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Yougov 2550 voters aged 18-24 Fieldwork: 1st - 28th March Women (Men) LAB 40% (29%) GREEN 23% (18%) CON 18% (27%) UKIP 7% (12%) LD 7% (8%)

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Leigh Pickett

@Leigh_Pickett FOLLOWS YOU

2015 is the year of the 99%❤️In deep with the Fire Brigades Union! My views are my own not those of my employer. Retweeting doesnt mean I agree. Unity!

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Tom Smith@BudaBrit  Apr 20@OneMinuteBriefs @UKELECTIONS2015 #VOTE #government UK's largest party pic.twitter.com/NUV4K3E7HN

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Tory Gamble Continues As Clegg Favourite To Be First Leader Out

 Politics  General Election By  Graham Sharpe

AS THE GAMBLE on the Conservatives to be at least part of the next government continued, William Hill installed Nick Clegg as Even money favourite to be the first UK major Party leader to stand down, with David Cameron 3/1 second favourite, Nigel Farage 4/1 and Ed Miliband 5/1 outsider.

Hills have another market on three of the other Party leaders, with Natalie Bennett 1/4 favourite to go before 11/4 Leanne Wood and 14/1 Nicola Sturgeon.

'Every leader is vulnerable at this General Election should he or she fail to produce the expected level of success' said Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe.

WILLIAM HILL have shortened their odds for the second time in forty eight hours for the Conservatives to win the Election with an overall majority as money cotinued to pour on that option. Hills took a number of four figure bets ,including one of £3000, as the odds dived from 15/2 to 13/2 (stake £2 to make profit of £13) to become the fourth most likely outcome of the General Election - three of which involve the Tories.

'The Tories have begun to attract consistent support to win outright, form a minority government, or again go into coalition with the Lib Dems' said Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe. 'They are also 2/9 favourites to win more votes than any other Party and 1/4 to win more seats. Yet Ed Miliband is favourite to be PM on Aug 1, although his odds have lengthened from 8/15 to 4/7 while David Cameron has shortened from 6/4 to 11/8.'

LATEST WILLIAM HILL GENERAL ELECTION OUTCOME ODDS....1/9 (was 1/10) Hung Parliament; 13/8 Labour minority; 7/2 Con-LD coalition; 4/1 Con minority; 13/2 Conservative majority; 7/1 Coalition involving SNP; 8/1 Lab-LD coalition; 25/1 Coalition involving DUP;28/1 Labour majority; 33/1 Con-Lab coalition; Coalition involving Ukip; 50/1 Coalition involving Greens; 500/1 Ukip majority; 500/1 Lib Dem majority.

FIRST MALE PARTY LEADER TO STAND DOWN...Evs Clegg; 3/1 Cameron; 4/1 Farage; 5/1 Miliband

FIRST FEMALE PARTY LEADER  TO STAND DOWN...1/4 Natalie Bennett; 11/4 Leanne Wood; 14/1 Nicola Sturgeon.

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Contact

Graham Sharpe, Media Relations Director

Tel +44 (0)7803 233702

Email gsharpe@williamhill.co.uk

COMRES POLLWATCH: - #GE(nder)2015

By Tom Mludzinski Head of Political Polling

We often get asked about the women’s vote, and whether women could decide the result of the General Election. I never feel entirely comfortable answering, even though “some of my best friends are women.” There are rich women, poor women, old, young, northern, southern, black, white, married, divorced, single women and they don’t all vote the same way. I have never been asked about the men’s vote.      History does though point to the fact that the Conservatives have traditionally performed better among female voters than male voters, in the same way that they have done better among older voters than younger ones.      However, that tradition has been on the wane over the last few decades, and in fact it was the 2005 General Election which saw the turning point for the Tories doing better among men than women. Ascribing the “women problem” solely to David Cameron was unfair, although he has not been successful in turning things around. And I have never heard commentators discussing Ed Miliband’s “men problem”.      Our own poll of 1,000 women for the Sunday Mirror this weekend showed Labour leading the Conservatives by 5 points among this half of the population, despite the race being too close to call more widely.

This Election campaign has seen not only Labour’s pink bus but also a specific “women’s manifesto”. Though their execution may have been clumsy, the aim has clearly been to directly and obviously engage with this half of the electorate, three in ten of whom (29%) feel ignored by political parties. Things are changing, and political parties can’t simply rely on what they used to know to be true. Within the female electorate there are some clear differences, most notably between generations. Women aged 55 and over are more likely to say they will vote for the Conservatives, while those aged 18-54 are more likely to say they will vote for Labour, again pointing to a longer term decline in the tradition of Conservative women. Not only are there differences in how they will vote, but the generations differ on how they see themselves and the role of women in politics. While three in four (74%) younger women believe there aren’t enough women in politics, significantly fewer (62%) of the older generation agree. Indeed, different age groups even see their position relative to men differently, with younger women being significantly less likely than their older counterparts to believe the two sexes have different priorities (24% of 18-24 year olds compared to 58% of those aged 65+). This in itself opens up questions about the way the campaigns target women and whether the pink bus will be effective with younger women.

