Punters think they’ll be leaving 42 weeks earlier

After a week which has seen the Blunkett resignation; the Government’s majority being reduced to one on the Terror Bill, and an opinion poll showing the Tories only two points behind there’s been big movement on the betting markets.

Punters having been moving out of Labour as the next General Election winners and the prices on the “When will Blair go” indicate a much earlier departure than gamblers were ready to risk money on barely a week ago.These are the main changes:-

The current spread on the length of Blair’s third time suggests a departure by July 2007. Only one week ago Cantor Spreadfair had a spread of 135-165 weeks on the length of Blair’s third term starting last May. Today that is down to 109 – 123 weeks – a huge shift in such a short period.

In just seven days the chances of Blair being still at Number 10 after January 1 2008, as rated by punters has moved from from 37% to 32% and the trend is downwards.

Since the Labour conference at the end of September the implied probability of a Labour seat victory, based on best betting prices, has slipped from 67% to 57%. Could it reach evens in the next few weeks?

The Spreadfair market on the number of Labour seats will get at the next General Election is down to 307-313 suggesting that the party will be short of an overall majority.

The poll, by British Polling Index had with changes on October – CON 35 (+2): LAB 37 (-4): LD 20 (+2).

So BPIX has the Tories through the 33% ceiling while the Lib Dems are holding onto their General Election share. It will be interesting to see if the November Populus survey, expected to be published in the Times tomorrow, shows similar trends.

At the General Election on May 5th the pollster had the Tories correct at 33% but were 0.8% over with Labour and 1.7% under with the Lib Dems. In terms of accuracy they came in second place ahead of bigger names like ICM, YouGov and Populus.

In the Tory leadership betting there’s been a sharp move back to David Cameron overnight. On the Betfair exchange he was trading at 1.14-1.15 at 9pm last night. The current price is 1.1. So a £100 winning bet place yesterday would produce a £14/15 profit. This morning the best you can get would give £10.

Mike Smithson