politicalbetting.com

What can we expect from the Keystone State?

For Barack Obama the last fortnight, since his failure to decisively see-off Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Texas, has been particularly bruising. The incendiary comments of his pastor Jeremiah Wright and the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro have thrust the issue of race back to the fore of the presidential campaign. Addressing the issue with his trademark eloquence and candour on Wednesday it is still unclear what (if anything) the Illinois Senator has been able to do to redefine an increasinglyand acrimonious campaign.

On April 22nd the Democratic race, after a six week hiatus, will head to Pennsylvania and the state’s presidential primary, where over 150 delegates are at stake, the largest allocation of any state yet to vote.

Pennsylvania is a diverse state, once colourfully described by James Carville as “Pittsburgh on the West, Philadelphia on the East and Alabama down the middle” and there is some truth to this. The state is dominated by the two large urban centres of Philadelphia, dominating the Delaware valley the south east and in the south west Pittsburgh, the historic centre of the American steel industry, while in-between is a wide rural region centred around the Susquehanna valley and shaped like a ‘T’.

Reflecting Carville’s characterization of the state the two urban centres have provided the Democrats’ traditional base in the state while the rural ‘T’ has been reliably Republicans.

The Democratic primary on April 22nd will differ from many of those earlier in the cycle by being restricted to registered Democrats only. This represents a particular disadvantage for Senator Obama who has done well with independents and republicans but has typically lagged behind Senator Clinton amongst register Democrats. Hillary Clinton also enjoys further advantages in the state, older, blue collar democrats, who have typically backed the New York Senator by wide margins over Obama, dominate the electorate while the state’s Democratic establishment is firmly supporting her campaign. Consequently, going into the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton enjoys massive structural, organisation and demographic advantages over Barack Obama.

That said, Obama still stands to pull off a strong showing in Pennsylvania, despite Senator Clinton’s obvious advantages. Despite the strong institutional support for Clinton, Philadelphia’s large black community is likely back Obama very strongly. Furthermore the prosperous Philadelphia suburbs could also provide a good base for Obama considering his appeal to affluent, liberal voters. The Obama campaign’s greatest challenge remains that the ‘closed’ nature of the primary disqualifies the moderate republicans and independents, upon whom much of Obama’s success has been built, from taking part. In an effort to address this, the Obama campaign has had an aggressive effort to register republicans and independents as Democrats before the deadline for such re-registration on March 25th.

Ultimately the nature of the Pennsylvania primary and the strength of the Clinton campaign in the state makes an Obama victory highly unlikely. Current the polls give Senator Clinton a commanding lead, however Obama’s past ‘form’ suggests that it would be unwise to write off his chances at narrowing the gap in the state. Perhaps most intriguingly, it will be over the next few days and weeks that we are able to properly assess the impact of the Wright controversy and Obama’s response to it. The extent to which it has seriously damaged the Illinois Senator’s candidacy or proven his resilience under pressure could, in large part, be measured by his performance in Pennsylvania in five weeks time.

Update: Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator Bob Casey jr endorsed Obama on Friday (click on picture above to get the video), representing what is a potentially very significant boost for Obama in the state.

Casey is the son of popular, former Governor Bob Casey snr and commands an important base amongst the kind of blue-collar, culturally conservative Democrats with whom Obama has struggled in the past. On its own this endorsement doesn’t fundamentally alter the race in the state, but it gives Obama an important opening and a powerful surrogate (plus, yet another super delegate).

Ben Surtees was one of the first people to post here when the site was established in 2004.

Just to say that my wife, Jacky, and I are off to France for a week - we’ll be stayig in an apartment in one of the houses above. Although I’ll be writing the odd article our stand-in editor, Paul Maggs will once again be in charge.

Tomorrow morning we have a guest article on Pennsylvania by Ben Surtees and there are one or two of my “prepared this one earlier” pieces which will be published.

Whether I am able to do more depends on two things: the weather and the extent to which my Vodafone modem will work across the channel.

Best wishes,

Mike Smithson

Look at the “Dismayed - Delighted” figures

There’s now the full detail from this morning’s YouGov poll and I have extracted the above responses which I find interesting.

Thus on the forced choice question Cameron now has a comfortable lead and the Lib Dem supporters questioned are almost neck and neck.

The next question “Suppose a Conservative Government were formed under David Cameron which of these three statements would come nearest your own reaction?” provides a note of warning to the Tories. The 22% - 32% “delighted-dismayed” split is not that encouraging. Notice that only three out of five Tory voters put themselves in the delighted category.

