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…
…… How many votes will each get in Tuesday’s ballot? We’ve argued about it for six months and on Tuesday the first ballots will be cast in the 2005 Tory leadership election. How is this going to go? Will front-runner David Cameron be hurt by not answering the drug questions? Will former front-runner David Davis cruise into the next round as easily as his number of declared supporters suggest – or will some change their minds in the secrecy of…
Will the Sundays kill off the Cameron challenge? As our chart shows the first six months of the battle to replace Michael Howard as Tory leader has seen huge swings between the front-runners. What the graph illustrates is the implied probability of success based on the best betting prices available. Even though this is the final weekend of the first phase this contest is still very difficult to call and much could depend on what is in tomorrow’s papers. Will…