All 3 entries tagged Elections

European Election Predictions

Polling in the UK is far less reliable than the US, and for that matter national support for Labour, the Lib Dems and UKIP is incredibly erratic at the moment, but here goes. Percentages are for national voting average, and won’t directly correlate to number of MEPs.

1. Conservatives – 29%
2. UKIP – 18%
3. Labour – 17%
4. Lib Dems – 16%
5. Greens – 10%
6. BNP – 7%

You can’t criticize me for not being bold! UKIP are in second place on the back of their strong polling over the weekend, and Labour’s troubles this week. Lets hope Brown’s reshuffle works out for him, so the next election is in some way competitive. He was actually quite good in Prime Minister’s Question Time .

I find it rather saddening that european elections are always an implicit referendum on British involvement in Europe, and political parties current national status, rather than being related to the issues involved in Europe. Oh and …

DONT FORGET TO VOTE!

: 04 Jun 2009 00:45 |  Tags: Elections News |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Michigan

Follow-up to New Hampshire from True Contradictions

There is a democratic Michigan primary but it doesn't count for any "delegates":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_primaries_2008#The_Michigan_primary

Republicans

I have to say that michigan is the closest race of the primary season so far.  Its also the hardest to predict - McCain is polling between 34% and 22%, Romney between 30% and 21%, Ron Paul's polling varies by a factor of 3.

On one hand we have McCain, fresh from his NH victory and riding the crest of the wave, on the other hand we have Mitt Romney, finishing a strong second in both Iowa and NH on the back of substantial ad spending.  Why is Mitt Romney now competitive when, despite spending millions, he failed in Iowa and NH? 

The key issue in Michigan is the economy, whose unemployment rates are double the American average and has been hit by the credit crisis harder than elsewhere.  As a businessman Romney is perceived as being stronger on the economy than McCain, whose strengths are generally perceived as being immigration and anti-terrorism.  Additionally Romney was born here in Michigan, in short if Romney can't win in Michigan, he is unlikely to win anywhere.

Mike Huckabee is also campaigning strongly here hoping to get a'better than expected' result in order to boost himself going into the critical south carolina primary.  He will be expected to gain strong support amongst evangelicals and people liking his 'down to earth' style.  It is worth bearing in mind that he is in a distant 3rd, and anything higher will be considered a major result for him.

Another aspect of this poll is that since the democrats have basically nuked their own primary in the state a lot of democrats and republicans will be voting in the republican one.  It is generally expected that this will help the more centrist John McCain. 

I doubt I will be able to post predictions for Nevada and SC - due to my situation this week, but at this moment in time I'd guess Obama over Clinton in Nevada though I wouldn't be too surprised to see Edwards grab another 2nd place here, since last polls I checked had all 3 of them within statiscal error margin of each other.

Its also worth noting that there are few polls going on in Nevada, since few candidates are campaigning there and pollsters don't want another embarrassment after NH.

As to republicans in Nevada I'm currently thinking about McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Huckabee, Thompson and finally Paul.  I don't state this predication with any expectations of accuracy for the same reasons I outlined for the democrats.

: 15 Jan 2008 01:22 |  Tags: Elections News Politics Reflections Us |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Local Council Elections

On the 3rd May the local council elections are a gogo, people on campus will have been registered to vote within the ward of Wainbody. Here’s some useful election information:

The incumbent councillor who is up for the vote in your ward is Conservative Cllr Tim Sawdon

You can find out how to write to him here

The local party website for the main parties are at:

Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrats

This is the result of the last election for cov council.

Observations:

1. The Tory and Libdem websites seem very content filled. The lib dems spending a lot of time saying how Tory and Labour rule has made cov worse off. The Labour Parties’ website seems very lacking in information, for example this is what they to say about my ward.

2. Its incredibly easy to find out superficial information about local politics. Praise here should go to google and all three parties for having websites up and running. Thankfully they seem to appreciate that its 2006 and people are busy.

3. The electorial commission point to the BBC website for information on the results of elections.

4. The last time, before 2006, that the Tories controlled cov was 1978.

5. You don’t have to be British to vote, if you a member of the commonwealth of EU and live in Britain then you can be registered to vote. I wonder if the university auto-registers these people like it does for people holding a UK passport?

: 15 Apr 2007 11:32 |  Tags: Council Coventry Elections Local News Politics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem