Is Mark Penn the Dumbest Pollster on Earth?

Possibly! Gordon Brown’s government has a 17% approval rating and fewer than one in five voters think Brown would make a better Prime Minister than either David Cameron or, titter ye not, Nick Clegg. His government is in much the same place John Major’s was in 1996 and we know how that ended for the Tories.

The Brown ministry has lost its mast and been holed, repeatedly, below the water line. Yet amidst the wreckage and the blood and the howls of agony one man insists that all is not lost and that, actually, victory remains possible. That man, folks, is Mark Penn, the American pollster and strategist last seen leading Hillary Clinton’s glorious triumph in the 2008 Democratic Primary. Oh, hang on…

Interviewed by PR Week, Penn claims that:

‘I think Brown is in a situation where he could win,’ said Penn. He noted that, in the US in 1994, ‘65 per cent said they would never vote for Clinton, and yet two years later he won by a virtual landslide’.