Paul Maggs has devised and will manage the following competition. Simply predict:

1. Who the new leader will be?
2. The percentage of the first preference votes your predicted new leader wins
3. The percentage of the overall votes (after re-distribution of second preferences) your predicted new leader wins

You may make your predictions to one decimal place

Scoring

Your score will be the difference between your prediction and the actual result at both stages of the voting (regardless of whether your predictions are higher or lower than the actual results).

For example, your predictions are Hughes to be the new leader, with 42% of the first preference votes and 54% of the overall votes. The results give Hughes 44% of the first preferences and 48% of the overall votes. Your score on the first preferences is 44 – 42 = 2. Your score on the overall votes is 54 – 48 = 6, so your total score is 2 + 6 = 8.

The entry with the lowest combined score will win the competition.

Note that if your predicted new leader is eliminated after the first preferences, he will score zero in the overall votes. In the example above, if you had predicted Hughes to take 54% of the overall votes but he is eliminated, you would score 54 on the overall votes.

Please post entries in the thread below before 2000 GMT on Wednesday March 1st 2006. Any comments on the competition should be made on the previous thread.

Paul has also devised a prize competion. Details are available here.