politicalbetting.com

Your chance to put your questions

Politicalbetting has invited both the contenders in the Lib Dem leadership battle, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne to take part in online hustings where users of the site can put their questions and discuss the issues with the contenders.

The first, with Chris Huhne, will take place at 11am this Sunday morning and will last for about an hour and a half. A special thread will be opened shortly before this time. The format will be similar to the online discussion we had with the founder of Mori, Sir Robert Worcester, a few weeks ago.

Although arrangements for Chris Huhne have been finalised I am still waiting for confirmation from the Nick Clegg camp with whom I have already had discussions.

When nominations closed today there were, as expected, just the two runners – both ex-Westminster school-boys who went onto Oxbridge and became MEPs. Both have only been in the house for two and a half years.

Mike Smithson

What are the implications of the collapse of the anti-EU party?

On June 10th 2004 in the last European elections, UKIP received 2.7 million votes and gained twelve seats in the European Parliament. Their national vote share of just under 17% put them in third place ahead of the Lib Dems and all the talk was of the party doing terrible damage to Michael Howard Conservatives in the ensuing general election.

When that vote came, just eleven months later, the party received a paltry 618,000 votes which amounted to less than 2.4% of the national vote. It did not win any Westminster seats although it’s argued that the performances of their candidates in key marginals cost the Tories a clutch of seats.

Earlier in 2007 the party was making the headlines again when two former Conservative Lords defected. Lords Pearson and Willoughby de Broke said they felt Cameron’s Conservative Party was not producing policy to support their beliefs.

Today, Julian Glover in the Guardian reports that in the latest poll published this morning UKIP did not register at all. Not a single respondent said the party would be their choice.

UKIP, like other smaller parties, is suffering from the increasing polarisation of big party politics. The question is whether this will have an impact on the number of seats changing hands and if so how should punters factor this in? For the UKIP element does not figure in the standard seat predictors except in so far as a part of the decline in support might mean switching to other parties.

We saw in the ICM marginals poll on the weekend that Gord called off the election that the Tories were doing well in the key seats. In that survey five people said they would vote UKIP.

All this is why in my commons seat spread betting I’m now assuming that the Tories will do a little better than the Baxter and Wells seat predictors suggest. When you have £100 a seat positions the odd five gains or losses either way can make a big difference.

Meanwhile on the Betfair general election “most seats” market the Tories have moved into the favourite slot once again.

Mike Smithson

But the Tories take the hit for the LD surge

After predicting on yesterday’s ComRes thread that the ICM October poll for the Guardian would report a 5% Tory lead I feel a bit of satisfaction that that indeed is what has come about. These are the shares with changes on the last survey from the pollster tkaen in the immediate aftermath of the Tory conference CON 40% (-3): LAB 35% (-1): LD 18% (+4)

Also last week I was predicting that the extra media attention from Ming’s departure and the leadership race would give the Lib Dems a 3-4% boost – which has happened too.

ICM has consistently been the pollster which has given the Lib Dems the highest shares and I’m convinced that the 14% of three weeks ago played a part in the leadership changes.

There’s something for everybody here:-

I’m hoping that the detail of the poll might have useful information about the Lib Dem race.

Mike Smithson

Is there a political risk in taking unilateral action?

According to the First Post online magazine tonight Gordon Brown is planning to take unilateral steps to stop the Tory multi-millionaire, Lord Ashcroft from pouring money into marginal seats between elections. At the same time there will be no constraints on the amount the trade unions can give to Labour – something that the Tories offered in exchange for agreeing to the marginal seats proposal.

This looks set to be a major row with the Tories claiming that Labour is trying to fix the election spending rules in its favour and not do anything in return.

There’s a huge danger in Labour being seen to act partially in this way and the move could provide the Tories with another stick to beat the government with.

It could be that the downside of the row is greater than the benefit of restricting Tory spending in the marginals.

Mike Smithson