Meanwhile the money piles on Ming Less than 24 hours after having to pull out of the Lib Dem leadership race a bookmaker has opened market on whether Mark Oaten will retain his seat at the General Election. The opening prices are 4/7 that he will and 5/4 that he won’t. This is an interesting bet because if the Tories do manage to sustain a recovery then Lib Dem seats like Winchester could be vulnerable. Oaten is a formidable campaigner…
No sign yet of a let-up in the Cameron honeymoon In the first posting of 2006, just nineteen days ago, we noted that the Cantor Spreadfair General Election – Commons seat spreads market opened the year on CON 260-267: LAB 296-303: LD 53-57. Taking the mid-points the collective view of punters was CON 265.5: LAB 299.5: LD 55 seats. In this form of gambling the number of seats a party gets becomes like a share price. If you think that…
But punters are still backing Nick Clegg Our chart tracks the implied probabilities of victory based on the best betting prices over the past twelve days since Charles Kennedy decided to step aside. With Mark Oaten now out of the race the big question outstanding is whether it will end up a fight between the three who have already declared or could the young ex-MEP, Nick Clegg spoil the party. His price is down at 19/1 so he continues to…
Brown gains ground on Cameron For the first time since David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservatives Gordon Brown has achieved higher ratings in a poll than Tony Blair when set against the new Tory leader. This is a move that has gone on almost completely unnoticed apart from in Anthony Wells’s Polling Report. In figures that were not published at the weekend ICM had this split with Brown as leader compared with the main party selection: CON 38…
Are his supporters trying to influence the race through the betting? In the early hours of this morning there was a big move back to Menzies Campbell on the Betfair betting exchange and a major easing of the Simon Hughes price. From what I can ascertain there is no apparent reason – there does not appear to be anything in the papers. At 11pm last night Ming’s price was at about 1.62/1 with Hughes on 1.32/1. The latest price as…
JACKY ASHLEY WARNING: I am not a member of what Jackie Ashley in the Guardian regards as the time-served officially recognised commentariat and any views on political outcomes contained herein should be treated accordingly. Are the markets over-rating Hughes? A challenging factor for the growing number of punters on the Lib Dem race is that the only hard information we have is the YouGov poll that was published in the Daily Telegraph a few hours before Charles Kennedy made his…
PB.C party-goers discuss the chances Saturday’s second PB.C party attracted 40+ site regulars including Anthony Wells, founder of UK Polling Report, Guido Fawkes and Ian Dale, the owner of Politicos and who served as David Davis’s chief of staff. Clearly the Lib Dem leadership race was a key discussion point with many of the Tories there saying the candidate that they most feared was the former MEP, Nick Clegg, who is not a candidate and has come out strongly for…
ICM puts the Tories four points ahead As the chart, reproduced from today’s News of the World shows, the first ICM poll of 2006 provides further evidence that the Tory turnaround which started with the election of David Cameron continues to gather force. The voting intentions (with changes since ICM’s last poll in December) are CON 39%(+2): LAB 35%(-1): LD 20%(-1). The poll is excellent news for the Tories and is also reassuring for the Lib Dems which had seen…