politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » ICM marginals poll finds the Tories losing their majority
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » ICM marginals poll finds the Tories losing their majority
ICM phone polled in the 20 most marginal Labour target seats (19 Tory and 1 Lib Dem) on behalf of The Sun on Sunday. This found Labour up 4% since May to 42% and the Tories unchanged on 39%. This represents a Con to Lab swing of 2.1%.
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Edit: and, surprisingly, first.
And more: we also have to factor in any notional Lib Dem recovery. Just a gain of a handful might make a big difference to the mathematics.
Marginals poll? Seems familiar. We had rather a lot of those before May didn't we?
What were the results again?
Given the bizarre events of this year, I wouldn't be surprised if we've been conquered by Martians before then.
Foretold an absolute shellacking for the Lib Dems.
Funny things about that poll Andrew Hawkins had doubts about that poll.
After all, in 2015, the Tories lost something like 11 marginals to Labour. But gained something like 10.
It was 10 Lab gains from the Tories in E&W and 8 Lab losses to the Tories in E&W
They've got him on the run and doing whatever they can to make life as difficult/stressful as possible.
He never had the dressing room - but now they're not even trying to hide their lack of respect.
How do you know which is the most accurate poll before the event though?
Or indeed accurate at all?
(Shuts up and relurks)
I'm demob happy. One more thread to go and I hand back the keys to Mike.
My guess that he will be forced to use the whip sooner than he would like. A "Night of the Long Knives" approaches. Hopefully with no actual bodies, but you never know.................
Labour -31
Conservative -4
Other (including SNP ,LD and NI parties) -15
We don't know if this is going to be accurate, but if it is close then the loss of 17 seats as this suggests, then the Conservatives Majority will not be lost!
Still, it is a bit early to be seat counting.
Of course what remains of SLab is the Unionist rump, but still.
My £3 has served its purpose and I've moved on.
It will be mighty interesting to see, for us on the right of the political spectrum.
Will be published eventually.
Or like the monster under the bed, was it invented to scare small PB children into behaving themselves?
That's been substantially been re-written.
I did do an AV thread a few months ago. AV might stop Andy Burnham from winning the Labour leadership.
"It’s not good enough – and could even be as good as it gets.”
Martin knows very well that the political cycle will see Labour increasing their vote shares between now and 2017, before swing back gradually occurs up to the general election.
He know this but can't say it because it basically makes his polls pointless and meaningless until about three weeks before the election (and if 2015 is anything to go by they will still be pointless and meaningless even then...)
Merhi to not be classified has been classed by Ladbrokes as lost, despite, er, Merhi not being classified.
I feel dirty for backing Corbyn's BFFs
Should really stick on Norwich beating Liverpool
Only got a little time so the post-race piece won't be up for a few hours, at least (I'll write a little of it soon). However, the bet I made on Merhi not to be classified was settled as lost with Ladbrokes. I've sent an e-mail querying this, given he was not classified. I hope it can be resolved promptly, especially as I put on a larger than usual stake, given the likelihood of it occurring.
In percentage terms....
Shows how much of an irrelevance they've become in this Parliament.
That might be my final thread
Presumably it's Ladbrokes' entry into exchange betting. But the odds are the same as Betfair (lower amounts)?
The next fix they do to correct the last cockup will induce some other error that will need fixing and so on and so forth.
All you need to know is JCICAWNBPM
EICIPM must have been one of pb's worst creations.
I think you mean EICAWNBPM.. a statement by Jack W methinks and very insightful it was too.
The idea, fine.
The acronym was bloody awful.
The one thing this poll almost certainly does do is put paid to any notions, however fanciful they were, of a snap election. If Corbyn is not evidently and unambiguously toxic enough to deliver a big majority to the government, then it won't be worth the enormous risk, not to say hassle, involved.
And as I alluded to earlier, polling of marginals on the existing boundaries is not worth a shiny shit.
https://twitter.com/victoriabeckham/status/645190436571770881
Still shouldn't grab her breasts though.
Meanwhile buried in the unweighted Yougov, we see Labour on an implied sub 30%, with a third of 2015 Labour voters saying they don't know if they will vote Labour or stating that they have already gone.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/conservative-targets/
Still no word back from Ladbrokes. I'll see a bit later today if there's an update. If possible, post-race piece (perhaps with that question still hanging) will be up this evening. May be up tomorrow.
One thing to keep an eye on - and one that could be potentially disastrous for the government - is education. Yes, we had the announcement this morning on free school meals, but there is a potentially far more serious problem brewing with exams.
To cut a long story short, because the old GCSE and A-level were all 'too easy', new exams are being phased in over the next three to four years. My subject (History) is in the forefront of these. And so far, the changes have been disastrous - badly thought through, and even more badly implemented.
