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Which MPs should be thinking about their future careers?

If you are returning to your computer today after the holiday don’t forget to enter our General Election Competition – entries close on Saturday.

Already a big range of predictions has emerged and there has been particular interest in several of the seat-specific elements.

Bethnal Green and Bow has produced a range of predictions covering four possible outcomes. Will George Galloway do it? If he doesn’t will his campaign undermine the Labour incumbent and let either the Tories or the Lib Dems in. All interesting and there is support across the board with Labour ahead.

Inverness has produced predictions across three parties as has St. Albans which is a classic seat that could change hands if the tactical vote rewind theory proves to be correct. Colne Valley has our entrants split between Labour and the Tories with some support for the Lib Dems.

Maidenhead was included to represent the so called “decapitation” strategy by the Lib Dems against senior members of the Shadow Cabinet. At the moment, if the views of site users are correct, then Theresa May is in trouble.

The much vaunted Lib Dem target of Cambridge, subject of much discussion on the site, has most of the entrants saying it will stay with Labour. The least contoversial prediction is Ynys Mon – where almost all the entrants think Plaid will take it from Labour.

What has been quite a surprise is how much support there has been for YouGov in the Most accurate pollster section. At the moment at least two out of every three entrants is opting for the internet pollster. We were amazed by the lack of support for Populus, which was caused by them being left off the list. Apologies to the firm. We are trying to find a way of dealing with this.

On the big picture very few entrants have been prepared to stick their necks out and suggest that Labour might not win an overall majority. Maybe the new version of Martin Baxter caculator with the tactical voting dimension, announced yesterday, might encourage more people to make bold predictions here.

All good fun and we are hoping that a sponsor will produce a reasonable prize. We are hoping that the interest in the competition will encourage some of the bookmakers to develop more interesting General Election markets.

Best of luck.

Mike Smithson