will run off with your money. Manager meant something quite disreputable, quite unprofessional."
In the UK, we still distrust our managers, sometimes with good cause. The way Fred Goodwin brought down the Royal Bank of Scotland wouldn't have surprised Adam Smith at all. We are suspicious of them not just because we don't know what they do - we fear they don't know either........
After World War II, all our proudest companies were run not by people who had the first clue about business but by generals. There was one apiece at British Railways, British Airways, at Vickers, and even at the BBC. They believed in one thing only - hierarchy.
These managers didn't think they had anything to learn, which was partly why the first proper business school in the UK didn't open until 1965, more than a century behind the US and Europe.
According to the American sociologist C Wright Mills, a successful manager had to "speak like the quiet competent man of affairs and never personally say no. Hire the No-man as well as the Yes-man. Be the tolerant Maybe-man and they will cluster around you filled with hopefulness. And never let your brains show."
Excellent advice all round. The Maybe-man still fares pretty well in offices some 60 years later - though brains have possibly staged something of a come back.
But back then there was no talk of diversity, let alone authenticity. It was all about conformity and hard work.
Read more at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23462290
James 4:12 - a personal favourite of mine - "There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbour?"
Supplementary Q's on Severance pay for senior public officials forced to resign and Payday loan companies
Edit: And one on if I had experienced a paranormal event. I answered No
Though I notice the pendulum has swung very slightly to Con as it's now Con Short, rather than Lab Short.
111 Service = £10 per call
As NHS Direct withdraws from providing the 111 Service, more local GP managed services will replace the remotely administered, monolithic and bloated NHS Direct provision.
Once the learning curve has been ascended, there is no discernible difference in quality of service between that provided by NHS Direct and that of the new 111 service providers.
Nothing to do with ideology, tim. Just sound management.
I don't follow each nuance of the polls as avidly as some on here but I wanted to note a couple of things. The Coalition parliament is not working in the same way as previous Parliaments and particularly first-term Conservative administrations. Traditionally, we would have seen a big move away from the Tories to the LDs in mid-term and a lesser move to Labour so a mid-term poll might have looked like Lab 35 LD 30 Con 25 or something of that nature.
With the seemingly irrevocable fracturing of the 2010 LD vote which has meant 40-50% of that voter has gone to Labour and stayed there, the amount of potential fracture of the Conservative vote has been diminished. Yes, there was a move to UKIP which at one point put that party close to 20% but the decline of that UKIP share has been far more precipitant than the decline in LD shares in past mid-terms.
The Conservatives have, since their spring nadir, clawed back a lot of the UKIP protest vote while the LD vote has flat lined at 10-12%. The Labour bloc (consisting of 2010 Labour voters and 40-50% of the 2010 LD vote) is the anti-Conservative blocking minority concentrated in one place. It is the converse of, for example, 1987 and 1992 where the Conservatives benefitted from a split vote.
With an seeming solid 38-39% in the Labour vote and around 10-12% in the LD camp, that simply leaves the residual UKIP vote to squeeze down (much as the LD vote used to be squeezed). The combined Conservative-UKIP vote is 42% in this poll (compared with 44-45% in other polls). Given that a segment of that UKIP vote won't go to the Tories under any circumstances you begin to see the glass ceiling of the Conservative vote at 37-39%.
Under the current system, Lab 39, Con 37, LD 11 and UKIP 5 gives a Baxter Labour majority of 18 but with incumbency that could be a shade more.
It may well be that contrary to other elections, the pattern may now be well set and won't change much before or even during the election. The key will be whether any of the 2010 GE LD vote currently ensconced in the Labour camp can be eased out of that bloc.
Baxter Con 37 Lab 34 LD 16 and you get 297 seats equally for the big two with the LDs on 29 which would be "interesting". The Tories need either to draw Labour voters directly to them (which seems improbable at present) or draw them into the LD camp.
