Will the runner-up tomorrow concede defeat and avoid the membership ballot? As the BBC is reporting tonight Tory officials are preparing for the possibility that the whole Tory battle could be over this week. With so many MPs now switching to David Cameron the suggestion is being made that whoever comes second might pull out and not put the issue to the final ballot of the membership. For this to happen Cameron would need to be so far far ahead…
The money piles on Cameron In the immediate aftermath of his afternoon’s first round ballot of Tory MPs the David Cameron price has moved to 0.32/1 on the betting exchanges and 2/7 with the conventional bookies. This compares with the 0.38/1 in the Labour leader betting that’s currently available on the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to take over from Tony Blair as Labour leader. Apart from Ken Clarke the big loser from this evening’s vote must surely be David Davis who…
Keep your eye on the David Davis price In the last Tory MP leadership ballot, the confidence vote on IDS in October 2003, the best guide to what was going on during the afternoon was on the betting screens. As I recall the poll closed at 6.30pm but an hour before there were exceptional changes on the betting exchange market on who would be Tory leader at the General Election. Michael Howard and David Davis had been running pretty close…
Is today the end for the former Chancellor? If the betting markets and those who took part in PB.C’s prediction competition have got this right then Ken Clarke’s long-standing hope of becoming leader of his party and Prime Minister looks set to end at about 5.20 pm this afternoon – when the results of the first round of the Tory leadership ballot are announced. In the leadership betting the rush to Cameron has continued and he has been trading overnight…
As we said this morning the current prices on Cameron winning are so tight that it has reached the stage where the return might not be worth the risk. If you can get £100 on the current Betfair level of 1.58 a winning bet would produce only £58 profit less commission. On IG’s Binary spread-market, which has just re-opened, the Cameron spread is 58-66 which is even tighter. But there is a great opportunity on Sporting Index’s BetHilo spread market…
Can we expect any more surprises? Tory MPs go into the first round of voting tomorrow with punters – as the above chart showing the implied probability of success based on best betting prices indicates – thinking that this is a one horse race. With the media almost totally focused on the Cameron drug issue the run-up to tomorrow’s vote has seen little discussion on policy issues with David Davis, Liam Fox and Ken Clarke finding it almost impossible to…
Tories divide 69:29 saying hard drugs should not be a barrier The absence of bad stories in the Sunday papers and a new opinion poll have led to heavy betting on David Cameron this morning. On the market sensitive Betfair exchange his price has tightened from 0.85/1 to 0.72/1 while the betting recovery on David Davis has been reversed. For the last few days there has been a strong view that today’s papers, particularly the Mail on Sunday, could be…
But the News of the World has a splash about George Osborne After the mounting speculation that at least one of the Sunday papers was trying to “find dirt” on Tory contender, David Cameron, the Shadow Education Secretary and betting favourite seems to have escaped unscathed this morning. There is a big story, however, in the News of the World showing a picture of Cameron’s close colleague and campaign chief, George Osborne, with his arms round a woman described as…