politicalbetting.com – Page 458 – The web's premier resource for political betting.

Just two days to go to Super Thursday and the Tories now an 83% chance on Betfair to take Hartlepool

4/5/2021 Mike Smithson Comments 0 Comment

If punters have got this right then the Tories are heading for a sensational victory in the Hartlepool by-election on Thursday. The big driver today has been the second Survation constituency poll on Hartlepool showing an even wider gap than was reported four weeks ago. Then the Tories had a 7% lead. In the latest small sample poll, which was carried out from April 23rd to 29th, that is now 17%. The figures are with changes on the general election:…

Read More Read More

The Great Unknown: A Betting History Of The Great British By-Election

4/5/2021 Editor Comments 0 Comment

The modern era of political betting began in 1963 when Ladbrokes’ Ron Pollard opened up a book on the Conservative Party leadership contest. Shrewd punters could back the outsider Alec Douglas-Home at 16/1 over the hot 5/4 favourite Rab Butler….. In recent years we have seen political betting reach new heights, becoming an integral part of the political narrative itself. Figures as diverse as Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump have traded on their tag as “underdogs” to cause…

Read More Read More

The Lib Dems look likely to give it a go in Chesham and Amersham

3/5/2021 Mike Smithson Comments 0 Comment

If you had asked the Lib Dems after the 2019 General Election about the sort of seat where they would like to fight a by-election they would have probably said somewhere that voted Remain, where they were in a clear second place and not too far from the M25. The last point is relevant because one of the prerequisites to pull off by-election surprises in the past is by being able to flood the area for several weeks with experienced…

Read More Read More

The screen-grab from the BBC’s LE2017 coverage that sets out the huge challenge for Johnson’s party on Thursday

2/5/2021 Mike Smithson Comments 0 Comment

Could the blues end up a net LOSER of seats? As we know local elections are scheduled for every May with a different set of seats coming up each year on a four year cycle. So this year we have those that were last contested in 2017 as well as the 2016 cohort which should have been voted on on last year It is the 2017 cohort that potentially could be challenging for the Tories. As can be seen from…

Read More Read More

The joys of first past the post

2/5/2021 TSE Comments 0 Comment

This forthcoming Wednesday marks the tenth anniversary of the AV referendum when the country decided giving Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats a kicking was more important than replacing an iniquitous voting system. It was beginning of trilogy of plebiscites that have fundamentally changed the United Kingdom. The Scots on Thursday may make it a tetralogy* and soon North Ireland may make it a pentalogy. In hindsight it may have been best if the Lib Dems had insisted on electoral…

Read More Read More

Size does matter in Hartlepool

2/5/2021 TSE Comments 0 Comment

Ever since the Hartlepool by election has been called I’ve vacillated between a Tory gain and a easy Labour hold. If Richard Tice and the Brexit Party hadn’t stood in this seat in 2019 then this would have been a Tory gain at the 2019 general election so that is what I drove my belief that this should be a Tory gain at the by election particularly once it was confirmed Richard Tice wasn’t standing, however it isn’t December 2019…

Read More Read More

A big polling night sees setbacks for the Tories and Johnson

1/5/2021 Mike Smithson Comments 0 Comment

On the YouGov/Survation split the latter has a record of picking up moves to LAB better

1/5/2021 Mike Smithson Comments 0 Comment

Wikipedia final GE2017 polls Remember when its final GE2017 poll was dismissed as an outler Lots of talk by poll-watchers over the last 18 hours about the Survation survey which is showing a radically different picture of public opinion in the country compared with others particularly YouGov. To recall the former has the CON lead down to just 1% while the latter has it at 11%. This all reminds me of what happened with the polls when TMay was seeking…

Read More Read More