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Turnout betting – politicalbetting.com
Turnout betting – politicalbetting.com
At the last election turnout was 67.3% and I might expect turnout to be higher at this election as voters mobilise to get the Tories out but I suspect turnout will be lower due to voting ID requirements change. After last year’s locals, Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted those changes were a gerrymander aka voter suppression.
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Voter ID I'm not sure will have a huge effect, but I'd think a depression of 1-2% from that is not an unreasonable prediction. I always felt it would hit the older cohort hardest, people who have voted for decades and just plain forget to change habit for the new rules.
I'm told by contacts in Elections things haven't gone too badly with the new rules in many places, but there's no test so big as a GE.
With that in mind, Marks & Spencer plans to close more than 100 stores and here is a list.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/ms-full-list-stores-closing-32388977
Annual six-month closure goes ahead despite self-assessment chaos
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/hmrc-permanently-close-tax-return-phone-lines-summer/ (£££)
There must be a Labour mole deep inside Jeremy Hunt's brain if he thinks this will not add to the Broken Britain narrative. In addition, now, let's think, is it natural Labour or Conservative supporters who are more likely to try and phone HMRC with self-assessed tax problems?
The least time I ever spent on the phone queue to British Gas was 48 minutes.
The Treasury are mad.
This is a risky betting market imho. @TSE and y’all have have posted various unknowns.
Generally people get out to vote more for negative than positive reasons.
Fear is a huge motivator. 1992 was driven by fear of Kinnock. Fear of high taxation or immigrants etc. are also proven motivators. Extremist leaders like Michael Foot or Jeremy Corbyn usually get people out to vote against.
Positivity isn’t the biggest reason why people vote: hence 1997.
Starmer may not inspire in the way that Blair did, but he doesn’t need to. This Government is by far the most unpopular of my lifetime and there is raw hatred of them.
On balance therefore I suspect a reasonable turnout.
She’s a smart operator.
He says the oldies around here (and there are plenty of them) are annoyed at having to take ID, and would sooner not do so than comply.
It's a fun market rather than a heavy-betting one, but if I were to get involved I would err on the low side.
And of course there's nothing much to get enthused about with any Party.
Giving the tories a kicking will definitely inspire some.
I think it will creep over 60% but possibly not by much.
Just to cause confusion.
I know a couple of neutrals who are very impressed by her.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
The fact it would screw up the Tories would be mere happenstance.
As well as squandering the initiative and opening himself up to further demonstrate the Tories’ extraordinary capacity for the self-sabotaging navel gaze, one of the key attack lines against Starmer (no policies, what do they stand for?) will become increasingly less effective as Labour now receive more time and media space to state their case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51jkypr04ko.amp
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
"We have a plan and the plan is working, don't let Labour squander our golden legacy and take us back to square one".
Back to square one isn’t a threat, it’s an improvement
Oh and inflation at 3.4% isn’t brilliant, it will be interesting to see the impact in April / May / June as minimum wage increases by 10%
This is, after all, the current government we're talking about.
Though not Republican voters.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/ohio-illinois-primaries-trump-takeaways-00147967
..Moreno’s win capped a strong night for the former president down the ballot: Trump went three-for-three in competitive primaries, boosting Moreno and two other House candidates who won close races.
But there were also warning signs for Trump as hundreds of thousands of Republicans — particularly in suburban areas where the GOP has struggled in the Trump era — chose Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis on the presidential ballot, despite the fact that neither is an active candidate anymore...
Tories be afraid. A revolution in how we do politics has begun. Quality centrist Dad crap from George Monbiot.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/a-revolution-in-the-way-britain-does-politics-has-begun-in-devon-tory-mps-should-be-afraid/ar-BB1kcp45?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=c6e60b655624430e9e49453211b38b41&ei=15
In an update in October 2022, the supermarket said it wants to reduce its "full line" stores from 247 to 180 by 2028, but it will open 104 more Simply Food shops. If these plans go ahead, it means M&S will increase the number of its Simply Food sites from 316 to 420.
She is certainly a major improvement over the hapless Annaliese Dodds.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/comment/article-13041677/HAMISH-MCRAE-Time-fix-Gordon-Browns-pension-errors.html
Any guesses how significant that might be for the general election ?
Remember too, Government rampers, that inflation is cumulative. Prices are still going up, just by less.
It is like "vote Swapping", pioneered by the Guardian a few years back, and other so called initiatives. The wet dream of political obsessives and why on earth would Labour waste their time participating. They are poised to win a landslide.
Also this statement in the article is a massive assumption too. "But cooperation among progressive parties could have averted all eight Conservative majority governments bar 2015." Why assume votes for 1 non Tory party are internchangeable with another non Tory Party. I vote Labour. I would not vote Green or Lib Dem irrespective. Not that I vote anymore. But when I did.
HOWEVER there will be a bounce back due to the continuing high level of wage rises particularly minimum wage. This probably won't come through until late 2024. MPC knows this is coming so are unlikely to cut interest rates by any extent this year. Lenders also know this is happening which is why mortgage rates are moving up albeit by a small amount.
The odds aren't attractive and the bands are too narrow.
No bet.
Reeves : "Er...not so fast...."
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
People miss the fact in terms of interest rates we are just reverting to the mean here. The last decade or so has not been normal for long term interest rates. Rates where they currently are are nearer to that.
U.K. manufacturing is alive and doing quite well. The meme that it doesn’t exist seems embedded in parts of the Left.
