politicalbetting.com

Do the Tories stand any chance of wininng?

The mood amongst Liberal Democrats at the PB.C party at the weekend was that defending the Cheadle by-election a fortnight today might be a tougher challenge than the current Betfair price might suggest. There are a number of issues:-

Will Labour supporters switch? With a Lib Dem majority in 2001 of just 33 votes Cheadle was right at the top of the Tory hit list and this put the squeeze on Labour which saw its share drop from 14% four years ago to 8.8% on May 5th. Will these voters do the same again? A factor is that there’s no love lost between party activists in that part of South Manchester after Lib Dems took neighbouring Withington in a bitter contest in May.

What does South Staffs say about Tory turnout? Any Lib Dem hope that Tories might be less keen to turn out because of the ructions over the party leadership was knocked on the head by their increased majority and vote share in last week’s South Staffordshire ballot. Also the underlying figures in the opinion polls show that the Tory vote nationally is holding up – something that did not happen after the 1997 and 2001 landslides.

Will UKIP’s withdrawal from the race have an impact? Although the anti-EU party got less than 500 votes on May 5th UKIP had the potential to eat into the Tory vote at the by-election. They won’t be standing and if the vote’s tight then where the UKIP hundreds go could be crucial.

Will the postal voters turnout? Almost all the 8,000+ electors who applied for postal votes will still be on the list and in a by-election situation the parties will do more than they did on May 5th to ensure that these electors vote. At the General Election there was a marked reluctance in the post-Birmingham context to get involved after the postal ballots had arrived. Many of the 8,000 were secured through the Tory pre-election direct marketing campaign.

Although it’s hard to see the Lib Dems being beaten the current price of 2/15 offers no value.

Mike Smithson

Will the bill give David Davis a chance to shine against Clarke?

With about 20 Labour MPs rebelling in last night’s second reading vote on the ID cards bill the betting exchange, Betfair has opened a market on whether the Government will get the legislation on the statute book during this session of Parliament.

This is the first time that I can recall that gamblers have been able to have a punt on a specific piece of legislation although so far there’s almost no liquidity in the market and the options are very limited. Under the terms of the bet the bill has to become law during this session which means, effectively, by October or November next year.

Given that this is such a flagship piece of legislation that has been introduced right at the start of the session there is plenty of parliamentary time available. Although there will be many concessions and the bill is likely to have a tough time in the House of Lords it is hard to see it going down completely within the time-scale.

From a betting perspective the real interest might be how the Tory front-runner, David Davis, performs.

For as Shadow Home Secretary he is leading the fight against the bill and critics and supporters within the party will be watching carefully to see how he handles himself. Will it help or hinder his chances of becoming Tory leader for which he is currenty 1/2 favourite.

If Davis cannot make the most of a parliamentary situation where there’s huge opposition on the Labour benches then the doubts might grow. On the other hand his contest with Charles Clarke gives him a great opportunity to shine.

Mike Smithson

Have people really forgotten how they voted already

In their latest poll ICM had Labour with a 7% lead compared with the 3% that real voters gave the party in the election seven weeks earlier. Fine you might conclude – the ructions over the leadership are clearly causing problems. However from the detailed data from the survey, now out, it’s possible to draw a different conclusion.

On May 5th, as we all know, the vote split in Great Britain was LAB 36.2%: CON 33.2%: LD 22.7%. Yet from my mathematics it seems that ICM, was working on a split of LAB 38.1%: CON 31.1%: LD 22.25%. when doing the calculations for its latest survey.

The challenge for any phone pollster is that it takes 5-6,000 unsolicited randomised phone calls to find 1,000 people who are ready to be be surveyed and those that do invariably are more pro-Labour than the population as a whole. This problem is not new – it’s just that those who respond to such calls tend to be this way.

So to ensure that their samples are representative ICM and other pollsters do some complex mathematics – they weight the data in accordance with what happened at the election and then make an assumption that a proportion have forgotten what they did.

And for reasons that I cannot fathom ICM seem to think that even after this short time there’s a big difference between the number of people saying they voted Labour and those that actually did do.

The notion of interviewees overstating past vote intention for Labour might have been correct in the aftermath of the 1997 and 2001 landslides but I question whether it’s right in the current climate. It will be interesting to see how the other pollsters deal with this.

Before May 5th I wrote several articles about the phone pollsters’ number crunching and placed a four figure sell spread bet on the Labour vote share which I said was inflated because the markets were believing the pollsters. At the time I said I was “putting my money where my mouth was” and was rewarded with big profits.

Mike Smithson

Has the Hague experience blighted Cameron’s chances?

Apart from having gone to Eton – his parent’s decision, one assumes, and not his – the other concern about David Cameron’s candiditure is his age. After the experience of William Hague, who was surely promoted too quickly, there are worries about handing the leadership to someone in their 30s.

The Howard pattern – going for someone in their 60s – was going in the opposite direction and this might be another factor that could hurt Ken Clarke.

My current favourite market on the contest is Sporting Index’s BetHilo spread on the age of the next Tory leader. The current spread is 51-53 years which, in many ways, looks a more cost effective way of betting on David Davis than the current best bookie price of 1/2.

Assuming that the new leader will be in place on November 1st 2005 this is what a £50 a unit spread bet would produce for each of the leading contenders:-

Ken Clarke born 2nd July 1940 +£600
Malcolm Rifkind born 21st June 1946 +£300
David Davis born 23rd December 1948 +£200
Andrew Lansley 11 December 1956 -£250
Liam Fox born 22nd September 1961 -£350
David Cameron born 9th October 1966 -£700

So a BUY bet gives you Clarke, Davis and Rifkind while with a sell bet you are on Lansley, Fox and Cameron and your winnings or losses will be determined by the actual age of Michael Howard’s successor when the transition takes place.

My sense is that the party will go for an old ‘un rather than a young ‘un and the buy bet might produce a good return.

Mike Smithson