Politicalbetting “Balance of Money” prediction: Labour majority 51 (-1)

Not much movement in the Labour price today except just a small continuation of yesterday’s downward pressure. The mid-point average on Labour seats on spread betting markets that we feature is now 348.5 which means that the “balance of money prediction has moved just one seat to a Labour majority of 51 seats.

Opinion Polls: No new polls today – the only development has been the detailed data sets from Tuesday’s Populus and ICM surveys. Anthony Wells of UK Polling report highlights one feature that has had a big impact – the – “spiral of silence” adjustment (reallocating a proportion of “don’t knows” based on the theory that that many of them just don’t want to admit their voting intention and will actually vote in the same way they did last time). In recent months this hasn’t had a large effect, but it’s shown itself in the past couple of days. ICM, NOP and Populus showed Labour leads of 3%, 3% and 2% respectively. If they hasn’t adjusted for the “spiral of silence” their Labour leads would have been 2%, 1% and 0%.

In fact, looking at the detailed data, Populus was showing a very slight Tory lead rather than a 2% Labour one because of this calculation which has, in the past, been the subject of some debate. Without it this adjustment telephone polls would have been much closer to those that use other methodoligies.

Phone pollsters: LAB 37.5: CON 34: LD 19.25 Labour lead 3.5%
Other pollsters: LAB 35 CON 37.: LD 21 Conservative lead 2.5%

Betting Odds Main features today:-

Labour price tightening on who wins most seats

Higher turnout prices tighten

Lib Dem seat prices moving downwards

DUP spreads moving up at expense of UUP

Lib Dem share of vote spread moving up

In the conventional market, featured here this morning, on the Party wining most seats:- it’s LAB 1/14 or 15/100: CON 15/2, 8.4/1: LD 100/1, 229/1. Betting Exchange prices are shown in italics.

Commons Seat spread-betting prices

IG Index – LAB 346-351: CON 203-208: LD 65-68: SNP 5.5-6: PC 4.5-5: DUP 7.7-8.2: SF 4.3-4.8: UUP 2.8 – 3.3: SDLP 1.8 -2.3: RES 0.5-1: UKIP 0-0.5
Spreadfair – LAB 347. – 350: CON 204.5 –206.9: LD 65.3 –65.6: SNP 5.5 –5.7: PC 4.5 – 4.6: UKIP 0.1 – 0.3
Predicted turnout percentage:- IG Index 59-60.5% while Spreadfair have 60.1 -60.7%

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

Mike Smithson