HMRC regularly screw up or alter tax codes (sometimes by their auto bots) and I need to phone them 2-3 times a year to sort it out.
Only humans can understand an individual's own circumstances.
She is not really saying that, though. That is misrepresenting her argument.
This is as close to a no brainer as you get when trying to encourage domestic investment.
However, now in my 40s and with little aptitude or appetite for moving into very senior management, I’m starting to realise that I’m probably not far off my wage ‘ceiling’ based on my ability and experience. So suddenly stuff like inflation vs wage growth is much more significant in my life.
There is tax burden too but to be honest I don’t feel like I’m taxed unfairly at all and in fact would be happy to lose another 5% to have a functioning country with trains, courts, schools and other such luxuries which the Big Society has somehow failed to provide for free
But presumably HMRC then is not one of the public services you would wish to cut further?
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/manufacturing/who-killed-british-manufacturing/?cf-view
Just this week Tata are closing the coke ovens at Port Talbot.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/18/tata-steel-to-shut-down-port-talbot-coke-ovens-earlier-than-expected
The LibDems got 15,000 votes in 2019. So on that basis, only 1:15 previous LibDems expressed any interest. And zero Tories, Labour, Green, Reform... (known Tories were escorted from the meetings). This was all about the LibDems trying to gain poll position as challenger to the excellent sitting Tory MP, Anthony Mangnall. It is complicated because in 2017, the challenger was Labour. In 2019, the LibDems put in a shitload of money to try to get the previous Conservative MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston, returned as a LibDem. Dr Sarah had a circuitous route to being a LibDem, having been selected as a Conservative candidate in a constituency-wide open primary (in which over 15,000 participated). She had quite a significant personal vote - a vote that will melt away at this upcoming election, meaning the LibDems starting point is significantly overstated.
On current national polling, Labour is again the main challenger in South Devon. Local LibDems should urge a vote for Labour if they really want to boot out a Tory. That they haven't tells you all you need to know. Meanwhile, Anthony Mangnall spends a lot of time getting to all the nooks and crannies of his extensive constituency. He also recently secured £25m to upgrade the harbour at Brixham - which has been very well received.
Sunak could have three things going in his favour:
- Inflation (temporarily) hitting target.
- A first flight to Rwanda, maybe?
- Less than catastrophic local election results (net of expectation management).
Government spending on "the green crap" is not a bad idea to move the dial a bit. Renewables are cheap energy - and would substitute energy imports.
Renewable assets need to be UK owned to make much of a difference, though.
Going round some of the old industrial sites - they had machinery from before WWII. In places that closed in the 70s and 80s.
The voters for each party will cooperate or not with very little impact from how they might be advised or instructed to do.
Plus, anyone who's counted at a supplementary vote election or similar can tell you surprising numbers put their preference as Tory 1 Labour 2 or vice versa, even if it makes little sense to do so.
So I receive a shouty letter. Self Assessment Statement. Money owed. Pay now or else. Ancient giro form thing on the bottom. So I call them. Navigating my way past the AI door guard I join a 75 minute hold queue. Person answers who clearly hates her job. She has a look, and says "we're sending you statements because you owe us money". Yes. I know. Payment plan. "That is the debt management department, we're self assessment"
"OK, so I can ignore the shouty letter?" "No, you need to pay the money owed." "I am, the payment plan." "Transpires that HMRC will continue to send demands for payment every month. As they take the payments as agreed. Because the "Debt Management" part and the "Self Assessment" part do not speak to each other. £ spent on pointless admin.
Turnout at 6 GEs this century: 59.4%-68.8%
Turnout at last GE: 67.3%
Turnout change at between 1992-97: -6.4% substantially down to Con don't knows not turning out.
57.5+ and 60+ ranges looks most attractive here. Assuming a liquid enough market, 57.5-62.5 could be backed for a combined 2.45, 57.5-65 could be backed for a combined 1.36.
I'm not jumping in on this tbh, but possibly a smidge of value in the 57.5-62.5 range?
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
Oh yes, and there is one month between the reopening of the phones and the absolute deadline fdor paper returns.
Genius.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
Nothing any politician can say or do in the next few months, is going to make a blind bit of difference if a few million people’s mortgages just went up by hundreds or even thousands per month.
Apart from Bidenomics of massive borrowing to pump the economy, which only the US can really get away with doing, the only thing that might possibly make a positive difference before the autumn is a crash in the oil price.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
British Leyland, Volkswagen and Renault were in trouble. Volkswagen were baled out by the West German Government and a growth plan was set in place including modernising model lines and manufacturing techniques. Renault was nationalised and did likewise. What remains of British Leyland is owned by the Germans, the Indians and the Chinese.
He not only failed to address major issues, he positively contributed to them. For example, stuffing the NHS full of highly paid managers. A friend of mine landed a six figure executive role having never worked in the NHS nor having any real management experience. There was a considerable amount of cronyism. So whilst we may criticise the current levels of corruption, I saw it all going on in Tony Blair’s Government (less so Brown).
Likewise, the Metropolitan elitist casual disregard about immigration fuelled what happened to the Labour ‘red wall’ vote over Brexit.
Blair was vacuous.
Much of our Blairite economic boom relied on the Thatcher-Major legacy, North Sea oil, and the European Union.
I am of the opinion that Keir Starmer’s Government will prove, in the long term, far better on almost every single metric.
He’s also not stupid or arrogant enough to take us into an illegal and ill-advised overseas war.
A different take on the housing crisis:
"Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).