I am working on a seaside related calendar and on a recent recce to Llandudno I noticed several families of Hasidic Jews paddling on the front fully dressed in their black frocks.........
It seems they had come down from Aberystwyth which has become a holiday centre for several hundred Hasidic families from all over the world where they rent an entire hillside of student accommodation.
They arrive en masse in camper vans full of food and everything they'll need for the duration of their stay. Though they can be seen paddling and sun bathing fully dressed all along the front they generally try to avoid contact with the locals
According to the Aberystwyth tourist office someone asked why there were so many people dressed in Welsh national costume.
Very good summary. Because there's been so little crossover since GE2010 between CON and LAB voters there is little potential for swing-back.
I will be amazed if the Lib-Dems poll as low as 11%.
Lib-Dems will be at least over 15% and possibly as high as 18-20% IMO.
Current Lab -> Con: 1%
Current Lab->LD: 4%
Current Lab->Won't vote: 2%
Current LD->Con: 0.5%
Current Don't Know/Won't vote -> Con: 2%
Current UKIP -> Con: 4%
i.e. it doesn't have to be the exact same people crossing over to give the overall effect of a significant swing.
Edit: On the current UKPR polling average (32/38/10/12) the above shifts would give:
Con 39.5
Lab 31
LD 13.5
UKIP 8
So, yes, there is potential for swing-back.
If Red Bull have the free choice of Alonso, Raikkonen and Ricciardo and go for the Aussie then they're mental.
This was suggested earlier given the addition of Sochi, possibly Austria and New Jersey next year, and has now been backed up by a clear warning shot from Ecclestone.
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/119011.html
The circuit's not great, and the red tape (including corporation tax) has not endeared the event to the teams.
One male was drowned last year as he went swimming in full garb and tide swept him away.
Also I gather that fewer are in Aberystwyth this year as the University Health & safety has banned the use of lighted candles in their rooms and so they have forsaken such a 'heathen' establishment.
Looking at the above figures it's surely obvious that thanks to Tory recent history they have a glass ceiling of around 36% which can't possibly give them a majority.
If this reading turns our to be wrong it means Ed's screwed up so badly he'll owe it to his supporters to commit Hara Kiri on election night.
There is the anecdotal experience of Bedford, but we really could do with more focus on marginals. When are we going to get one of those big polls?
Senna/Prost. Hamilton/Alonso.
When you have two giants of motor sport going head to head in the same team you'll get trouble.
If you was to put Alonso or Raikkinen with Vettel you'd have fireworks.
There was a reason Benetton and Ferrari put drivers at least one tier under Schumacher into their team (though at his best EVERYONE was at least one tier under Schumacher to be fair) and it was a pretty successful formula.
You're quite right to cite the dramatic year Hamilton and Alonso were team mates, but that was some time ago and history may not repeat itself.
In the Midlands? in the North West? I doubt they think the economy's improving there. And that's where it matters.
http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000NYn6L9elUbg/s/900/900/CDM00107UK.jpg
Much truth in what you are saying , however the number of 2010 LD voters who have moved to Labour is much less than 40-50% . The typical figure in the polls is 25 to 30% . Today's Populus for example has 24% . As large a number are currently telling pollsters they don't know how they will vote next time ( 26% in today's Populus ). As Nick Palmer has said in Broxtowe many of these not only did not vote Labour but they voted and re elected LD councillors in May .
We also should treat Populus figures with care as they consistently are unable to get a representative sample . In this poll they had 203 UK IDers and should have had 20 Consequently they reduced the 250 respondents who said they would vote UKIP to just 110 .
Whilst Brown was indeed a dire candidate, Mandy/Campbell did manage to run a fantastic scare campaign about the Wicked Tories murdering everyone's first born...
2015 will be the first campaign since 1992 where the Tories will be able to control of the narrative and it will be first election since 1997 where the focus won't be almost exclusively on "Tory Spending Plans"
How much of a difference that makes we'll have to wait and see, but Labour very successfully made the 2001 and 2005 elections referendums on Tory plans rather than their own record and deployed the same tactic with some success in 2010 as well.
