politicalbetting.com

Big boost for Blair north of border

Huge changes in public opinion in Scotland in just 17 days are recorded in a Scottish Opinion Poll in today’s Daily Record. The figures are with changes on the last SOP reported here just over two weeks ago are:- LAB 52 (+14): CON 16 (+1): LD 12 (-11): SNP 17 (+1).

In that last poll in mid-March SOP had the Lib Dems up a massive 12% and Labour down 10% so today’s figures are a bit of a reversal.

These new figures have Labour at 9% higher than the party achieved north of the border in 2001 and would indicate even more gains for Tony Blair’s party on May 5th.

We are a little sceptical of polls showing such massive swings in opinion.

LATEST BETTING
IG Index - have reduced the Tory spread by one to 198-203 seats.

Mike Smithson

Earlier this morning a former colleague of Lynton Crosby in Australia, Simon Bush, posted a comment on an article about the Tory campaign chief that we had published two months ago. This referred to a complaint he had made to the Times. Because it was posted on such an old file we thought it a good idea to give the comment greater prominence here.

I have read with interest your piece on Crosby and his legal notice to the Times and the subsequent comments. I worked with Lynton on campaigns in Oz and he often (I mean weekly) fired off complaints during the campaign to the ABC on biased coverage and to the Broadcasting Commission on Labour advertising etc. These are not new tactics in this country, perhaps such tactics are new in the more gentrified world of UK politics? In politics you play to win and thats Lynton’s motto and who can fault him for that? Not I. Also, putting resources in the marginal seats is politics 101 surely (why do I see this being discussed at length like its controversial). It pisses off sitting members and candidates from other seats who think they are deserving of support and funds but so what……

I have written to Simon asking if he could tell us more about working for Crosby and perhaps give us some insight into what else we can expect in the coming campaign.

HAS ANYBODY SEEN THIS POLL? According to the Sun this morning that Michael Howard’s leadership rating has gone up by 3% since the Howard Flight affair. Does anybody know what poll Trevor Kavanagh is referring to?

LATEST BETTING
IG Index - LAB 351-356: CON 199-204: LD 66-69 - no change.

Spreadfair - LAB 350.2 -354.5: CON 198-202: LD 66 -68 - a slight softening of the Tory and Lib Dem prices.

Round-up of prices from conventional bookmakers.

Mike Smithson

Does “Tax and Spend” have public support?

The economy and taxation are set to take centre stage in the election campaign with three national papers leading this morning that for the first time in more than a decade average household incomes are on the decline - the direct result of tax increases.

This will bring to a head the central philosophical difference between the two main parties which was the main reason behind the Howard Flight sacking.

The Telegraph, Times and the Mail splash the reports that average incomes fell last year for the first time in more than a decade as a result of tax rises imposed by Gordon Brown after the 2001 election, according to a study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

The IFS said Mr Brown’s big tax-raising 2002 Budget - the first after the 2001 election - which put up national insurance and froze personal allowances saw average take-home incomes fall in real terms in 2003-04, the first annual drop since the recession of the early 1990s. These tax increases were brought in with the specific intention of providing extra money for the NHS.

In another study the Telegraph reports that private pensions have dropped by upto three-quarters as a result of the tax changes brought in by Gordon Brown in 1997 and declining investment returns.

All this will bring to centre stage the question of whether we are prepared to pay higher taxes for better public services.

Last September ICM asked: Thinking about the present levels of tax on the one hand and the state of the public services (like health or education) on the other, do you think the party you support should pledge to increase taxes, hold taxes at their present level or to reduce taxes?. A total of 18% said raise taxes to 36% who said they should be cut.

YouGov last week reported a 44% to 12% split in favour of tax cuts to the question“Should whichever party wins the general election pledge to increase OR reduce taxes and spending, or are the present levels about right?

There is little doubt that tax increases are more acceptable when real income are rising because they are not noticed as much. With incomes falling - if only by a touch - the debate could change.

Mike Smithson

Should Politcalbetting be part of this voting farce?

For five days now we’ve been discouraging individual Politicalbetting supporters from multi-voting in the Guardian Political Blog of the Year contest because we thought that this was wrong and that the paper would take action to stop it.

Since then short-listed sites with a fraction of the user base of Politicalbetting and which attract maybe 1% of the comments that come here have seen dramatic increases in their votes and our relative position has gone down and down from first to fourth place.

Last night the Guardian’s “Backbencher” email bulletin urged readers in a headline to “vote early and vote often” - which suggests that as far as the paper is concerned that multi-voting is acceptable.

The question is do we join this or not?

For to cast as many votes as you want is very simple. All you do is disable cookies on your browser and you can vote to your heart’s content. With the Mozilla Firefox browser you can disable cookies just for voting by going into “tools”, then “options” then “privacy” and click on the “exception” tab.

With Internet Explorer you go into “tools then “options” then “privacy” and finally “advanced” to get to the cookie setting.

But should we go down this road? What do you think?

Be thankful that the Guardian is not running the General Election!

Mike Smithson