Has Tony Blair repeated the 1997 and 2001 magic?

Tony Blair is heading for another landslide according to the Martin Baxter formula which takes a weighted average of the latest polls and then applies the changes on a uniform swing basis to each individual seat.

The Baxter “poll of polls” has LAB 38.8: CON 31.1: LD 22.2 which in terms of projected seats in the next House of Commons comes out at CON 166: LAB 395: LD 57

His figures show that the Conservatives will not increase at all on the 166 seats that the party won last time and that the 3.5% increase in Lib Dem increase vote share will only give it five extra seats.

Martin’s latest prediction is the product of a series of good polls for Tony Blair over the past few days in spite of the re-emergence of the Iraq issue and the fierce questioning of his veracity by Charles Kennedy and Michael Howard. In spite of this only one or two of the entrants in our £1000 General Election Prediction Competition – which closes at 2359 tonight – have been bold enough to forecast a Labour victory on such a scale.

The Guardian , meanwhile, has an ICM poll of marginals that suggests that the Conservatives are doing slightly better in their target seat which are currently Labour-held. On the other hand a new Mori poll has CON 29(-4): LAB 39(+3): LD 22 (nc)

Today we will see the betting take off and once again can I ask that you use the links on the site because we get a commission which helps to defray the big costs we are incurring.

Click for BinaryBet to see the range of interesting markets that our competition sponsor is operating.

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Click here for the full betting round-up.

Click here for betting on marginal seats.

Finally, can I echo what Anthony Wells is saying on his site….. emotions are going to get high in the next day or two, so be nice to each other. Stay on the topic, no gloating, no boasting, no personal abuse, no running, bombing, diving in the shallow end or heavy petting.

Mike Smithson