Team source says Davis failed to use his “killer sound-bites”? The general view, backed up by the opinion polls, was that David Davis was the clear winner of the Question Time debate between the two contenders the week before last – and there’s little doubt that his performance put new life into his campaign. But word has reached PB.C that those advising David Davis were very disappointed by what their man did in the debate with David Cameron and that…
Is supporting the Government the right opposition strategy? With yesterday’s 2-1 lead in the YouGov poll of Tory members and this morning’s endorsements from William Hague and Liam Fox we now regard David Cameron’s victory in the Tory leadership race as a forgone conclusion. Given that a significant proportion of the members have already voted only tragic events, surely, can stop him from doing it. Those punters, like me, who ignored the Times’s coverage of Wednesday’s Populus poll have done…
The challenger stumbles a bit after being called a “shit” Each new event in the seemingly never-ending saga that is the Tory leadership contest is having a big impact on the betting – as shown in the above chart on the implied probability of Davis winning based on best betting prices. Last night David Davis appeared on BBC 2’s Newsnight to be interviewed by the legendary Jeremy Paxman – still seen as the most formidable inquisitor on UK television. And…
The Times’ pollster puts Davis ahead amongst Tory voters The Times today publishes more findings from its November Populus Poll showing that of those in the survey who said they were Tories – 50% wanted Davis as leader against 37% supporting Cameron. This is a huge turnround and sparked off a great amount of activity on the betting markets. Last night the Betfair exchange had Cameron at 0.11/1 with Davis at more than 7/1. This morning Davis is down to…
The Lib Dems do 2 points better if Davis wins The Tories would only perform marginally better against Gordon Brown under David Cameron than David Davis according to an ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph this morning. If it was Brown versus Davis the split would be: Lab 41: CON 33: LD 18 If it was Brown versus Cameron the split would be: Lab 41: CON 34: LD 16 To the question of which contender would encourage “people like you”…
Updated 0940 Remember Nixon-Kennedy from 1960 As I predicted on Tuesday David Davis, did much better than expectations and this is being seen as a big boost to his campaign. But how much better, will it help him and are there still betting possibilities? According to today’s YouGov poll in the Telegraph Tory members who had watched the programme said Davis won by 45-18. Members are backing Cameron for leader by 68-32. This is down from 77-23 ten days ago….
Only the “don’t knows” will switch today The BBC devoted the whole of last night’s Question Time to three Davids: Conservative leadership contenders Davis and Cameron, and moderator Dimbleby. If you didn’t catch the broadcast, you can watch it by following the video link here. The opinion of most of our contributors was that neither Davis nor Cameron made a fatal mistake or scored an overwhelming hit: and despite Davis’s poor performance on the platform at the Tories’ October conference…
Take the 3/1 against Cameron getting below 66% At the May 5th General Election one of my biggest wins came from betting against the opinion polls. From my analysis I was convinced that they were overstating Labour and I backed my judgment with a four figure amount per unit spread bet. At a time when the likes of ICM, Populus and several others had the party in the 40s I bet that the equivalent of the GB share of the…