Just a week to go – how many will vote?

In an effort to boost turnout in next Thursday’s elections which are being held in all parts of England outside London the Home Office has launched a multi-media advertising campaign, including the TV one above, to raise awareness and help boost turnout.

At the moment there is little betting interest apart from on how many will actually bother to go to the polling stations.

The big political interest next Thursday is on the Corby by-election to fill the vacancy created by Louise Mensch stepping down. If the polling is correct the Tories are set to lose to Labour.

The bookies that have set up PCC markets have put the threshold pretty low. Ladbrokes are offering 5/6 on it being either more than or less than 17.5%. Bet Victor have 8/11 that it will be higher than that and evens that it will be lower.

The awareness raising exercise has not been helped by the relative lack of coverage in the national media which tends not to notice that anything is happening unless it’s going on in London as well.

There appears to be little activity on the ground though I guess there’ll be a fair amount of phone canvassing aimed almost solely at getting existing party supporters to the polls.

The deposit level of £5,000 and the need to get 100 signatures of voters on the nomination papers has kept the number of candidates down.

Overall I reckon that the 17.5% turnout threshold for the bet will be exceeded but not by that much.

Mike Smithson

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