Why I’m scaling back on my “Tory buy” position

As far as I can see there is only one voting intention poll this morning and that is from the non-British Polling Council registered BPIX in the Mail on Sunday

Frustratingly the only figures available online are a CON-LAB split of 40%-35% with no information about the Lib Dems. The pollster found there was a 37%-37% split when it asked how respondents would vote if Tony Blair was still Labour leader.

There are other polls in the Telegraph and News of the World where no voting intention questions appear to have been asked. Such responses are not normally turnout related and it is unlikely that overall the samples would have been weighted in line with past vote recall. As a result I don’t attach that much importance to the findings, which as you would expect, are not that good for Brown or Darling.

BPIX seems pretty good for Labour especially as the fieldwork will have taken place after the latest in the Northern Rock saga, the missing data discs and the concerted attacks on Brown from the former army chiefs. The Tories are down one point and Labour down two compared with the last survey from the pollster six weeks ago.

The message that will hearten Downing Street is that the Tories don’t seem to be benefiting from the current troubles and it is the share that Cameron’s party is getting that is crucial.

As I reported on Friday morning I was quite heavily into a Tory buy position on the Commons Seats spread markets. I had contracts giving me an average profit of £150 a seat on every Tory seat above 284. I added a further £30 at the 293 level. Since then the polls have not been as decisively pro-Tory as I was expecting and I have closed down £135 of the bets giving me a profit, to transfer to my bank account, of just on £1,000.

My Friday position of £180 a Tory seat was beyond my comfort zone when it became clear that the party’s polling shares were falling back. The great thing with this form of betting is that you can operate in the short-term.

UPDATE 11.27am: It would appear that the ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph was the same survey that the Guardian reported yesterday morning. This did have voting intention figures so some of my comments above are probably not as valid. The findings from non-voting intention questions do contain the views of many people who are very unlikely to vote. When you are betting your prime concern is what voters think.

Mike Smithson