Just listen to Nick Robinson on his return from holiday Yesterday I suggested that the West Yorkshire seat of Morley & Outwood might be good for a speculative punt because this had the makings of being the sensation of election night – a bit like Michael Portillo’s defeat at the 1997 general election. This, of course, is the new seat that Ed Balls will be fighting and on the face of it there is a pretty solid Labour majority. But…
Sporting Index Spread Markets The market average: CON majority of 62 Today Politicalbetting’s projection for the general election based on what’s going on in the betting markets takes on a new dimension with the inclusion for the first time of Betfair’s new election line betting market. This was launched last week and involves punters entering into bets at evens on whether the parties will get more or less than the stated numbers. The great thing about this new type of…
General Election constituency betting Could the Morley seat be the “Portillo moment – 2010 version”? We can all, I’m sure, remember it well. In the days immediately after Tony Blair’s stunning landslide in May 1997 the moment everybody seemed to be talking about was the result from Enfield and Southgate where Michael Portillo’s shattering and unexpected defeat seemed to epitomise the whole election and the total collapse of the Tories. For Labour’s performance there was absolutely staggering and went way…
PR Week Make of this what you will One of the more off-beat places to look for information about life in No. 10 since the Brownite take-over has been the trade magazine PR Week which has much to chew over in its latest edition. David Singleton writes: “…One Downing Street insider said there had been ‘endless conference calls and crisis meetings’ since the story of McBride’s plans to smear senior Tories broke on Saturday. The source added: ‘This is a…
Will this be the big election betting market Betfair has just introduced a new form of betting for the general election – called line betting – which seems ideal for a betting exchange where individual punters fix the prices through what they are prepared to offer rather than this being done by the bookmaker. So how does it work? Look at the panel above and you’ll see sells in the blue shaded area and buys in the pink shaded one….
Is it just the political nerds who are interested? After such an intensive period of dramatic political developments I just wonder how this is going down amongst the voters at large. Are they really responding in the way that the Westminster village seems to be and, of course, posters on PB’s threads which are now running to record lengths? Or could it be that when the next polls come out over the weekend and early next week that we don’t…
Times Online What chances her survival if the Green case is dropped? At the end of November, less than a day after the police raid on Damian Green’s offices in the Palace of Westminster, I placed as much as William Hill would allow me at 7/4 that Jacqui Smith would move from being home secretary at some time before the general election. In spite of everything that bet is still outstanding. The price later tightened to 6/4 and the time…
ICM Research May 1994 Did Blair concede too much at the Granita? We all know about the famous dinner at the Granita in Islington at the end of May 1994 which has shaped British politics ever since. For Brown came away from that meeting thinking that he had Blair’s backing as the heir apparent in exchange for not pursuing his own candidature. Yet just looking back at the polling of the period this seems crazy. Brown was simply not in…