Poll to Poll

  For nationalists across Europe the problems the European Union has encountered in securing sufficient supplies of COVID-19 vaccines will provide a political moment to exploit. It will embolden those who feel that nation states should take care of their own affairs. The move will play especially into the hands of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Rally, formally the National Front. It comes on the back of a faulting response by the Government of President Emmanuel Macron to the pandemic. As far back as October one poll found that 61% of those surveyed in France felt he had not handled the pandemic well. Add to that the recent news that police in France have detained seven people in connection with the beheading in October of teacher Samuel Paty by Abdoullakh Anzorov after Patry showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during a class debate on free expression and the terrain could hardly be better for Le Pen.   Perhaps not surprisingly she has now proposed ...

  It is now a week since Joe Biden became President of the United States, inheriting one of the most challenging in trays of any incoming President in modern history. After a week which has seen him sign numerous Executive Orders focussed on the country’s response to COVID and reversing many Trump ‘era polices such as the border wall with Mexico and re-joining both the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the World Health Organisation, one poll suggests that the new President’s ‘honeymoon’ continues. According to data within an ABC News/Ipsos poll 69% of Americans approve of the way the President is handling the response to the COVID-19 pandemic with 81% supporting the new federal mask requirements. This includes 99% of all Democrats who support it, 59% of Republicans and 63% of Independents. On a number of other policies being enacted by the Biden administration: 77% support a government-wide approach to civil rights and racial justice. 83% support prohibiting workplace g...

As we start 2021, one of the major political moments of the year will be when voters got to the polls to elect a new Scottish Parliament, currently scheduled to take place in May. Make no mistake about it the vote could mark the start of a journey which takes Scotland out of the UK altogether. That the SNP’s poll numbers and those for Nicola Sturgeon are extremely high for a party that first came to office in 2007 is beyond dispute.   What will be worrying Downing Street the most is the news that the 19 th consecutive poll now puts support for independence in Scotland ahead of support for staying in the UK. According to the figures from Survation for the   pro-independence Scot Goes Pop blog, with those who did not know how they would vote in another referendum excluded, 51% of those questioned said Scotland should be independent while 49% said it should not. That said, voters will also be going to the poll in Wales this year to elect a new Senedd, a contest which no...