January 2005

From the Torygraph, an interesting report on the latest European Constitution poll. ICM’s survey, the first to be carried out using the actual question to be asked in the referendum, showed 39% in favour and 41% against – radically better figures than any previous poll. Naturally… “The ICM findings will fuel the debate over the…

Read More Unexpected

1. Yes, It Wasn’t Any Worse Than We Thought Indeed, quite a lot of people voted (latest figure 57% or perhaps somewhat less depending on reports). And there was no bloodbath comparable to (say) the slaughter of pilgrims in Najaf last year… 2. But That Ain’t Saying Much ..but some 44 persons were blown up…

Read More Five Points to Remember about Iraqi Elections

Anthony Wells has a very interesting post about the possible sources of surprises in the election campaign over at the Polling Report (a species of advanced headquarters he’s set up for the campaign). Read it, it’s worth while. Broadly, his argument is that the apparent stability of the polls conceals a considerable potential for shocks,…

Read More Polls!

The Dutch armed forces have, it seems, encountered a slightly unusual difficulty in Iraq, where they contribute 1,350 troops to the British-led MND(SE)’s northernmost sector. Simply, the soldiers’ trade union isn’t happy about their T’s and C’s. Yes, you read that correctly – the trade union. It’s called the AFMP and it’s angry that the…

Read More Dutch Army in labour dispute

Not so long ago I responded to a post on Mark Kleiman’s weblog concerning the “competitiveness leagues” that (usually) rightwing organisations like to prepare. I produced some methodology questions and some questions about content, here. I also proposed to check the performance of one of these against results, and in the end I did. The…

Read More Graphs!

Back in November, a row broke out when the rightwing thinktank MEMRI attempted to sue Juan Cole of Informed Comment for being rude to them. Specifically he accused them of being biased towards the Israeli government in the summaries of Middle Eastern media they give away to opinion-formers in the US. As the row developed,…

Read More That Juan Cole vs. MEMRI row revisited