Are the Tories right to cry “foul” over the “biased” electoral system? The Tories are said to be drawing up plans to attack the “inbuilt advantage” in the electoral system that in recent elections has given Labour far more seats in proportion to votes cast than the other parties. In 2001 the Tories needed to get almost twice as many votes for each seat while the Lib Dems required three and a half times more. Partly this was due to…
Populus poll means – “Lib Dems four seats off being official opposition: Labour losing majority” Apart from a marking down of the Lib Dems the betting markets have hardly reacted to yesterday’s sensational Populus poll in the News of the World which when translated into seats means that Labour would not have an overall majority in the House of Commons and the Lib Dems would be just four seats short of being the official opposition. The figures with changes on…
Give a political bet as a present! If you’ve been celebrating or commiserating after Thursday’s by-elections you might be interested in a new gambling service where you can give political bets as presents. It’s all done online and you can give one to yourself. What’s promising is that the service, Flipem, does well thought out political bets and ran what we think was the only “size of majority” market on the Leicester South by-election, where we came across them. For…
Updated 1-50pm Will the Kerry-Edwards price tighten even further? At the end of the month thousands of Democrat delegates will head for their party’s Convention in Boston to endorse formally the Kerry-Edwards ticket and start the campaign. The choice of John Edwards for the V-P place has gone down well in the polls and they are scenting victory. Yet at the turn of the year, as the following shows, nobody gave the party a chance of ousting Bush from the…
Updated 1235 Online by-election betting now available The Government’s tactic of giving the minimum possible notice for the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections has meant that the media, and the bookmakers have yet to wake up to their huge significance. But William Hill now have markets on both by-elections available online. After an intensive week of campaigning many Lib Dems are now talking about a double – taking both seats. This would have huge consequences for both Tony…
Big New General Election Profit Opportunities The biggest betting opportunity this week comes from the online bookmaker Bet365 which has opened three new General Election markets at prices that are out of alignment with what is available elsewhere and, indeed, what it is itself offering in other markets. Just compare their prices with the current Commons seats spread betting prices – which we believe represent a fair current reflection of what is likely to happen – Tony Blair to be…
“LAB 359: CON 198” – Is it really so bad for Michael Howard? Our longstanding call on Labour to win most seats at the General Election and the huge mountain that Michael Howard has to climb are, on the face of it, reinforced by this latest General Election prediction by City financial mathematician, Martin Baxter. LAB 33.22% (-8.87%): CON 32.46% (-0.24%): LIBD 20.77% (+1.93%) This gives the following Commons seats- LAB 359 (-44): CON 198 (+33): LIBD 58 (+7) Overall…
Euro results meaningless – but YouGov looks set to win the pollsters’ test For political gamblers the Euro elections results are almost totally meaningless. There were no betting markets and all they showed is that people vote differently for the European Parliament (above) than they do domestically – as is markedly demonstrated by the completely different vote shares from the same voters on the same day in the local elections. Thus in the two sets of elections on Thursday almost…