….

Who do you believe? YouGov, ICM or MORI?

Ladbrokes have just added to the range of betting options on the London Mayoral race with markets on the vote shares that both Ken and Boris manage to end up with.

Given the very different evidence from the opinion polls you might as well be betting on YouGov vs ICM/MORI. The former is showing the Tory with a 13% lead while the latter have a completely different picture.

Remember this is the vote at the first stage. In 2004 the splits were KEN 35.7%: NORRIS 28.2%: HUGHES (LD) 14.8%.

My guess is that there will be much more voting for minor party candidates at this stage and that the segments of 35%-39.99% for both Boris and Ken might be the best bets.

Hopefully one of the spread firms will put up a spread market on this.

If you are betting please click on the price panels above. This provides the site with the revenue to help sustain the operation. At the moment the advertising and betting commissions amount to gross amount of less than £500 a month which simply is not enough. You can also use the links to bet on any other event including a full range of sporting options.

UPDATE: Julia Clarke, head of political research at Ipsos-MORI has posted a response to those who were questioning the form of wording for the pollster’s Mayoral survey for Unison which was published yesterday. This is what she writes:-

In response to the discussion about the question wording of the two mayoral polls Ipsos MORI has published so far this year:

The survey conducted in February for the Labour Party used our standard mayoral voting intention question. The survey conducted in April, for UNISON, used a slightly different question introduction, naming the Green candidate as well as the three main candidates, because it was intended to replicate a survey conducted in 2004 for the same client, which also named the Green candidate (it is reasonable to choose Sian Berry as the fourth candidate to be named in any case, as she has received more recent media coverage than other minor candidates, and was in clear 4th place in our February poll in which no minor party candidates were named in the question).

Of course it is possible that this change in the question wording will have had some effect on responses, probably by increasing the Green share of first preference votes. It is not obvious which method provides a more accurate reflection of real voting behaviour at the ballot box. It seems unlikely that the change will have had a significant effect on the final share (including transfers) for Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson since those whose first choice was Green were able to name a second choice as well. I have put an additional table up on the website of the ‘criss cross’ of first vote against second vote, here:(although due to our new website this is taking longer than anticipated — it will be up very soon if it isn’t now!). This should help to clarify things.

Cheers,

Julia Clark
Head of Political Research
Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute

Mike Smithson