Can Cameron get more than 80% of the membership vote?

With Cameron looking an odds-on certainty to succeed Michael Howard there’s a new market on the share of the vote that he’ll get in the membership ballot.

Given that the current best conventional bookie price on him winning is 1/10 why not try a different bet where the returns could be higher. You can get an attractive price with Paddy Power’s “what will Cameron’s vote share be” punt.

The prices are: Cameron share of 0-65% 2-1: 66-80% evens: more than 80% 5/2.

In this market everything depends on how much weight you give to the YouGov polls of party members which have been appearing at regular intervals. The last had Cameron beating Davis by 72-22%.

The big judgement you have to make is whether the six week campaign is going to strengthen further the Cameron position or if Davis is going to eat into the total. This is a hard call but in the absence of any other evidence the 66-80% price of evens looks like a good bet.

With ballots due to be mailed from the end of next week it is reckoned that a large proportion of votes will be cast in the first period so campaigning activity towards the end might not have much of an impact on the outcome.

Mike Smithson