First, the content. I'll stick to History and RE because those are the subjects I know best, but it could apply to several of them including science. Good point - in terms of what we do, the new History (and RE, to a lesser extent) course is about one million times better than the dreadful SHP and MWH syllabi it is replacing, which were basically tired Marxist cliché from the early 1970s (USSR good, USA and Catholic Church bad) wrapped up in pseudo-historical drivel. We now have to cover the medieval and early modern period, and the study of ancient buildings and archaeology. That's wonderful, and I am really pleased about it. BUT bad point - the amount of stuff we have to cover is increasing by roughly 50%. Guess how much extra time I'm getting to teach this. If anyone guessed zero, they guessed correctly. A-level is, if anything, rather worse in terms of heaviness of content, without the concomitant offer of a broader and more interesting range.
Second, the complexity. The new GCSE will essentially be a revival of the old O-level. The Maths paper, for example, now has two levels - foundation and higher. Foundation is essentially the old intermediate paper. In History, you will practically need a degree just to navigate the exam papers (because unfortunately, with so many topics to cover they are long and fiendishly complex). There will also be an increase in the raw number of exams, due to increased content.
(continued)
This, to my mind, leaves two problems. One, it will militate against children getting a pass grade (5-9 in new jargon, 5 being a C) in schools that are not always performing at very high levels. This will particularly impact on children from lower-income families who have much less choice over where they can go to school than their counterparts from families with middle-class parents who can afford houses near good schools even if they then have long commutes to work (or, in extremis, private education). I would not mind that if I was not also concerned that there has been no commitment to offering advanced vocational routes as well as an alternative to academic success and HE - or for that matter, a gentle acceptance that not every school, can deliver above-average teaching and not every student can achieve above-average grades (the DFE's civil servants would certainly fail maths)! But the fact is, at the moment anything below C (5) is regarded as a failure and these exams could potentially be too steep for some children and some schools to cope with. Second, the massive increase in exams strikes me as a very reckless gamble with the mental and physical health of the children. At the present time, around 20-25 exams appears to be the norm. Under the new dispensation, that could easily top 40, in under a month - that's two a day, or more (a month has c.20 teaching days). And the old solution in a clashing exam, of teachers having children to stay for the night so they can be held incommunicado, for obvious reasons is not really an option now.
Therefore, we will in 3 years or so have a lot of gloomy comment on poor exam results, declining social mobility and the difficulty young school leavers face in finding any sort of job. That will, or at least should, deal a hammer blow to the government's centrist credentials and potentially undermine George Osborne and Michael Gove as the ministers who will undoubtedly be held responsible.
So education ought to be an absolute gift to any competent opposition. It ought doubly to be a gift to Labour because we must be by far the most unionised of professions (I know of no teacher who is not in some union - certainly I am, although not a TUC affiliated one). Fertile ground. This brings me to the main point. I think Lucy Powell's appointment as Shadow Ed Sec could be Corbyn's worst mistake. She is rude, arrogant, not very intelligent and was clearly put in as a token Brownite woman. The person who gave us 'In the real world, OK, where I live, unlike where you live Andrew' and the Edstone is not the woman to either exploit this for political gain OR provide a measure of opposition to mitigate the looming disaster.
For myself, I'm just stressed and miserable at the chaos, which is my job to deal with as a Head of Department. And I'm not at all surprised that since I started teaching just three years ago the numbers quitting the profession within five years have risen from 40% to 50%.
Also, this is the first set of polls since Corbyn was elected, so they are not calibrated against anything meaningful.
Over time, we shall have more polls which will allow us to see if there is any trend. But I think whatever, the outlook is bleak for Corbyn. He has, as I see it, two scenarios:
1. maintain his original beliefs. This will lose him a good chunk of previous Labour voters and essentially preclude him from picking up votes in the centre. Labour will be reliant on gaining first time voters and stealing from the Greens. I can see no scenario where this leads to him beating Ed's performance at the next GE
2. compromise on his beliefs in the interests of leading his party. This will lose him most of those votes he stands to gain in scenario 1, and most of the enthusiasm behind his election to the post. It is unlikely to win back all, or even the majority, of those he will lose in scenario 1, as few will believe that his actual beliefs have changed, and so there must still be some lingering suspicion that, if voted into office, his natural political proclivities will reassert themselves. Again, I don't see how this results in him bettering Ed's showing at a GE.
CNN
Trump 24
Fiorina 15
Carson 15
Rubio 11
Bush 9
Cruz 6
Huckabee 6
Paul 4
Christie 3
Kasich 2
Santorum 1
Walker, others 0
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/20/politics/carly-fiorina-donald-trump-republican-2016-poll/index.html
NBC
Trump 29%
Carson 14%
Fiorina 11%
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/nbc-online-survey-fiorina-won-debate-trump-still-leads-n430316
Sounds like you think that's value
There are only two reasons driving the never-ending call for electoral "reform". Selfish self interest of those calling for it and (more importantly) to keep TSE in thread material.
Fill, your, boots!
This poll doesn't surprise me at all. The old order has the putrid smell of decay and that's not just the Tories. Corbyn's starting to look like a breath of fresh air.
I think there is a case to be made that you are either electable or not. These two are not. It's only when people are vaguely plausible as PMs that the relative question of more or less electable comes into play. Yvette Cooper might have been electable, although not as electable as Cameron. I still think though that she might have a chance against Osborne in the unlikely event he ever becomes Tory leader and she comes out of retirement.