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Month: May 2004

Predicting low turn-out elections

Predicting low turn-out elections

With almost all the parties having launched their local and Euro campaigns for “Super Thursday” on June 10 the nightmare for political gamblers and others who like to predict these things is how do you deal with very low-turnouts? For low-turnouts can completely distort a result making prediction very challenging and can cause politicians and commentators to draw totally wrong conclusions about the way the public feels. Before the 1999 Euro Elections all the polls had support for Labour at…

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Labour recovering slightly – but bad news for all

Labour recovering slightly – but bad news for all

This morning’s poll in the Telegraph by YouGov brings bad news for all three parties at the start of the Euro Elecion campaign. YouGov has picked up the trend recorded in the latest polls by MORI and ICM to show a marginal improvement in Labour’s position even though Tony Blair has been having a torrid time. The change in the gap between Labour and Conservative has, like MORI, improved by one percentage point in Labour’s favour. YouGov is showing Michael…

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Monday Call – May 3 2004

Monday Call – May 3 2004

NEW – The Politicalbetting.com Market Prices Search Engine Politicalbetting.com now has its own dedicated pages comparing all the latest political betting odds, including betting exchanges, supplied by the Besbetting.com odds search engine. This scans through the main bookmakers offering bets on political markets; identifies market movements and discovers the best prices. Our new agreement with Bestbetting will help us to provide an even better service to our growing user base. UK General Election Tony Blair is in for a terrible…

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Don’t confuse votes with seats..

Don’t confuse votes with seats..

………and don’t confuse seats for votes. A consistent theme on Politicalbetting.com is that political gamblers should not confuse votes for seats. We’ve repeatedly pointed out that because of differing turnouts and the way the Westminster seats are distributed Labour can still win a Commons majority even if its vote slumps by 10% at the next General Election. But there’s another danger that was repeated by the Guardian in its main leader yesterday – do not confuse Labour’s healthy Commons seat…

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Flying blind in London…

Flying blind in London…

……………………………………….betting without the aid of opinion polls The next big political betting event – the London Mayoral Election – is less than six weeks away but there has been almost no polling information to guide punters and very little media coverage. Unlike in 2000 just one bookmaker is offering odds and there is a single, but lively, betting exchange market. When Ken Livingstone was first elected in 2000 he was taking on the Labour establishment and his fight made big…

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