Will punters be more accurate than the pundits or the pollsters?

Each day here during the campaign Politicalbetting will take the average mid-point Labour price from the two spread markets that we feature and project a General Election result based entirely on how political gamblers are risking their money. It will be interesting to see whether the balance of money being risked is a more accurate predictor of the result than the opinion polls or other forecasting methodolgies. For while anybody can make predictions punters back their views up with real money. Today’s calculation shows a projected Labour seat level of 352.25 seats which we have converted into a Labour overall majority of 58.

Opinion Polls: This will be the first General Election for the new British Polling Council which was set up to “to encourage the highest professional standards in public opinion polling and to advance the understanding, among politicians, the media and general public, of how polls are conducted and how to interpret poll results.” Membership is limited to organisations who “can show to the satisfaction of the BPC that the sampling methods and weighting procedures used are designed to accurately represent the views of all people within designated target groups.”

The BPC requires transparency and given that all the main firms are members their surveys will be the only ones we feature. Be especially wary with reports of “private polls” by the political parties. Information about them is leaked for a purpose and should be treated as propaganda.

There is no change to our Polling Averages. Phone pollsters are showing LAB 39.5: CON 32.75: LD 19.25 while the other firms have LAB 36: CON 35.5: LD 21

Betting Odds With the delay in the announcement of the date of the election there’s been quite a bit of activity on the “date the the election“ markets. If you think that May 5th is an absolute certainty then a flutter at 1/20 makes reasonable sense. You should get paid out by Wednesday and this is not a bad return.

There’s been a very slight movement to Labour on the main market. Party wining most seats:- LAB 1/12 or 12/100: CON 15/2, 8/1: LD 100/1, 199/1. Betting Exchange prices are shown in italics.

Commons Seat spread-betting prices

IG Index – LAB 350-356: CON 198-203: LD 65-68: SNP 5.5-6: PC 4.5-5: RES 0.5-1: UKIP 0-0.5: DUP 7.5-8: SF 4.3-4.8: UUP 3 – 3.5: SDLP 1.8 -2.3
Spreadfair – LAB 351 – 353: CON 199.2 -201: LD 66 –68: SNP 5.3 –5.7: PC 4.4 – 4.6: UKIP 0.3 – 0.4
Predicted turnout percentage:- IG Index 58-60%

A full round-up of all General Election Betting is available here.

Mike Smithson