So will it be Ken or Boris? – the PBC London Mayor Competition

Just four days until London goes to the polls – who do you think will be the new Mayor and how will the various candidates fare?

You will be asked to predict the first preference shares for Ken, Boris, and Brian, plus the BNP, Greens, Left List, and UKIP, and then the final vote share for your predicted overall winner. (Final vote share is winner’s total votes / total votes for top two candidates x 100 – Ken’s final vote share in 2004 was 55.4%)

Please click here to open the competition which is in Excel format:

London Mayor Competition

Please do not make any predictions in this thread as they will not count.

The scoring system is available on the second sheet of the attachment, and the prize will be a copy of Mike’s book The Political Punter.

Save the attachment (if you open it straight away it may be in read-only mode) and send your predictions to pbpredcomp@yahoo.co.uk – entries close 7pm Wednesday.

International round-up

A poll out today by Red C in the Sunday Business Post suggests that support for a “Yes” vote in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is dropping, with the Yes/No/Undecided split now 35-31-34. Paddy Power offer evens on a “No” vote, which may be value – what do pb’s resident Irish experts, Neil, Yokel, and Caveman think?

The markets: St John may be glad to know that I’ll be keeping an eye an international betting markets in DC on Sunday, although they are fairly quiet at present away from the US. One however that I do think is value is to back the Nationals in New Zealand – they have had comfortable poll leads for a while now and although trading is very thin on Betfair, there is £173 available at 1.31. I hope to feature NZ in more depth as we approach the election in the autumn.

Finally, a useful article from Bloomberg ahead of the German election in 2009, speculating on whether SPD leader Kurt Beck or Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the popular Foreign Minister, will be going head-to-head with Merkel as the party’s Kanzlerkandidat in the Bundestag election. Merkel looks currently nailed on for a second term, with the CDU/CSU having had big leads for months – the key question is what the makeup of the next government will be.

Paul Maggs “Double Carpet”