politicalbetting.com

Let’s do some number crunching

With just over five months from the predicted General Election day of 05/05/05 it’s time we started making some forecasts of what we think might happen first in terms of the vote share and secondly the number of Commons seats.

LABOUR VOTES. Our formula is based in the chronic tendency of the pollsters to always over-state Labour. In two of the last three General Election every single poll from every single pollster produced an exaggerated figure. In the other election, 1997, the majority of pollsters did the same. So our formula is to take the average of the bottom two Labour shares in the most recent polls and then DEDUCT 1.5%.

TORY VOTES. If the US automated pollster, Rasmussen, does do UK surveys then we will take their Tory share and make no adjustment. They were the only firm to get it right last time. If not we will take the average of the highest two figures from the latest round of polls and ADD on 1%.

LIB DEM VOTES. The party seems to get about the same or slightly more than the highest polling figure so we’ll take the average of the top two shares from the latest poll round and then ADD on 0.5%.

CONVERTING VOTES TO SEATS. We’ll put the poll shares we’ve determined into the Baxter calculator and then make two adjustments: we’ll take 12 seats from Labour and add them to the LD total because of special targeting. We’ll also take 14 seats from the Labour total and give them to the Tories for “tactical unwind” – a controversial notion but one we believe will happen.

On current figures this produces the following “result”

Lab: 306 (33.5%)
Con: 237 (34.0%)
LD: 72 (23.5%)

The rest is easy – just put your bets on and wait for the money to roll in!

Latest spread prices:- LAB 345-353: CON 200-208: LD 71-75
Comments (77)
Comments

NOTE – ALL THE LOST COMMENTS HAVE BEEN STORED AT COMMENT 19

Why no WILL BLUNKETT SURVIVE markets?

In recent years a healthy tradition has grown up of betting on whether politicians in trouble will survive.

Within days of the David Kelly case last year you could back or lay on whether or not the main players – Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon, Tony Blair, Andrew Gilligan, Gavyn Davies – would hold onto their jobs beyond September 30 2003. In terms of taste the Kelly case was far worse than the Home Secretary’s current predicament.

A week or so later last autumn it was the hapless IDS who became the focus of betting attention and whether he would still be in post in mid-November. Then in the run-up to the publication of the Hutton report the main players came into the frame again and money could be won and lost.

Currently you can bet on whether Peter Mandelson will serve his full term as a Euro Commissioner. So why no market on Blunkett?

Could it be, we wonder, that the betting industry is worried about the promised Government plans to tighten up the law on gambling, particularly on the internet?

There’s a huge interest in the story and lots of speculation on whether or not he can carry on as an authoritarian Home Secretary laying down the law to all of us with the papers full of his private life. People want to bet but the only Blunkett market about is whether he’ll be the next Labour leader. Even at 20/1 we do not think that this is a value bet.

Meanwhile the affair – political that is – has taken the wind a little out of Labour’s sails on the main General Election market. Although the bookie price on Labour is still 1/7 the Betfair odds have moved a touch to 1.22. They were 1.18 a week ago.

UK General Election back as most popular market

With two new polls both giving totally different pictures it’s not a surprise that the UK General Election is back at the top of the politicalbetting top 10 – which is based on “click-throughs” to online bookmakers from the site.

If you are thinking of betting in the UK markets it’s worth recalling that at the 2001 General Election every single poll from every single pollster over-estimated Labour.

Our safety first strategy is to base your bets on whatever is the current lowest Labour poll share and then knock one or two points off.

1. General Election Winning Party Labour still 1/7 best with the conventional bookies but has moved out from 1.18 to 1.21 (better than 1/5) on Betfair. Is there just a sense of weakness? Maybe – but there is no value here either way.
2. Republican Candidate 2008 Quite a bit of interest with money going on Rudolph Guiliani – former New York mayor now at 11/4. It’s a long way to go and the evangelical right will want to ensure that they continue to have their person in the White House.
3. Winning Party 2008 Given it’s evens on both and you have to wait nearly four years to pick up your winnings we are amazed that people are betting. Remember to factor in the cost of locking up the money.
4. Conservative Seats at General Election. The 10/11 on the Tories getting less than 220 seems a popular bet. We are not so sure because the polls are giving conflicting messages.
5. US President 2008 Hilary Clinton is still the 5/1 favourite. No comment.
6.General Election Date. Given the Sun has now said that its 05/05/05 why not get on now while there’s value at 1/5? One thing’s for sure – Tony Blair’s not going to upset the Sun’s owner Rupert Murdoch.
7. Tony Blair’s departure date 2006 is the 6/4 favourite. We are not so certain.
8 Labour Party Seats A seat total of 360+ is the 11/10 favourite. Much less risky than a spread bet but much reduced returns.
9. Liberal Democrats seats A total of 61+ remains the 1/3 favourite. Probably good value.
10 Democratic Candidate 2008 Hilary Clinton is 5/4 favourite. Not good value given the time your money is locked up

Has Blair really not been hurt by Iraq, Kelly, and Hutton?

The Independent on Sunday’s new pollster, Communicate Research, has Labour back at their 2001 General Election share according to their latest survey out today.

The figures with changes on the same poll last month are CON 31 (-2), LAB 42(+2), LD 20(+3). At the last election Labour got 42%, the Tories 32.7% and the Lib Dems 18.8%. So the only change on 2001, according to CR, is a small switch the Tories to the LDs.

We have talked a lot on the site about weighting results according to people’s recall of what they did in 2001 because the difficulty that phone pollsters have of finding a representative sample. CR do not do this.

What we have are figures unweighted by recalled past vote of people who have landlines and happened to be in, ready to answer an unsolicited phone call from a stranger and be willing to talk when the computer generated dialler got through to them.

For a range of reasons, as other pollsters have found, such an approach tends to produce disproportionately more Labour supporters than those of other parties. Unlike other pollsters, as well, CR do no set out in their interviews the different party options – an approach that has been shown to favour Labour and the Tories.

At the 2001 General Election the Indy’s then pollster, Rasmussen, was one of the most accurate and was the only firm to predict precisely the Tory share. Why they should have been replaced by CR and their methodologies beggars belief.

Elsewhere in the Indy today there is sceptical piece on pollsters by the veteran political commentator, Alan Watkins Everyone seems to agree that, come May or whenever it is, this government is going to get in again. The polls say so. The journalists at Westminster have few doubts. Even the Tories admit ruefully that their time has not yet come: if, indeed, it ever does come. But the strange thing is this. Of all the people I know – friends, relations, acquaintances whether close or slight – not one of them intends to vote Labour at the election. Some do not propose to vote at all. Others promise to support the Respect coalition, if there is a candidate available. Most are going for the Liberal Democrats, about half of them (I would estimate) in a switch from Labour. A few, most eccentric of all, say they will vote Conservative. But then, that is because they have always voted this way and, if they were prepared to put up with Mr John Major and then Mr William Hague, they see no reason to forsake Mr Michael Howard now. This, I realise, is what the sociologists used scornfully to call anecdotal evidence, though what other kind of evidence there is I do not know.

The CR survey also opens up a massive 10% gap between the various polling organisations on the Labour lead. They cannot all be right and our money would certainly not be on the Indy survey.

The spread markets are unchanged at LAB 344-352: CON 202-210: LD 70-74. The Labour price is still two seats below where it was at the end of July when Labour’s lead was just 1%.