Tag Archives: cheadle

A straight choice? Does this squeeze message hold water?

By Iain Roberts | Published 4th April 2010 - 6:09 pm

Under our First Past the Post voting system, the squeeze message is a legitimate one, used by all parties when it’s to their benefit.

Voting for the third (or lower) placed party in the seat is, they all argue, a wasted vote. Those lower placed parties will say otherwise, but it’s a fair tactic. Lib Dems would say that under a better voting system, tactical voting wouldn’t be needed.

But in this election we’re seeing a new twist on the theme from the Labservatives, and it’s a bit of a stretch to see how it could be honest or …

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

What the pollsters think will happen at the general election

By Stephen Tall | Published 24th January 2010 - 9:45 am

Forget data sets, interquartile ranges and margin of error. The Guardian recently reported the collective wisdom of the wet-fingers-in-the-air of the UK’s pollsters, who met this past week “to refine their methods ahead of the election, and ended with off-the-cuff predictions for the final result.”

And here’s what they came up with:

Statisticians from most of Britain’s main polling companies attended the session, organised jointly by the British Polling Council and the National Centre for Research Methods.

Four of them were brave enough to come up with predicted vote shares for the main parties. Put together they average a shade under 40%

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Posted in General Election, Polls | Also tagged | 8 Comments

Times: Tories “give up” on Cheadle with Lib Dems digging in for victory

By Stephen Tall | Published 7th December 2009 - 10:15 am

Mark Hunter, Lib Dem MP for the  Cheshire seat of Cheadle since 2005, could be forgiven for smiling like his county’s proverbial cat this morning.

Today’s Times reports that the Tories are scaling back their expectations of election victory in the light of a slew of polls showing the party’s support dipping:

The Conservatives are digging in for a six-week election campaign and are quietly withdrawing resources from some “landslide” seats to maximise David Cameron’s chances of winning a workable majority.

The well-sourced article highlights just one example of a constituency where the Tories are giving up the fight:

Cheadle, currently held by

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Posted in General Election, News, Opposition watch | Also tagged , , | 9 Comments

Cheadle by-election architect appointed Lib Dem campaigns director

By the founding editor | Published 15th December 2006 - 8:39 am

Via Duncan Borrowman comes the welcome news that Hilary Stephenson, one of the party’s most experienced campaigners, has been appointed to succeed Paul Rainger as Director of Campaigns.

Among the many campaigns she has run was the (relatively) recent Cheadle by-election to defend the seat following the death of Patsy Calton MP, which saw local man Mark Hunter successfully sent to Westminster.

We wish her well!

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , | 6 Comments