politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It could be that the days of saturation general election po
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It could be that the days of saturation general election polling ended at 10pm on May 7th
The chart says it all. There have been just 6 general election polls published in the UK since May 7th – a sharp contrast with the numbers we saw even by this stage five years ago.
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Reading the comments section of this article shows that Osborne has got it right on BTL. If even Telegraph readers are in favour of the removal of tax relief then it is a winner.
Unsurprisingly most also hold the same views as I do, BTL landlords are parasites that drain capital out of the real economy and prevent first time buyers from getting on the ladder. The sooner we do away with them the better off we will be. Young people should not have to double pay the pensions of baby boomers through tax and via their rent.
Hear hear, and I say that as a 53 year old.
Who's going to let houses to young people when the BTL "parasites" vanish?
Are the young people all going to buy the large properties in central London in which they currently tend to live?
That said, the trend in the final fortnight was towards the Tories and ukip and away from labour, which proved correct, so I don't buy that the polls were completely useless as an indicator. I think they got it right
People need to start putting their money elsewhere and not into existing housing stock, it prices people out of the market. This is the one policy that stands out for me as actually solving a major problem for the future.
It was all there if you were not taking the polls as gospel. That said I think Salmond saying he was already writing the Labour budget helped the Conservatives enormously.
Having said that, the first big event of the new Parliament was yesterday, so expect a couple of polls in the next week or two as the media try to understand the reaction to the Budget.
But I think it is a piss-poor waste of tax money for investors to be helped to buy their second, third....or forty sixth.
*innocent face*
Try and put away the partisan fury when it comes to betting analysis, you just look an uninformed wally
Ed Miliband @Ed_Miliband
"The challenge for the Chancellor is that he claimed the mantle of One Nation. But @TheIFS figures suggest a profoundly regressive Budget."
You talk drivel about BTL landlords.
As such it could readily be argued that Salmond single-handedly enabled the Tories to win with an overall working majority.
Was he unable to see that this was likely to be the result, or did he perhaps see a Tory Government as being the preferable outcome for his party?
This feedback loop is a problem in itself, but is doubly a problem when the polls are incorrect and the feedback is bogus.
https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/news_features/Right-to-buy-turns-into-buy-to-let-goldmine
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/great-council-house-selloff-scandal-righttobuy-council-houses-leave-nowhere-for-poor-to-live-9832339.html
All of them piss poor policies.
The typical BTL property is not going to be easily converted into an affordable, one-family house like a small terrace. The median case is probably two young people, sharing a kitchen, in a flat that is part of a big house, in one of the Inner London boroughs. It neither suits these people to buy today, nor does it really make more housing available to the others if one of them does buy.
Restricting the availability of the tax shield on interest is a good idea.
Andy Burnham has just gone odds on for the Labour leadership (Betfair)
Fair drift on Corbyn out to 15/18.
Budget reaction from IPSE:
The Chancellor has greatly disappointed us by listening to the army of faceless wonders in HMRC and threatening contractors throughout the UK.
If you work through your own limited company things are going to get tougher, much tougher.
HMRC dealt not one, not two, but three blows to the UK's smallest businesses yesterday. In all cases we believe the blows are below the belt!
First, arcane rules known as IR35 are ominously to be made 'more effective'. These rules try and almost always fail to separate disguised employees from genuine businesses.
Second, new restrictions on travel and subsistence expenses are to be imposed on one-person limited companies.
Third, there is a significant tax hike on dividends - a change that will affect all company directors, not just independent professionals.
If it's really an issue then I'd look at doing what Osborne did with the Living Wage and cut corporation tax to offset the loss of the tax shield
Amazing the amount of resistance I had yesterday before the budget when I said it would be a good idea and yet I think this is one move that has very wide support among the public. If DM and DT readers support it then surely the rest of the country does as well. All except the private landlord parasites who stand to lose out.
It's really quite boring now. The endless shrieking about 'scumbag' landlords does you no favours, and turns away those who might otherwise be sympathetic to your cause.
He is the favourite but odds-on sounds a little tight, I might lay him as a trading bet.
Sounds like a little value in Corbyn for those who missed the silly odds a month ago. 365 have him at 10s
That is to say, yes there were overreactions, but even if at the same time as a particular poll, that is not to say the overreaction was always solely about that single poll but a reaction to be considered in context, rightly or wrongly, which is not quite the same thing as an overreaction to a 'mere' poll.
At best, they might buy a house most of the way to Luton. Try drinking your craft beers there.
I'm guessing a lot of your senior colleagues at Spiv&WadBank are big players in BTL - how do your views go down there?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/33369443
I think these rule changes are going to end up hurting a lot of small businesses.
They seem to want to target one-person service companies as they think they are skipping paying some tax. But they don't seem to understand two important points:-
1. The changes affect many other "normal" start-ups.
2. If someone starts as a one-person service they might end up employing others - but not if you punish them right at the start.
Should be some good tennis, tomorrow.
I am retired and this provides me with some income.
I don't think I understand the electorate enough to know which groups will turn out, it seems much more likely to be the full members voting this time rather than the old affiliates, and last time that group voted for the candidate nearest the centre in DavidM. On topic we desperately need some good polling of the membership but I fear it won't be forthcoming.
My heart also thinks Liz is someone I could vote for, but she doesn't seem to have set the campaign on fire as did Cameron or Blair previously.
London is overwhelmingly where the jobs are. There isn't much of an alternative. Plus commuting is deeply uncool for twenty somethings.
As you say, finding a good tenant is the key. I also use an agent for the convenience of myself and the tenant. It provides enough income to pay the mortgage (and the rainy-day fund while interest rates are low).
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/the-dirty-little-secrets-about-2016-predictions-119860.html
And, on a different tack, here's a pix I'd entitle something like "alive!!"
http://tinyurl.com/ojngt3f
Other factors - relentlessly polling the same bunch of people (you know who you are, yougov) who may not have been entirely disinterested in their answers; inability to tell outliers from new trends; becoming part of the story instead of shedding light on it (e.g. so many polls showing one thing motivates the other side to come out to vote, e.g. having an impact on election tactics and strategy which changes the result); and quite possibly, asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions in the first place.
Can't help wondering whether both the inaccuracy problem and the fawning acceptance by press and pundits would have been solved if they had said the MOE was 10% either way. In other words, not much better than an educated guess.
Never mind, John Curtice will sort them out. At least they are all in it together!
The result of the Lib Dem leadership election is going to be announced via twitter
http://bit.ly/1CrDdnx
Farron is crystal clear and in full campaign mode.
http://tinyurl.com/pqdh2lp
Clever way to get extra followers.
Tory lead of 6% with the Ashcroft phone poll (fieldwork ending 26th of April)
Tory lead of 3% with the ICM/Guardian phone poll (fieldwork ending 26th of April)
Tory lead of 5% with Ipsos Mori phone poll (field work ending 28th of April)
Coupled with the Tory leads on the economy/leader ratings, then actual result wouldn't have been a surprise.
Something went wrong in the last week or so with most of the polls showing a swing to Labour.
Cameron child tax credit changes
Did he rule them out before the election?
Ed Brown
Newsnight producer
Posted at 12:32
On 31 March 2015, David Cameron appeared on the Question Time Election Leaders Special. The very first exchange was as follows:
Questioner: "Will you put to bed rumours that you plan to cut child tax credit and restrict child benefit to two children?"
David Cameron: "Well thank you Jenny for that question. No, I don't want to do that, this report that was out today was something that I rejected at the time as prime minister and I reject it again today".
He finishes his answer by pivoting to the successes of his benefits cap.
But Dimbleby clarifies with the Prime Minister: "Sorry – you said you didn’t want to put to bed the rumours that you were going to cut Child Tax Credits, you meant you did want to put to bed the rumour?"
Cameron: "Ah, yes. We increased child tax credits actually, we increased them by £452 under this government because I was determined that while we had to take difficult decisions, and we have, we were left an absolute nightmare to clear up, I wanted to make sure that child poverty continued to fall and it has fallen because of what we did on child tax credits."
Dimbleby: "And so that’s a guarantee that you won’t" (moves on to audience member who asks about benefit cap)
In the run up to the Budget, my colleague Allegra Stratton reported that the Government was looking at options on how to make changes to child tax credits.
Sure enough, George Osborne, presumably with David Cameron's blessing, announced that the Government was going to limit child tax credit for people with more than two children.
He also made other changes, including increasing the rate at which it was withdrawn from people as they got more work (the "taper rate") from 41% to 48%, and reducing the level of income at which it would be withdrawn. They also froze the level of tax credits.
The effect of all of these measures is that the Government will be spending less on tax credits than it would have been if it hadn't done them - to the tune of billions. We know this because the budget book tells us so.
I leave it to you as to whether what George Osborne announced yesterday on tax credits was consistent with what David Cameron told the Question time audience before the election.
This has to be the low point for the dems. I think Osborne's plans might leave plenty of people behind.
https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/618883165675859969
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/which-clps-are-nominating-who-labour-leadership-contest
Andy 27
Jeremy 19
Yvette 18
Liz 4
How does the current polling situation compare to say the week's after 1992? Or 2001?
If the conclusion you draw is that 'the polls were wrong', or that 'the betting was a better guide than the polls', you are ignoring a huge chunk of the data. Because the fact is that the polling was dead right, whereas many punters, and especially the pundits, were wrong not to believe it. I'm referring of course to Scotland, which was where the easiest money was to be made in GE 2015.
The correct conclusion to draw, IMO, is not that we should ignore the polling, or assume it is wrong as such, but that we should interpret it intelligently, and especially (as I said repeatedly before the election) that we should not under-estimate the uncertainty in any election forecasts. Polling is a guide, it doesn't tell you the answer.
I'm not even convinced that the polling was wrong. Rather as with the old adage that the definition of IQ is 'that which is measured by intelligence tests', an opinion poll vote share figure is 'that which is measured by opinion polls'. It is an important figure, but it is an input to the view one should take as to what the final result may be, it is not a substitute for that view.
I always believed (and I posted here) that the Conservative lead would be higher than the opinion polls suggested, because of differential enthusiasm and differential swingback from UKIP. However, I underestimated how much higher - I was expecting the final Tory vote to be about 4% higher than Labour's, rather than the 6% actually achieved. That's the kind of error which we should not be at all suprised by. Plan your betting positions accordingly.
So GO is increasing supply - of houses for people who want to live in them.