politicalbetting.com

Last week’s calls proved to be reasonably robust in spite of new polls in both the UK and US. Please note that next week’s Monday Call will not be published until Monday evening because of the UK public holiday.

There’s continuing speculation over the future of both the Lib Dem and Labour leaders that is attracting coverage and could be the focus of most betting activity. Our LAY call on Blair/Kennedy on the current 1.85 in the party leaders at the General Election market remains. The referendum has led to more speculation about Tony Blair’s short-term future. We’re not convinced that either Blair or Charles Kennedy will go – but there’s a good chance that one of them might. By laying the two to still be leaders at the General Election you win if either or both go. The latest Kennedy story does not suggest he is very confident about his position. Laying Blair/Kennedy at 1.85 offers better value than laying Blair alone at the current 1.64.

What’s attractive about this bet is that the any upward price movements will be dramatic and large while downward movements will be gradual allowing you to bail out at not too great a loss.

There is no “Will Kennedy Step Down” market so the only place that you can bet is on the party leaders market. This is complicated because the option “Tony Blair only” is also in doubt. The option “None” has seen a price tumble.

The biggest test of UK public opinion before the General Election takes place on June 10 when there will be the elections on a PR basis for the European Parliament, local elections in many areas and the London elections including that for mayor. The Conservatives launch their campaign this week to be followed by Labour and the LDs a few days later. This will be the first electoral test for Michael Howard since he became Tory leader.

On the betting markets there is little activity apart from one bookmaker who is making a market on the individual regions in the Euro vote and, of course, the London Mayoral Election. We expect more markets to be created as we get near the date. There have also been very few opinion polls.

We stick by our call that the market price on Ken Livingstone is far too low and does not reflect the true situation.This is probably because of three key facts that many punters have not fully appreciated.

The result is based on the aggregate all-London vote so that outer Tory and LD areas with much higher turnouts will have a hugely disproportionate influence.

Because of this effect Labour was out-voted by the Tories in the all-London local elections in 2000 and 2002 even though it was upto 20% better off in the national polls than it is today.

The second preference Liberal Democrat votes last time went to Norris by a big margin – not Ken as is widely assumed – and this is likely to happen again.

It’s easy to call the 1-5 favourite in a contest. It’s much harder to say, as we are, that this might be wrong. This call against Livingstone might be out – but not by more than 2-3% and certainly not by a margin to justify prices of 1.2 on Ken and 9-11 on Hughes and Norris. The layers are out there so BACK both Hughes and Norris if the prices remain at current levels.

The latest opinion polls have shown a move back to Bush and there is very little betting value about. UK prices range from 1.53 – 1.73. The Kerry prices range from 2-2.37. We can’t see any major movements in the coming week and perhaps the best strategy is not to tie your cash up longer than is necessary by betting on either man now. Also we will get a clear idea of whether Bush is really recovering. DON’T BET.

The main “who will win” markets seem to have shrugged off the latest opinion polls from ICM and Mori which reported slight declines in Tory support. But will this indifference continue if the April YouGov poll on Friday follows suit? The Tory betting exchange price has, as predicted, moved from 4.3 to 4.2. We were suggesting short-term gains here but now you should wait until the YouGov figures are out. Our overall view remains – Labour are almost certain to win most seats. DON’T BET at the moment – you will get better value on Labour after the June 10 Euro and Local elections.

The seat number markets with the spread-betting firms have moved down slightly from LAB 332-342 to 330-340, perhaps in response the point we have made that they have ignored the reduction by 13 of Scottish Westminster seats at least 10 of which will be Labour. As was pointed out by politicalbetting.com on Saturday the two pollsters who were most accurate at the last General Election are now putting forward figures that would produce a huge difference in the number of Labour seats. YouGov would have it at 300 – ICM at 380. This market is only for the very bold and unless you are very confident that one of these top pollsters is totally wrong then DON’T BET.

The “Which year will the General Election be?” market on Betdaq has not moved and still nobody is laying 2005. If they do above 1.5 – BACK.

A potentially interesting Betdaq market links who will win with which party leader. The main options are:-
Labour led by Tony Blair 1.4
Labour led by another 2.4
Conservative led by Michael Howard 4.8
The only value bet is Tory/Howard which is substantially better than the 4.33 on the Tories alone that two bookmakers are offering. As we’ve said before – the way the Westminster seats are distributed make it very hard to contemplate anything other than Labour coming out on top. The problem with all Betdaq markets is the lack of liquidity. If you want to back the Tories this is the place to do it.

It might be that one of the bookmakers will open a market on the planned Euro referendum. If this happens do not be tempted to bet either YES or NO. Without a referendum date you could by locking up your stake for a long time and a lot can happen in the intervening period. We don’t know yet what the final Euro-deal will be or how other countries react to it. Our guess is that the UK referendum will be hugely influenced by the way other countries in Europe who are having referendums vote. DON’T BET.

NOTE: When we make a call we are stating that we believe that the chances of something happening are better than the odds that are available.
All prices quoted are as at time of posting.
Because of the UK Public Holiday – next week’s Monday Call will be published on Monday evening

Political gamblers seeking to call the next UK General Election are faced now with totally different pictures from the two opinion poll firms that were most accurate in predicting the 2001 General Election.

On the one hand is YouGov that is suggesting a vote split that would lead to a hung Parliament with Labour 23 seats short of an overall majority. On the other there is ICM which is predicting a vote split that will lead to Michael Howard’s Tories gaining just 6 more seats than next time and that Labour would have an overall majority of 114 seats.

