Is he in danger of losing losing the E-petition war?

Back in the summer Guido launched a campaign to get capital punishment restored for certain cases of serious murder and he set up a petition on the Number 10 e-petitions site.

The aim was to reach the threshold of 100,000 within six months so it would become eligible to be debated in the commons.

His move received a fair bit of attention in the media and also prompted a rival petition from those wanting the current ban on capital punishment to be retained.

Alas time is running out. The total has to reach 100,000 by the weekend for then it becomes time expired and there’s still some way to go.

As can seen from the chart the total of 26,283 is somewhat under the required number. Guido has made up some ground on the “retain the ban” initiative but the big number looks set to defeat both.

The lesson from this is that it’s mighty difficult using the e-petition scheme to get on the parliamentary agenda. If an issue such as capital punishment promoted by a popular blog and parts of the national media cannot do it then very little can.

Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH

Should the franchise be extended?

With suggestions from the SNP that the franchise should be extended to 16 year olds in the referendum there was a good article over the weekend by Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University.

He sifts through what polling there is and concludes “…we cannot presume that the opinions of younger people on independence are in fact particularly distinctive at all.”

Curtice goes on:“…But whatever their views, 16 and 17-year-olds can only possibly make a difference if they actually cast a vote in the referendum. In practice, most would not do so.

Many young people lack the motivation to vote. The SNP gave the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds in two recent health board elections. Even amongst all voters, the turnout in those elections was abysmal – 23 per cent in Dumfries & Galloway and just 14 per cent in Fife. But amongst those aged 16 and 17 who managed to get their names on the register, the turnout was even worse – just 13 per cent and 7 per cent respectively..”

Those figures themselves could over-state the level of involvement because many 16/17 year olds did not get themselves registered.

The experience of the 2010 general election was that the further you went down the age groups the lower the turnout rate. Young women were markedly less likely to turn out than young men. This was produced by Ipsos-MORI shortly after the election.

Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH

Some ugly polls for Gingrich this morning. Our forecast has Romney +13 in Florida, 95% chance of winning. nyti.ms/ywKYEp

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) January 29, 2012

Last Sunday he was 8% ahead

With Florida going into its final day of campaigning tomorrow it looks pretty certain that Mitt Romney will chalk up his second victory which should, surely, provide him with a solid platform to go forward.

Nate Silver has produced his latest forecast – 95% chance of a Romney victory. A week ago Nate’s prediction was that it was 75% chance for Newt.

That’s how the betting markets see it. He’s 1/25 to win on Tuesday and about 1/7 to win the nomination.

Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH

And Miliband moves up from last week’s record low

This week’s leader ratings from YouGov are just out and all three main party leaders see improvements on a week ago.

Camerons “Well/Badly” figures are 46/47 making a net minus 1. Last week it was minus 3. Ed Miliband is on 20/68 which is a net minus 48 compared to 53 last weekend. The improvement is still not enough to be scoring better than Nick Clegg who has had the best week of all following his speech on tax. He has gone from 21/71 last week to 26/64 today. So a net change of plus 12.

Clegg’s tax speech, which was widely covered and pretty well received, raised questions of whether he was pre-empting Osborne’s budget.

Quite what went on within the coalition we don’t know but it’s clear that we are seeing a specific effort on policy differentiation from the yellow team.

The last time that Clegg had better YouGov ratings than today’s was last March just after his party’s Spring Conference when the planned NHS changes were centre stage.

Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH