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At GE2019 only 7 seats had lower turnouts The sad and sudden death last Friday of former prominent trade unionist, Jack Dromey, means there is a by-election in the Birmingham Erdington constituency where he had been the MP since GE2010. I’ve no doubt that following their North Shropshire and Chesham & Amersham success the LDs will discreetly be testing the water in the seat where their candidate lost her deposit at GE2019. The percentage vote lead that Dromey had over…

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Another day and another report of alleged lockdown violations by the Prime Minister last summer and still Johnson survives. But as can be seen from the betting chart 2022 has now moved to favourite for his exit. We all know the process. 54 or more MPs write letters to Sir Graham Brady calling for a confidence ballot. The 1922 Committee chair then arranges this to hold a secret ballot of Tory MPs probably the following day. If the no confidence…

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Lots of speculation today about the future of Boris Johnson as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party. The big question is how long is he going to remain in the job and Betfair have just put one up on whether he’ll still be in the job at this year’s Conservative conference. The latest betting has this as a 70% chance which is almost the same odds that are currently being traded on Smarkets on him NOT being the…

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Reinvesting some of my North Shropshire wininngs At the weekend I placed a bet at 7.2 on Betfair that Starmer will be the next PM. To be successful this gamble has two very distinctive components – that Johnson goes into the next general election as Prime Minister and in that election the Tories lose their majority. I think many are overestimating the possibility of there being a change in the Tory leadership before the next general election. . Perhaps we…

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In looking at the above splits remember this was carried out amongst the group that you would expect to be most loyal to Johnson. If there is such division amongst CON members what do the wider pool of CON voters think? The polling was commissioned by SkyNews and comes after what has been the most difficult period of Johnson”s time at number 10 culminating in a second humiliating Westminster by-election in the formerly solid blue Tory seat of North Shropshire….

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Last September, the politics team at Smarkets decided to start offering a market on one local by-election every week. We’ve had a look back at the results to see if we could learn anything about whether the betting markets provided any useful information about the outcomes. On average, there are about five local by-elections across the UK every Thursday. Unsurprisingly, we’re usually going to pick whichever one we think looks the most competitive. (One other factor we sometimes consider is…

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