It would though be flippant to suggest that men and women have exactly the same priorities. Our polling reveals some consistent differences on the issues, with women tend to give greater priority to issues such as the NHS and cost of living. These issues also tend to be strong areas of focus for Labour and so perhaps it is no wonder that Labour lead among the female bloc. A challenge to our representative democracy is that almost half (46%) of women think that male politicians can never fully represent the best interests of women, leaving plenty of questions about how to increase the number of female MPs – but that’s for another Pollwatch perhaps, though just 14% of all Britons say that it is right to use positive discrimination to increase the number of women MPs in Parliament. GE2015 has seen a dearth of silver bullet demographics, we’ve not had Worcester Woman or Mondeo Man, but “women” can’t fill just fill that void. Being 50% of the electorate makes them an important demographic to woo, and one clearly where Labour are having slightly more success than the Tories. But it won’t be enough on its own, a party needs more than just women or just the working classes or any other group. Women could decide the result of the election, if they all turned out and all voted en bloc. They don’t. The parties need to tailor their messages accordingly, in this election and beyond.

MAY 2015: WILL YOU BE READY?  NEW MPS.  NEW POLICY ENVIRONMENT. NEW REPUTATIONAL RISKS. Be prepared for the new Parliament using ComRes's MPs Panel. We offer a guaranteed, unrivalled & representative sample of 150 MPs, giving the greatest insight into emerging risks for your organisation and policy priorities post GE2015.  SIZE & SPEED ComRes operate the largest and most frequent MPs Panel on the market, with results in 5-6 weeks EXPERTISE Our expert consultants provide real value by placing data into proper context and producing actionable insight ANALYTICS Latest techniques in predictive analytics help you identify key drivers of favourability and engagement Capacity on ComRes’s MPs Panel is limited.  To discuss how your organisation can place questions on our most popular May wave, please contact Katharine Peacock:katharine.peacock@comres.co.uk or 020 7871 8660

BBC UK GENERAL ELECTION 2015 DAILY BRIEFING 30/04/15

The final(-ish) countdown

Do you want the good news or the bad news? Good news: there's a week to go until polling day. Bad news: that might not be the end of it. If there's a hung Parliament, the wrangling could go on for days. Nonetheless, everyone's busy making their final pitches. David Cameron ran through his party's credentials on supporting young people, and Ed Miliband talked about speaking to one million more people before 7 May. Danny Alexander's pitch was very final indeed, putting yet more distance between the Lib Dems and their coalition ex-partners. On top of that, the leaders have another chance to make a televised breakthrough on tonight's Question Time.

One door opens, another closes The big row today is all about welfare cuts - and more specifically, cuts to child benefit. We've got the Lib Dems' Danny Alexander, who was George Osborne's deputy in the Treasury, claiming that three years ago the Tories had a whole series of plans to cut child benefit and tax credits - plans that they say would have amounted to around £8bn of savings. George Osborne has completely rejected these ideas, saying that they weren't policy and in fact had come from the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems maintain they definitely are Tory ideas and perhaps feel they haven't got enough credit for all the things they've done in government behind closed doors. So it was today they firmly opened those doors to reveal some confidential conversations at the very top of coalition government. This might make future talks for a coalition government pretty difficult, but with so many Lib Dems facing a really tough fight in their constituencies - including people like Danny Alexander - the Lib Dems seem to feel this is a risk worth taking. Eleanor Garnier Political correspondent

Treasury wars George Osborne and Danny Alexander pictured in more collegiate days As already mentioned, Lib Dem Danny Alexander has been taking aim at his former colleagues by releasing a document he claims was prepared by Iain Duncan Smith in 2012 outlining how £8bn could be saved from child benefit and child tax credits. Mr Alexander said it showed the party was either being "deceitful" or "highly reckless" in not saying where all of their planned £12bn cuts to welfare would come from. But George Osborne countered the proposal had been commissioned by the chief secretary himself, adding: "We haven't put into practice any of these options, we don't support them." Read more >

David Cameron walkabout in Wetherby Conservatives say they're 'first' for young people Speaking in West Yorkshire, David Cameron said the Conservatives were the party of "the first chance - the first job, the first pay cheque, the first home". He outlined what the Conservatives were offering younger voters, such as more apprenticeships and no national insurance on jobs for under-21s. Read more > "Me first!" Labour's one million chat challenge Earlier this year Ed Miliband said he wanted to have four million conversations in four months. He now says he's met that goal and wants to have a million more talks in the next week - in order to tell people they have a "real choice" between "putting working families first" or "at risk with the Tories". Read more >

