As Jeb Bush, the 11th declared Republican candidate enters the race for president, a look back at a secretive survey in 1935 that foreshadowed today’s ubiquitous horserace polls.
While pre-election polls got their sums wrong, and seemed to ignore biases in the rush to publish, a far more accurate call was being made in the betting shops of Britain.
Recent polls have put Labour and the Conservatives in what seems to be an unshakable dead heat. The latest Ashcroft poll puts them both on 33%. This takes the parties back to exactly where they were in…
George Ward, London School of Economics and Political Science
While Conservative pundits wonder why high scores for economic competence aren’t boosting poll numbers, some clues might lie away from financial measures.
With parliament closed, the election campaign is now in full swing and it looks increasingly unlikely that either will win outright. A recent meeting of election forecasters concluded that the UK is heading…
Beyond polls and betting markets, how else can we gauge how people feel ahead of future elections? Social media is a goldmine, and one of the newer ways to tap into it is with a “social mood reader”.
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University