Camapaign Countdown April 4th

Camapaign Countdown April 4th

Will punters be more accurate than the pundits or the pollsters? Each day here during the campaign Politicalbetting will take the average mid-point Labour price from the two spread markets that we feature and project a General Election result based entirely on how political gamblers are risking their money. It will be interesting to see whether the balance of money being risked is a more accurate predictor of the result than the opinion polls or other forecasting methodolgies. For while…

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Can Blair beat Martin Baxter again?

Can Blair beat Martin Baxter again?

How Michael Howard could be a winner on votes but a big loser on seats The main way of trying to work out what specific vote shares will mean in terms of Commons seats is to use the calculator created and maintained by the ex-Cambridge, and now City mathematician, Martin Baxter. His approach, available to all online, is to take projected vote shares and to apply them in terms of a uniform national swing to each constituency in Great Britain….

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Campaign Countdown – April 3rd

Campaign Countdown – April 3rd

A daily feature: Throughout the the election we will be producing a daily Campaign Countdown here with the key numbers from the latest reported polls, our polling averages, Commons seat spread betting figures, and main betting odds from the conventional betting markets. We are hoping to have live betting price feeds as we get closer to the day. New Opinion Polls Reported: One new opinion poll this morning – from Communicate Research in the Independent on Sunday where the surveying…

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Communicate Research – Labour lead down by 6%

Communicate Research – Labour lead down by 6%

Tories up in spite of Flight sacking row In the first national poll to be carried since the sacking of the Arundel MP, Howard Flight, there been a big improvement in the relative position of the Conservatives. The survey, by Communicate Research for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday shows a significant drop in the Labour lead compared with last week’s survey that had Tony Blair’s party doing substantially better than at the 2001 General Election. The figures are with changes on…

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Will the phone pollsters outperform the rest?

Will the phone pollsters outperform the rest?

Introducing the Politicalbetting Polling Averages With the declaration of the May 5th General election, only, perhaps, forty-eight hours away a big decision for gamblers could be whether or not they believe the telephone pollsters or are they going to put their money on those firms that use other methods to assess public opinion. For a big gap has emerged between the firms that rely on the phone and those that don’t and during the election campaign we will be producing…

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Guardian Political Blog of the Year – we are pulling out

Guardian Political Blog of the Year – we are pulling out

This has just been sent to the Guardian. Dear Backbencher, Re: Political Weblog Awards. Could you withdraw the undersigned from the running for your Political Commentary Awards. In the light of unusual voting patterns and your suggestion that readers “vote early and often” seemingly being taken literally, any award seems worthless to us. Together we represent 4/5 of the nominees and the great majority of the votes. Adam Smith Institute Guido Fawkes’ blog Harry’s Place Political Betting Can I thank…

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What’s happened to Labour “missing” 38.5%?

What’s happened to Labour “missing” 38.5%?

Comparing voters’ intentions with what they said they did in 2001 An interesting way of looking at opinion polls is to compare what people said they did last time with the current intention – and the results are quite striking and contrast quite sharply with the published headline figures. From the detailed data in the latest YouGov poll 914 people had previously recorded that they’d voted Labour at the 2001 General Election. Yet now only 562 said they were voting…

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Can Michael Howard take on the Archbishop and the Police?

Can Michael Howard take on the Archbishop and the Police?

Are their dangers in the “politics of fear”? Has there ever been an election where Conservative campaign tactics have come under simultaneous attack in from what in previous times would have been regarded as two great pillars of conservatism in society – the head of the Church of England and the body representing the country’s Chief Constables? Yesterday’s attack by senior police chiefs over a Conservative campaign advertisement on crime for its “misleading statistics”, and the Archbishop of Canterbury warning…

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