Clamming up on climate change? Natalie Bennett has insisted the Green Party has put the environment and climate change "on the agenda" - something she claimed "every other party leader failed to do". Environmentalist James Lovelock told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier this month that climate change was being ignored by all the main parties. Read more > The Sun splits its vote The Sun and its sister paper, the Scottish Sun, have endorsed different parties in the election. The London-based paper urged readers to back the Conservatives and "stop the SNP". By contrast, the Scottish Sun said the Tories did not understand Scotland and praised SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, as "a phenomenon who inspires people". Read more >

Coming up: Leaders' Question Time

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will face questions from David Dimbleby and a studio audience tonight. You can watch live on BBC Two from 20:00 BST. Afterwards, you can watch programmes with other party leaders in different parts of the country: Nicola Sturgeon at 21:30 on BBC One Scotland, Leanne Wood at 22:45 on BBC One Wales, and Nigel Farage at 22:50 on BBC One England. You can follow all the action online. Read more >

Politics around the UK

Scotland: Parties clash over second referendum Read more > Wales: Plaid Cymru calls for national drugs fund Read more > Northern Ireland: Passionate fight in Foyle constituency Read more > England: Young voters' views on 'Milibrand' Read more >

Hugh should I vote for? The old adage goes that politics is show business for ugly people. But this election increasingly feels like ugliness for showbiz people. Today the latest celebrity to weigh in on the general election was Hugh Grant, intervening to praise Danny Alexander (here is a full list of candidates in the constituency). But it does not always go well when famous names get involved with politics, as BBC Trending reports. Read more >

Crimestoppers launches a major new initiative to combat electoral fraud

By Lord Ashcroft. 

With the General Election exactly a week away, I am delighted to report on a new initiative to tackle electoral fraud.

The “Don’t Stand for Electoral Fraud” project from Crimestoppers, the crime-fighting charity, is perfectly timed. It will see a four-pronged attempt to tackle those who intimidate voters, bribe voters, steal postal votes and vote for someone else.

The move follows a partnership between Crimestoppers, the charity that I founded 27 years ago, and the Electoral Commission, the independent elections watchdog and regulator of party and election finance.

I am delighted that the Electoral Commission has embraced this project and I hope it will mark the beginning of a long and happy association between Crimestoppers and the elections watchdog.

As with all Crimestoppers’ work, we are urging the public to be our “eyes and ears” and to report any evidence or suspicions that they may have of criminal activity in this field – by using our on-line form or our 0800 555 111 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0800 555 111end_of_the_skype_highlighting number to highlight their concerns anonymously.

Depending on the nature of the alleged offence or malpractice, it will then be up to the police and/or the relevant Electoral Registration Officer/Returning Officer to pursue further inquiries aimed at preventing the fraud and catching the offenders.

The key message of the new initiative is: “One person, one vote – that’s how democracy works. We each get one ballot and one vote. This is our right and it is our right to vote freely for whoever we want, without anyone doing anything to stop us.”

There are other areas of electoral fraud, apart than the four main ones listed above, that Crimestoppers hopes to tackle. These include:

• Treating – Paying for food, drink or entertainment in exchange for voting or not voting,
• Multiple voting – It is illegal to vote on behalf of someone else unless you are officially appointed their proxy,
• Secrecy – Each ballot paper is secret, asking someone to reveal their ballot paper is an offence,
• False registration information – It is an offence to deliberately give wrong information when applying to register, get a postal vote or get a proxy vote.

Early last year a report entitled “Electoral fraud in the UK”, presented by Jenny Watson, chair of the Electoral Commission, concluded simply: “Electoral fraud is a serious issue.”

As recently as last week, a London mayor who “cynically perverted” the religious feeling of his Muslim community and “silenced his critics with accusations of racism and Islamophobia” was removed from office after a bitter legal battle.

The disgraced Lutfur Rahman repeatedly played the “race card” in his bid to seize the mayoralty of Tower Hamlets and later cling to power, Richard Mawrey, the Election Commissioner, ruled.

It was ordered that last year’s mayoral election, which was riddled with corruption, be run again and Rahman – who was re-elected to the position after forming his own party, Tower Hamlets First – was barred from standing.

One again, I urge everyone to unite and make this crucial new Crimestoppers initiative a major success. Our forefathers fought for our right to vote and we must not allow criminals to wrestle it away from us.

• For more information on the new Crimestoppers initiative, visit here.
• For more information on the work of the Electoral Commission, visit here.
• Read this article on ConservativeHome.com