Labour spread price starts to slip

For the first time since Tony Blair announced the election a month ago the Labour price on the spread markets has started to slip. The mid-afternoon fix from IG saw a two seat drop which means a four seat reduction in the projected majority.

This is not a major drop but it is significant and is the product of Labour backers not being as confident as they were this morning. There’s also been more money going on the Lib Dems.

Part of this was started by the morning’s batch of opinion polls – none of which had the 40+% shares for Labour that had helped the spread price to move upwards. The latest price from IG Index is 366-370 seats putting it alongside the Sporting Index price. Spreadfair , which is a much smaller market, is at 369.1-369.6.

All this causes a change in our Balance of Money prediction to a Labour majority of 90 seats.

IG Index have also reduced the Labour vote share percentage to 36.75-37.25%.

Mike Smithson