2015 will be a very different kind of election, but we'll have to wait and see whether it makes any difference to the overall outcome.
Figures from the BoE and Hometrack (property tracking website) reveal that the rate of increase in mortgage approvals and average house price rises fell in July when compared to June and May.
This probably evidences the abating of the pent-up demand released as the snows of spring melted.
New buyer registrations were up 2.5% in May, 1.6% in June and 1.0% in July, although year on year rates of increase continued to climb with July showing an annual 1.3% rise over 0.8% in June.
The small fall in the monthly rate of house price inflation is a response to the similarly small fall in demand. With annual house price inflation still running at less than half the general rate of inflation (CPI), house prices are still falling in real terms and there appears to be little sign of any form of a house price bubble building.
Mortgage approvals, house sales volume and prices though are still rising in nominal terms and the housing market as a whole is reviving but the current figures show the continued need for government stimulus to ensure market liquidity and confidence.
George's skills in tantric timing are evident for all to see.
We also know UKIP has a foothold in that vote so there's a battle there to watch. In this new environment, I simply don't think the "swing back" argument holds water. Even if all those who voted Conservative last time did the same, the rise in the Labour vote share would end David Cameron's tenure. The UKIP tussle is a side show - the key is that 40-50% of 2010 LD GE voters perhaps amounting to 10% of the electorate.
For there to be any other result than Ed Miliband becoming Prime Minister, that bloc has to be fragmented. That either means returning it to the LDs, bringing it to the Con camp or having it abstain.
As I understand it, the LD policy on negotiation in the event of a Hung Parliament is still to give first refusal to the party with the largest number of votes. Whether or not Miliband wants or needs to talk to the LDs after May 2015 is for Labour to decide.
The numbers as they currently stack up don't offer much hope for either a Conservative majority or a Con-LD coalition.
"Roger - it does still seem difficult to see how the Tories can win outright next time. Can Ed seriously do worse against the Tories than Brown."
No he can't. Anecdotally even though the economy is possibly on the mend I don't sense any enthusiasm for another 5 years of a Tory led government. I'd say it's close to impossible with the very slight proviso that Ed is seen as completely unsuitable (think Michael foot) and I think that's unlikely.
We should forgive the Lib Dem perfidy on boundary changes.
Failure to do so would be the greatest strategic error since The Emperor allowed The Rebel Alliance to know the location of the Second Death Star.
He's left needing the economy to underperform, at the expense of the living standards of British families, not a good place to be at this point in the cycle.
Labour may have got the substance of the past three years right economically, but they've wasted them by not expanding on what the UK ought to look like under a recovery and future return to growth.
Labour are in danger of getting blown away by an expertly managed downward revision in expectations by the Tories.
The Tories were the Opposition in 2008.
Labour are the Opposition now.
The Opposition underperformed in 2010 compared to its 2008 polling....
Boundary reform was tied to the AV referendum. The Conservatives delivered, and if the referendum hadn't gone their way they would've been livid with Cameron. Clegg specifically said boundaries weren't linked to Lords reform, and then performed an utter 180. His proposals were also bonkers, and had no referendum included (single 15 year terms is ridiculous).
The Lords must, alas, be reformed because Labour, as ever with constitutional arrangements, ****ed it up and the present system is unsustainable, but Clegg's 'idea' [I use the term loosely as it has connotations of thinking and intelligence] was bloody stupid.
But let's say Cameron did as you asked. It would really piss off a huge number of big C Conservatives, as well as drawing countless attacks from the left of it being done for partisan advantage. Furthermore, leftists (Lib Dems and Labour) are well-versed in anti-Conservative tactical voting and that would probably help them more. I suspect UKIP sorts who are ex-Conservatives would rather vote 1. UKIP 2. Nobody than back the blues under Cameron.