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Month: October 2009

Who’ll get blamed for this lunacy?

Who’ll get blamed for this lunacy?

Metro Could it affect the outcome in the top betting constituency? The one thing that makes me more furious than anything at the moment is the crazy new law that’s going to impose a hideous regime that will keep adults and children apart. In the name of trying to control paedophiles our stupid MPs have allowed this over-the-top ill-thought out piece of legislation to be passed and now local councils, like Watford, are making their own preparations. Some of my…

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Will MORI help us to map a possible Tory victory better?

Will MORI help us to map a possible Tory victory better?

1979 polling data is being made available online Part of my standard patter whenever I give talks about the coming election is that we are moving into what is almost uncharted territory. Changes of opinion on the scale that the polls are currently showing happen very rarely and, of course, there has been only one change of government in the past thirty years. One of the challenges for those who like betting on and predicting elections is that the only…

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Does this mean pay-day for the McNulty backers?

Does this mean pay-day for the McNulty backers?

BBC News Making money on McNulty’s money-making It’s been an up and down eight months for the McNulty troughing backers – those of us who piled into the William Hill market at the end of March taking as much as we could of the 5/1 bet that the former minister would have to pay back some of his housing claims for the mortgage on a house he owns in his Harrow constituency where his parent live. At the end of…

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Will Dave pass the November 11 plus test?

Will Dave pass the November 11 plus test?

PaddyPower Can he keep the Tory lead to a minimum of 11%? We are nearly at the end of October and time to consider the PaddyPower market on what’s going to happen to the polls next month. Can the Tories sustain a lead of a minimum of 11 points in all the published polls from Populus, YouGov, ComRes, Ipsos-Mori and ICM in November? If you think they can then there’s a not unattractive evens bet available. When it first came…

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Is Dave out of synch with his party on climate change?

Is Dave out of synch with his party on climate change?

Could he be storing up trouble for the future? The 2006 picture of David Cameron with the huskies in the Arctic became one of the defining images of the first few months of his leadership as he sought to create a new narrative for the party. Here was a Conservative leader embracing one of the key issues of the day and what better way of making this into a news story than the trip to Norway. But is his view…

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Do women candidates fare better than men?

Do women candidates fare better than men?

Angus Reid Strategies Does Cameron’s plan make electoral sense? It’s one of those bits of received wisdom you often hear from political campaigners – you get a small but noticeable boost if your candidate is a woman particularly if she is the only one on the ballot. Well as part of a poll in the wake of the Tory all-women short-list row Angus Reid Strategies, who do PB’s monthly voting intention survey, have come up with a number of findings…

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How big an issue is immigration/race relations?

How big an issue is immigration/race relations?

Ipsos-MORI The changing perceptions since Labour came to power The Ipsos-MORI issues index for October is just out and features, as it has done every month for more than a quarter of a century, the unprompted responses of interviewees when they are asked to list what they see as “the most important issues facing Britain today?” The chart I’ve singled out is, given the BNP and the associated publicity, is on immigration and race relations and shows how views have…

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Will the BNP succeed in infiltrating YouGov?

Will the BNP succeed in infiltrating YouGov?

BNP Should we be worried about the polling scam?? Reproduced above is part of a page from the BNP website and sets out a scam aimed at both raising the party’s polling numbers and making money at the same time. The site spells it out: “..Despite recently getting two MEPs elected our support in Yougov polls has recently dropped to 3%. One of the main reasons people don’t vote for us is because they believe we are a wasted vote,…

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