The final one of the three “Which party do you think is more likely to run Britain’s economy well – the Conservatives or the Labour Party?” is now showing a distinct Tory margin and might be a good pointer.

The spread markets have reacted to the poll with a three seat jump in the Tory position.

There will be no Sean Fear slot today. He is otherwise engaged.

Mike Smithson

New poll suggests that Cameron is heading for a 100 seat majority

The above graphic, reproduced from the seat calculator on Anthony Wells’s UK Polling Report site, shows what happens when you key in the projected vote shares from today’s March YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph.

The survey paints the same broad picture that we’ve seen in all the post-budget polls - very bad news for Labour.

When nearly a fortnight ago poll by the firm for the Sunday Times had Labour on 27% trailing a massive sixteen points behind the Tories there was a widespread assumption that this was a rogue or an outlier. This view changed a couple of days later when ICM in the Guardian put Cameron’s party on 42% with a thirteen point lead on Labour.

Today in the first post-Easter poll there has been a small improvement for Brown’s party but they are still below 30% and the Tories are maintaining their 43% share. These are the figures with comparisons on the last survey from the firm: CON 43% (nc): LAB 29% (+2): LD 17% (+1)

To YouGov’s regular forced choice question of whether respondents would prefer a Labour government under Brown or a Tory one under Cameron the split was 47% - 35% in the Tories favour. This is the highest level it has been for Cameron.

All of this adds credence to the view that there has been step change in public opinion during March. Something happened with the budget to affect the overall view of Labour.

Unlike with the Sunday Times which permits the simultaneous publication of the detailed data alongside the poll itself we will probably have to wait until after the weekend before we see elements like the regional spreads and age distributions. What could be central here is the break down of the London data which might give a further pointer to the Mayoral election - less than four weeks off.

The Telegraph is leading on the poll which could influence punters on the commons seat spread markets. The overnight figures from Sporting Index show a massive variation from the Anthony Wells projections. The firm has CON 308-314: LAB 262-268: LD 44-47 seats. My guess is that there will be a movement upwards in the Tory spread - a few notches closer to the 325 level which in a general election would see Cameron securing a majority.

Other General Election betting is here.

Mike Smithson

Could this be a serious proposition?

The author of the classic White House Race Novel, Primary Colours, Joe Klein, has floated the idea of a Gore-Obama ticket in the latest edition of Time magazine.

This is from Klein’s piece: “..But let’s play a little. Let’s say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let’s also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they’d have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.

I played out that scenario with about a dozen prominent Democrats recently, from various sectors of the party, including both Obama and Clinton partisans. Most said it was extremely unlikely … and a pretty interesting idea. A prominent fund raiser told me, “Gore-Obama is the ticket a lot of people wanted in the first place.” A congressional Democrat told me, “This could be our way out of a mess.” Others suggested Gore was painfully aware of his limitations as a candidate. “I don’t know that he’d be interested, even if you handed it to him,” said a Gore friend. Chances are, no one will hand it to him. The Democratic Party would have to be monumentally desperate come June. And yet … is this scenario any more preposterous than the one that gave John McCain the Republican nomination? Yes, it’s silly season. But this has been an exceptionally “silly” year. “

Latest nomination betting is here. Gore is currently 41/1 with Betfair.

Mike Smithson

Should your betting be following the Prime Minister?

With just five weeks to go before five million Londoners vote on their Mayor there’s a report in the Times this morning that is hardly going to improve relations between the government and City Hall. Under the heading “Gordon Brown deserts Ken Livingstone..” the paper reports that the PM has “… all but written off Ken Livingstone’s chances of winning the London mayoral election, according to close allies.”

Brown, it is noted pointedly, will be visiting the US next month as the fight for City Hall reaches its climax.

The report goes on: “..Some Brown allies are already consoling themselves that a Johnson victory “would be a disaster” for Mr Cameron. Others, including senior Cabinet supporters, fear that a Johnson mayoralty would hand the Tories a prize platform for building bridges with the business community in the City.”

Certainly it’s the case that Brown and Livingstone have never been the best of friends but such a note of no confidence from Number 10 as the campaign just starts to open up is quite surprising. Negative comments ahead of an election should not be coming out like this. If Ken does, against the odds, make it then relations between the two men are going to be even colder.

The Times report is not going to go down well with the wider Labour movement as Ken faces his biggest challenge.

The betting, meanwhile, continues to move from Ken who is now getting close to the 2/1 level.

Mike Smithson