DUE TO A TECHNICAL MESS-UP THIS POST HAS HAD TO BE RE-PUBLISHED

But how comfortable are you about betting on the polls?

The spread betting firm IG Index has teamed up with YouGov to open a new weekly market based on how the reputations of leading polticians will go up and down in the pollster’s BrandIndex ratings.

Each week more than 11,000 on the pollsters panel complete surveys asking them to rate a range of different brands. In addition polticians names are mentioned and people are asked to tick boxes against those they feel positively about and those where they have a negative view. For the betting market YouGov is subtracting the negative data from the positive and adding 100 to create a form of index.

The market will be settled on what has happened by Friday. I am assured that strict measures are being taken so that the data cannot be accessed by anybody while betting is taking place. These were the starting index positions this week.

William Hague 95.4
Boris Johnson 94.2
Hilary Benn 89.2
David Cameron 88.3
Alan Johnson 83
Harriet Harman 76.9
Sir Menzies Campbell 75.5
John Reid 73.6
Jack Straw 71.7
Gordon Brown 67.7
Patricia Hewitt 67
Tony Blair 60.9

I placed a £50 sell bet on Cameron this morning. The spread, as can be seen above, is 89 – 89.5. So for every point that the Tory leader is down on the 89 price I get £50. For every point above I will lose that. I reckon that it has not been a good week so far for the Tory leader and this will be reflected in the BrandIndex. Who knows?

IG Index is one of the betting firms that pays Politicalbetting a commission for new customers who sign up aftyer coming from the site. If you are opening an account please mention PBC – it helps me with the running costs.

Mike Smithson