This is the latest ICM poll with a seat prediction from Martin Baxter’s General Election calculator.

LAB 37% 380 seats
CON 32% 171 seats
LDs 22% 65 seats

RESULT Labour overall majority of 114

This is the last YouGov poll – again with a seat prediction from Martin Baxter’s General Election calculator.

LAB 34% 300 seats
CON 39% 271 seats
LDs 22% 46 seats

RESULT Hung Parliament – Labour short by 23 seats

The ICM scenario would be disastrous for Michael Howard and he would not be able to survive. The YouGov “result” would see the Tories winning an OVERALL MAJORITY OF SEATS IN ENGLAND and, no doubt, would claim this as some sort of victory.

But how do political gamblers choose between the two opinion polls? The Populus poll is showing the Tories and Labour on 34% each while Mori shows a slight improvement for Labour this month on 36-34%. The big difference between ICM and YouGov is that the former is showing a significant drop in Tory support while the latter has been putting the Tories at 39-40% consistently this year.

The Websites of both YouGov and ICM firms make the same boast “Britain’s most accurate pollster”.

Understanding these polls is going to be the secret of a profitable General Election for political gamblers. The market price on the Tories continues to tighten.

There’s speculation by Simon Carr in the Independent this morning that Tony Blair might be planning to step down in the summer – after his 10th anniversary as Labour leader. This date has been mentioned before and in December there was much talk of some deal being done with Gordon Brown at that famous reconciliation dinner hosted by John Prescott after Gordon Brown returned from maternity leave.

It will be recalled that Brown returned to work with a series of TV interviews in which he was more forthright than ever about the occupant of 10 Downing Street. Prescott called the dinner and since then all has been quiet – but was there an agreement whereby Blair would step down?

For a few weeks the change in mood of Brown was noticed by many at Westminster and people were concluding that a deal had been done. Could they be right?

This is how Carr concludes his article on Blair:-

He’s had his lows, especially in the summertime, so maybe this is coincidence. But he is dealing with a slump in credibility, he has made a mistake over the referendum, and his 10th anniversary is coming up.
If he were to hand over power to Gordon Brown after the next election we would all recoil, would we not, at a Soviet-style breach of the democratic process. Ken Livingstone came to power in the GLC all those years ago without being elected. I don’t think Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would sink to such a stratagem.
So the blinding insight is this: they’re going to do the decent thing. Ha! The column that dares to say what others daren’t think!
The handover in the summer, the installation at the party conference, the election early next year.
Oh, and the punchline to all of this is: Gordon Brown loses. They haven’t seen that coming.

The quip about Gordon could send a flurry through the betting markets – if not Brown who? Currently Blair is 1.49 to be Labour leader at the General Election and Brown is 3.9. After that it is Jack Straw and Peter Hain – both at 50.

For a long time we have been saying that the best political bet about at the moment is laying Blair & Kennedy in the Party Leaders at the General Election market on one of the betting exchanges. If either or both go decided to you win and there’s enough speculation about both men to make this a good value bet. This was one of this week’s Monday Calls on politicalbetting.com.

We do not think that anything will happen with Charles Kennedy until after the June 10 local, Euro and London elections. Elections are the oxygen that drives the party and nobody wants to interfere. If he has decided that enough is enough then an announcement would come afterwards. If the LDs do well, as looks very likely, then his position is reinforced – but this, conversely, could make it easier to stand aside.

Given the core mathematics of the next UK General Election that make it so difficult for him to lose why is Tony Blair making such a big deal of the June 10 elections for the European Parliament? Why is he mortgaging his short-medium term political future with the commitment for the referendum on the Euro constitution?

Sure June 10 2004 is not going to be a good day for Labour. The last time the Euro seats were fought, in 1999, Labour had an unmitigated disaster. The opinion polls had them at 56%, to William Hague’s Tories on just 25%. Yet when it came to real voters putting real votes in real ballot boxes Labour could only manage 28% – or HALF what the pollsters were saying. The Tories, written off by everybody got 35.8% – admittedly on a very low turn-out.

Sure the political climate has changed since 1999 – the opinion poll leads are smaller if non-existent, the Tories are more sure-footed and credible under their new leader and the LDs are enjoying their highest poll ratings since the heady days of the Alliance before the Falklands War in 1982.

Sure Tony Blair must be worried that if Labour could not get it supporters out in the favourable climate of 1999 then it is going to be much tougher this time.

But he has been able to take some measures to ameliorate the situation – tinkering with the election time-table so that the 2004 local elections take place on the Euro day will boost turnout as will forcing through postal voting in parts of the country even though there have been strong warnings about fraud; and of course he’s ditched the Labour party’s own rules to bring Ken Livingstone back into the party as candidate in the London Mayoral Election.

But who cares about the European Parliament? William Hague’s 1999 triumph had no impact at all on the General Election two years later. And as we’ve been saying repeatedly on Politicalbetting.com it is very hard for Tony Blair to get beaten on 05/05/05 – the suggested General Election day – because of the way the Westminster seats are distributed.

The Euro referendum is going to dominate the UK political scene for a long time to come and it is by no means certain that the strategy of trying to paint the Tories as extremists who just want to be out of the EU altogether is going to work. Michael Howard, as we saw in the Commons yesterday, is so much smarter than previous Tory leaders and is not going to let them get away with it.

The question of what will you do if the referendum says no is hard for Tony Blair to answer. Referring to the Irish experience in such a situation just makes him look even more slippery.

One thing is for sure – we need some new political betting markets