Test your skill in Double Carpet’s By-Election Competition

With this Thursday’s by-elections in outer London and South Wales presenting the parties with their first major tests at the ballot box since May’s local elections, you are invited to make your predictions for Blaenau Gwent and Bromley & Chislehurst, and put your punditry skills to the test against the rest of the politicalbetting.com readers.

To make for smooth running of the competition, please enter your predictions in the order set out below. For each party, you may make your predictions to one decimal place.

What will be the percentage vote shares for the following parties?

Blaenau Gwent (House of Commons)

Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid Cymru, Independent (Dai Davies)

Blaenau Gwent (Welsh Assembly)

Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid Cymru, Trish Law (no party description)

Bromley & Chislehurst

Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, UK Independence Party

The Scoring: Your score for each party will be the difference between your prediction and the actual result (regardless of whether you are under or over in your prediction). Thus if you predict the Lib Dems in Bromley to win 37.2% of the vote and they get 26.9%, your score is 10.3. Your scores will be added up for all fourteen predictions, and the entry with the lowest combined score is the overall winner.

The winning entries for the three individual by-elections will also be announced, and in the event of a tie for the overall competition, the player who has the best predictions for any individual by-election will be the winner.

Your entries should be posted by no later than 7pm on Wednesday 28th June, and in the event of any dispute, the competition organiser’s decision is final.

Paul Maggs (“Double Carpet”)

This thread is for entries only. Please use the previous thread for comments on the competition and the by-election.