If electors in tomorrow’s two by-election vote in accordance with the latest national opinion polls then Labour will have huge victories in both Birmingham and Leicestereven though the party’s share nationally has dropped by ten per cent since the last General Election.

According to the latest General Election projection produced for each Westminster seat by the City mathematician, Martin Baxter, these would be the results:-

Birmingham Hodge Hill
LAB 50.8%: CON 19.3%: LIB 11.1%: OTH 18.6%

Leicester South
LAB 43.4%: CON 22.3%: LIBD 19.8%: OTH 14.45%

Baxter produces regular “poll of polls” figures and then publishes an election prediction based on a weighted average of the most recent ICM, YouGov, MORI and Populus surveys. He then applies the change in vote shares to each Westminster seat and publishes them on his web-site.

It is important to stress that these are national figures – not local ones and the predicted outcomes are certainly very different from the latest betting prices for Birmingham and Leicester.

It is a measure of how unique Westminster by-elections are that nobody expects results anything like these tomorrow night. Certainly the punters who have made the Lib Dems a heavy odds-on favourite in Leicester are not taking any notice!

WILL TONY BLAIR SURVIVE THE BUTLER REPORT?: Following the publication of the Butler Report, William Hill have made Tony Blair an odds-on shot to survive to lead Labour into the next General Election and offer odds of 8/15 that he will do so – or 11/8 that he will have resigned by then.