It may be less than a fortnight since the 2012 US elections, but it’s never too early to start speculating about what might happen in the next ones. So here’s a quick first look: 2013: New Jersey and Virginia (and Massachusetts?) It may be an off-year, but there’ll be at least two — and possibly
Today’s employment figures don’t contain much new to shout about. The number of people in work — although it rose by 100,000 on the previous quarter — is actually down very slightly from last month’s record high (but still above the pre-recession peak, just). Unemployment fell by 49,000 from Q2 to Q3, although that’s well
As David reported earlier, today’s Guardian carries allegations of price-fixing in the energy markets. The paper has an account by Seth Freedman, who worked as a price reporter at ICIS Heren, detailing how he observed suspicious trades that looked like attempts to manipulate the daily index price. Based on Freedman’s account, the alleged manipulation looks
After falling to 2.2 per cent in September, inflation — as measured by the Consumer Prices Index — rose to 2.7 per cent in October. On the Retail Prices Index, inflation rose from 2.6 per cent to 3.2 per cent. The main cause of the rise is the government’s changes to university tuition fees, which
It looks like George Osborne will put the planned fuel duty rise on hold again, in order to avoid another Tory rebellion and potential government defeat in the Commons. This battle has its origins in a Labour Budget: that of 2009, in which Alistair Darling introduced a fuel duty escalator whereby fuel duty would increase
With the elections over and Barack Obama returned to the White House for four more years, the attention of US politicians has turned to the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ — a collection of tax hikes and spending cuts that threaten to send the country back into recession. But what exactly is going on, and why? The
The focus, of course, is on President Barack Obama’s resounding re-election — but there are plenty of other reasons why Democrats are celebrating Tuesday night’s results. In the summer, it looked like Obama’s party would struggle to maintain their Senate majority. Instead, they have extended it. Embattled incumbents held on in tight races in Missouri,
NBC has called Ohio for President Obama — enough to guarantee him the 270 electoral votes he needs for re-election. The Democrats are also certain to retain their majority in the Senate, while the Republicans have held the House.
Four years ago, on the weekend before the 2008 presidential election, political commentator John McLaughlin asked the four panellists on his show The McLaughlin Group to predict the winner. As Nate Silver says in his excellent book The Signal and the Noise, ‘That one ought not to have required very much thought.’ The polls indicated
Can Mitt Romney win the presidential election on Tuesday? The answer is yes, he can — but it’ll be tough. Although the national polls taken in isolation suggest the race is roughly tied, the state-level polling points to a much bigger lead for Barack Obama. It seems that either the national polls are underestimating Obama’s
We’re now just a week away from election day in the United States. And after all the campaign rallies, all the debates, all the billions of dollars spent, it looks quite possible that things will be left pretty much the same as they are now — as far as control of the federal government goes,
With a week and a day to go until the US elections, here’s a quick run-down of the 33 Senate races. Currently, the Democrats have 53 seats (including two Independents who caucus with them) to the Republicans’ 47, so the GOP would need a net gain of four seats to take control. Back in the
Ed Balls has just been given a thorough grilling by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics — particularly on his past assertions that Labour were not running a structural deficit in the years leading up to the financial crisis. Here’s the relevant section of the interview: listen to ‘Ed Balls on the structural deficit, 25
So it’s official: the UK economy grew by 1 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, according to the ONS’s preliminary estimate. That’s significantly better than the consensus forecasts. As all the politicking and pontificating begins, there are a few caveats worth keeping in mind:- 1. It’s just an estimate. As I showed yesterday,
Will it be 0.5 per cent? 0.8 per cent? 1 per cent? Whatever figure the ONS tells us GDP grew by in the third quarter of 2012, there’s one thing you can be pretty sure of: it won’t be the actual amount GDP grew by in Q3. In the past 51 years, just 12 of
GDP per head is still 7 per cent below its pre-recession peak. That’s one of the sober reminders of the weakness of our recovery in a new ONS report, released as part of its National Well-being project. In fact, GDP per head fell by 7 per cent from 2008 Q1 to the recession’s trough in
Today’s borrowing figures show that the government has borrowed £2.6 billion more so far this fiscal year than it did in the same six months last year*, allowing Labour to continue to claim that the deficit is rising. This is, of course, embarrassing to a Chancellor who defines himself by deficit reduction — but, all things considered,
With two years to go, Alex Salmond’s campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum is facing a big challenge to turn around public opinion. Ipsos MORI have a new poll out today, showing almost two-to-one opposition to independence, and support for Salmond’s cause has been declining all year. This matches the findings
It seems today’s good jobs figures — employment at a record high and the unemployment rate back below 8 per cent — are at least partly thanks to the Olympic Games. While the UK added 212,000 net jobs in June-August, London alone added 101,000 — accounting for 47 per cent of the total rise. And —
Recently, we’ve been used to the economic figures being either bad news or mixed news. So today’s employment stats come as a welcome surprise: it’s almost all good news. They show that total employment rose by 212,000 from March-May to June-August, and now stands at 29.59 million — a record high, 18,000 above the pre-recession peak