Is now the time for a trading bet on Labour? Could the opportunistic call on Andrew Marr’s programme by UKIP’S leader, Nigel Farage, for Tory MPs to defect over the grammar school issue be a foretaste of how things might get very tricky for the Tory leadership in the next few months. Of course there are not going to be any defections to UKIP but the Farage interview does underline the challenges that the leadership faces. Until now the conventional…
Is this down to punters anticipating a Brown bounce? The chart shows how punters are assessing the general election chances of the two main parties on the Betfair “overall majority” market. As can be seen there been a movement back to Labour and now the price of the party being returned with a fourth successive majority has tightened to 2.7/1. The hung parliament option remains the most popular with a current price of 1.44/1 and this is where my money…
But the Tories return to 42% on the named leader question The May Populus survey for the Times, out this morning shows a biggish swing from the Lib Dems to Labour but with the Tory share remaining static. The headline numbers with changes on last month are CON 37% (nc): LAB 33% (+4): LD 17% which, if repeated at a general election would produce a hung parliament with Labour having most seats. But when the “named leader” question was asked…
Will the anti-Blair factions move back when Gordon’s in charge All the focus from this morning’s YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has been on the relationship between Labour and the Tories and what happens when the party leaders are named. One number, however, is missing from the on-line reports of the survey – and this could make grim reading for the Lib Dems. The main numbers, as reported in the previous article had CON 38, LAB 34, LD 15,…
Will “Gordon Brown for Britain” go down well with the voters? This is Betfair’s election outcome market and shows how punters have been fairly consistent in their view over the past year that we are heading for a hung parliament. The only change has been the move by the Tories into the second place position. The events of this week have yet to have a significant impact. What is likely to cause a change is the first batch of polls…
How will this move in the Brown era? On the eve of the Tony Blair’s historic announcement the table shows how punters were assessing the chances of the main parties for the next general election in the Spreadfair commons seats market. In this form of betting you buy or sell seat numbers and you can trade them day in and day out right until the final election is known maybe three years hence. You also do not need to tie…
Can we extrapolate in the way the Sunday Times does? Both the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph carry projections this morning about what Thursday’s results would mean in general election terms. In the Telegraph Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde suggests that the CON-LAB-LD split was 40%-27%-26% which he suggests would give the Tories an overall majority of 20 seats. The Sunday Times projection of a 54 overall seat for the Tories is based on work by Professors Colin Rallings…
Labour’s wannabee leader continues to trail the Bullingdon boy Two threads this morning both from new YouGov polls in the Daily Telegraph. The first coverered in the previous story shows a sensational rise in support for the Greens ahead of next week’s election for the Edinburgh parliament. The second, which is the papers main lead, is from the main April survey by YouGov. The focus is on Gordon’s position in relation to Cameron in the forced choice question of whether,…