Comment & Analysis (Intergalactic) | Barnaby Whitlow, with the Markets Desk
When this newspaper endorsed Count Binface eight days before anyone else took the possibility seriously, critics called it a joke. Ipsos has now polled the joke. It leads by twelve points.
Asked who they would prefer to win the Clacton by-election, 33 per cent of the British public chose Count Binface. The other candidate polled 21. These are the findings of a professional polling organisation, using a representative sample of 1,000 adults, published this week, and our markets desk has verified that we are not making them up. We could not have made them up. We lack the confidence.
The desk therefore initiates formal coverage of Count Binface with a rating of OVERWEIGHT, a term we use in the technical sense, though the helmet is not light.
The fundamentals
Seventy-four per cent of the public back the parliamentary standards investigation into the other candidate's 5 million pound payment, and 73 per cent say it should continue even if he wins the seat. Most strikingly, offered a range of views on his decision to resign and force this by-election, the largest group, 54 per cent, selected "he should resign and leave parliament." Only 16 per cent endorsed the resign-and-stand manoeuvre currently being executed. The market, in short, has examined the product relaunch and asked for the original to be discontinued.
The Neither question
Our analysts also note the strong performance of Neither, polling 32 per cent. Neither has not published a manifesto, which makes an audit impossible, in what we are beginning to recognise as the standard arrangement. Should Neither declare, this desk will initiate coverage.
Price versus polling
Bookmakers continue to quote the other candidate at 1/6 and the Count at 4/1. Our desk observes a growing spread between the price and the polling, and reminds readers, as ever, that markets can remain irrational longer than a by-election campaign can remain solvent.
Polling day is 13 August.
Corrections & Clarifications (Intergalactic): an earlier edition of this desk reported polling day as 6 August, the date then proposed. Parliament has since confirmed 13 August. We regret the error, and note that we remain the only participant in this by-election to have corrected one this week.
Disclosure: no member of the markets desk holds a position in the candidate, the bin, or Neither. Two members hold ice creams.
Barnaby Whitlow does not exist. Pieces on this desk are satire: every statement about a real person, a real poll or a real investigation is drawn from the public record and listed in the sources below, and everything else is a joke.