politicalbetting.com

Competition Time I am offering a £40 Amazon gift voucher to anyone who comes closest to predicting accurately the London Borough Election Results. It is quite straightforward. Each contestant will receive one point for guessing correctly the political control of each London borough after May 4th. You have five choices: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Other, or No Overall Control. No Overall Control means failure by any one party to win more than half of the seats on an authority. Thus,…

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But is this just the YouGov “magnifier” working again? In a poll that will send shock waves throughout British politics a YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph today puts support for the British National Party up from just above zero to seven per cent. In echoes of the internet pollster’s surveys in May 2004 showing a huge surge for UKIP ahead of the Euro elections YouGov has the following shares with changes on last month: CON 33%(-3), LAB 35%(-1), LD17%(-1),…

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Is Tory progress inevitably bad news for the Lib Dems? The primary focus of any general election prediction or analysis is on the fortunes of the two main parties. However an often overlooked aspect of a general election result is that of the electoral relationship between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. Since the 1950s it can be argued that the performance of these two parties have been intertwined to such an extent that their electoral performance is greatly dependent…

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Could covert recordings rule Miliband out of the race? The Sunday Times has published further transcripts of the conversations between the city academies fundraiser, Des Smith and its reporter who was posing as an intermediary. The paper, which back in January first broke the “cash for honours” scandal, reveals that Smith recommended that the second favourite to become the next Labour leader, David Miliband, should be should be tagetted. At the time the Miliband price was 7/1. It’s now eased…

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HOW RELIABLE IS THE NEWSNIGHT PREDICTION ? A week ago, Newsnight produced an analysis of local by-election results by Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings, which received considerable publicity. Studying this year’s local by-election results, they suggested that the national equivalent vote shares which the parties would win on May 4th would be CON 33: LD 29%: LAB 28 (compared to 34%, 27%, and 33% respectively in 2002). On that basis, Labour could expect to lose about 100 seats nationally, the…

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Who’ll be ahead in the Camera in the morning? With traffic on the site reaching record levels I’m opening up a new Italian election thread to ease some of the strain on the PB.C server. With thousands of people trying to open up a 400-comment thread at the same time it is inevitable that things will be slow. Please post here from now on. Many thanks – and good luck. Mike Smithson

Will “Lucky Tony’s” friend manage to squeeze in? An evening of high tension in Italy has led to hectic trading on the Betfair market as the prices on Silvano Berlusconi and Roman Prodi has moved from one to the other as more information came in. As soon as the polls closed the exit surveys seemed to show that Prodi had it and prices swung sharply his way. Then as real results started to emerge there’s been huge swings. At one…

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Could Rentoul be right – that the unthinkable is now thinkable? In the ongoing turbulence over the Labour succession the main developments over the weekend have been a hint by the former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, that he might run for the job and an extraordinary piece by John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday suggesting that Gordon Brown could be sacked. The Milburn move came in a TV interview in which he repeatedly refused to rule himself out of…

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