At last the Politicalbetting forecasters of 2005 are…

In my introduction on May 2 to our General Election Competition I took the precaution of stating..” My rulings, however unreasonable, on all matters relating to this competition are final. I am right even when I am wrong.

There are two issues which could affect the result. Was Labour’s majority 66 or 67 seats (because of the South Staffordshire situation) and how do we handle the rounding on the vote shares. A further issue is that I did state that potential winners should make a claim.

There were three entries where the scores were almost dead level depending on how you dealt with South Staffs and rounding up or down. BigGibbon (182), Kevin (118) and Zach Veitch 183.

Taking everything into account I declare that entry number 183, Zach Veitch is the Politicalbetting General Election Forecaster of 2005.

His entry was Labour majority 67; Lib Dem seats 66; Labour GB vote share 36.2%; Conservative vote share 33.3%; LD votes share 23.4%; pollsters over-estimating Labour 6; Nick Palmer’s performance 43.4; Richard Willis’s performance 38.9% and Charles Anglin 27.8%.

What makes this entry outstanding is that as well as getting the majority right Zach’s vote share forecast for Labour is correct and he is only one tenth of a percent out with the Tories. He was also dead right with the number of Labour over-stating pollsters. Well done Zach and well done to the two runners-up Kevin and BigGibbon.

Zach now receives the prize of a Binary Bet account with £1,000 cash in it.

On the New Year competition the top entrant from those who made claims was Harry Hayfield.

My apologies for the delay in announcing this but coming to a decision between the top three in the final week competition was difficult.

Mike Smithson