In one or two posts this week I have been critical of Tory MPs for, in the main, not wearing masks in the chamber. Well things seem to be moving particularly amongst women MPs but why has it taken so long? Let us hope that in the meantime none of the earlier maskless Tories has caught COVID. Mike Smithson
I was part of the YouGov sample for this polling question and when it was up on the screen I found myself taking several minutes rather than the usual few seconds to answer it. The first process in my thinking was who I should exclude and I concluded that all the men would have been too conscious of short-term political considerations to have acted in a proper and timely manner when in February and March last year COVID was upon…
There will come a time, I am sure, when the fight against COVID doesn’t dominate the news but we are a long way off that. The sheer scale of the latest numbers is a sharp reminder that now is not the time to relax as appeared to be happening. Ministers seem to be trying to ensure that we continue to take a lot of precautions so that “normal”, whatever that means, life can continue. Maybe we’ll never fully get on…
Ex-PBer and now Ipsos-MORI polling director, Keiran Pedley, made this comment: Looking at the trend, the net score of -25 is not as bad as the -35 this time last year. But the direction of travel is negative – question is what happens from here…things recovered slightly in Nov last year & then more as vaccine rollout landed in 2021. Last year this tracker predicated several LAB leads in VI polling. Could we be about to see the same happen…
This is in spite of what ministers are saying
Several of the papers this morning are making the roll out of the booster jab their main story following suggestions that this is not going quite as well as the initial vaccine programme at the start of the year. Quite why this is it hard to say but there’s little doubt from my own observations and the newspaper reports that it is increasingly becoming a matter of concern. I’m 75 with a difficult medical history and get told that I…
This makes LAB’s chances look even more remote Above is the main analysis from Electoral Calculus on the impact of the new boundaries. The table seeks to show what would have happened at GE2019 if these boundaries were in place. As can be seen this is good news for the Tories and bad news for LAB, the LDs and PC. This also reinforces the point I repeatedly make that the 15% chance that the betting exchanges currently rate a LAB…
One of the reasons I love Opinium polls more than others is the way the firm presents its data. There are far far more cross-heads than with any other firm and poll watchers can spend hours just going through it. In its latest poll the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, was included in its regular approval ratings and as will not come as a surprise she has a net minus 55% with those who voted Remain in the referendum. Quite surprisingly,…