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Neil Kinnock: Sheffield Rally: 1992 General Election

Labour bias +6.5% IGNORE; UKIP bias +4.9% PROTEST

For nearly a decade and a half the opinion polls have had, when tested against real General Election results, an average pro-Labour bias of 6.5% and there’s been hardly a whisper from Labour MPs. The bias led to political gamblers making huge errors and losses at the 1992 General Election in which Neil Kinnock, above, made what amounted to a pre-election victory speech a few days ahead of his own party going down on votes by 8%.

Now, for the first time since then, we have a pollster showing a bias to Labour that’s down to 2.1% and large numbers of Labour politicians are protesting in an ongoing campaign.

Ostensibly they are focussing on an over-estimate of 4.9% in the Euro Elections for UKIP, but is their real concern that what has been a given of British politics for so long - the pro-Labour bias of UK opinion polls - is no more?

The essence of their position would seem to be that it’s OK for the polls to consistently over-state Labour by 6.5%, but not to make errors of 4.9% with other parties.

What pollsters report, particularly in the run-up to an election, has a huge effect on the voters and it is not always the party that’s reported to be in the lead that benefits.

Figures that are just plain wrong help nobody and it is not just political gamblers who have got an interest.

That is why the recent comments have made such depressing reading. They seem to be attacking some of polling firms because they are not reporting what they want to hear.

The internet pollster YouGov has come in for stick and there is little doubt that it is not as good at predicting vote shares for the smaller parties than it is for the Conservatives and Labour. The UKIP figure was an exaggeration and YouGov seem to record the Lib Dems at much lower levels than the other polls or much higher.

But for the first time in a decade and a half political gamblers have a proven and reliable guide to how the main two parties are doing. Let’s be thankful for this and be just a bit wary of the pollster’s figures for the Lib Dems and the smaller parties.

US ELECTIONS UPDATE. The latest polls show big leads for John Kerry. This follows some recent polls showing a Bush recovery and has happened in spite of a huge anti-Kerry ad campaign by the Republicans. The latest prices have him at 2.1 or 2.2. For some reason the Iowa price has taken a steep drop. Our call is BACK KERRY.

Picture - http://news.bbc.co.uk/furniture/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/92sheffield_rally.jpg

It’s down to Bush’s lack of popularity

Four years ago we backed George W. Bush at substantially better than evens to win the 2000 White House race because we felt that he had more voter appeal to many Americans than Al Gore. As it turned out we should have lost that bet but we didn’t.

Now comes the opportunity to bet on him again but we are not sticking with Bush for the same reason - we do not think he has the voter appeal. We take this view in spite of one or two recent opinion poll improvements for the incumbent and the fact that bad news from Iraq is not having quite the same impact on domestic US opinion as it was a few weeks ago.

Five weeks ago we said - “What has persuaded us is the view that Kerry will not win the election; Bush will lose it. The lacklustre performance of Kerry to date owes, we think, to his realisation that the election is first and last a referendum on Bush.”

But what convinces us that John Kerry is still in with a good chance are the favourability polls on George W. Bush. The president is still finding it difficult to get above 50% and many commentators are observing that no incumbent who has dropped below 50% in his personal ratings in an election year has managed to hold on.

One factor that looked promising was an opinion poll showing that a John Kerry – John McCain ticket would beat Bush-Cheney by 53%-39%. Since then the option of a leading Republican joining Kerry on a bipartisan tickets seems to have been ditched and the hot Vice-Presidential favourite is John Edwards – the telegenic Senator from North Caroline who did so well in the primaries. This option has polled almost as well as McCain and there’s little doubt that the young former trial lawyer will bring a real edge to the ticket.

The V-P choice is critical because a factor to hurt John Kerry has been the candidature of Ralph Nader who is in one or two surveys polling 6-7% .

A good indicator of betting value on US political markets is the Iowa Electronic Exchange - which we’ve featured before on Policalbetting.com. The latest Kerry price is the equivalent of 2.13 - so just slightly better than evens and a touch lower than the best UK price. The Iowa markets is not on who wins but, bearing in mind what happened in 2000, who gets most votes.

Bush’s poll recovery has pushed the Kerry price out and you can now get more than 2.2. This should drop after a successful convention in Boston next month. BACK KERRY.

Next month’s Democratic Convention on his home turf in Boston will provide the ideal platform for Kerry. It will provide a sharp contrast with the Republican Convention in August in New York. The city was chosen by the Republicans so they could launch their campaign with a sharp reminder of 9/11. We think that this might back-fire because it could be seen as a cynical political move to exploit what happened.

LABOUR LEADERSHIP UPDATE. Comments by Gordon Brown seem to give a firm indication that Tony Blair will not be stepping down prior to the General Election and will stay on, at least, until the referendum on the EU constitution. This is about as clear as you can get and reinforces our call not to bet against Blair in either the Labour leadership or “Still Party Leaders” markets.

Picture - http://nandotimes.nandomedia.com/ips_rich_content/220-kerry.jpg

“LAB 359: CON 198″ - Is it really so bad for Michael Howard?

Our longstanding call on Labour to win most seats at the General Election and the huge mountain that Michael Howard has to climb are, on the face of it, reinforced by this latest General Election prediction by City financial mathematician, Martin Baxter.

LAB 33.22% (-8.87%): CON 32.46% (-0.24%): LIBD 20.77% (+1.93%)
This gives the following Commons seats-
LAB 359 (-44): CON 198 (+33): LIBD 58 (+7)
Overall Labour Majority of 72.

Baxter’s predictions are based on the main opinion polls which, as he points our in a new analysis on his site, have historically been BIASED TOWARDS LABOUR. These are his bias figures for the past three General Elections.

1992 General Election. Opinion Polls bias to Labour 9.5%
1997 General Election. Opinion Polls bias to Labour 3.5%
2001 General Election. Opinion Polls bias to Labour 6.5%
Average opinion poll bias to Labour in the last three General Elections - 6.5%

In terms of the election result the bias only mattered in 1992 when not one single poll predicted a Tory lead and John Major’s Government was returned. In 1997 and 2001 the polling errors were obscured by the Westminster seat distribution which is in Labour’s favour.

Thus in the Baxter projection above Blair wins easily with 161 more seats than the Tories for less than one per cent more votes. This could untangle to some extent if there are different swings in different parts of the country - as happened in this month’s local elections where Labour was losing to the Tories in the south and to the Lib Dems in the north.

Since 2001 YouGov has been carrying out the monthly poll for the Daily Telegraph using the internet and this has tended to show a better, and probably more accurate, position for the Tories in relation to Labour. YouGov appears to be less good with the Lib Dems and UKIP. But in this month’s Euro elections, when it was possible to test polls against real results, even YouGov had a 2.1% bias towards Labour.

If it gets close what could make calling the General Election really tricky is that as well as factoring in the pollsters’ anti-Tory bias and the Westminsters seat distribution we’ll need to make assumptions about different regional swings and the possibility of some anti-Tory tactical voting unwinding.

Because of the in-built factors “close” here means consistent Tory polls leads of 6% or more - and we are a long way from that point. Our call remains - BACK LABOUR.

Our other main calls remain:-

BUY Lib Dem in the General Election spread markets because we believe the party will get more than the 58 seats - the current spread position. This is the figure in the Baxter prediction which, interestingly, has two thirds of the party’s projected “gains” from Labour, not the Tories.

DON’T BET against Tony Blair, Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy in the various party leader markets. We believe that they will all be the leaders of their parties on election day.

We believe that the election will be held on the first Thursday in May 2005 - 05/05/05.

DON’T BET on the outcome of the UK Euro Constitution Referendum. We do not know when the vote will be held and this could be in 2006. Current prices offer no value either way.

BET on John Kerry to be the next US President. Prices have now eased above 2 as Bush has recovered a bit in the polls.

2012 Olympic City. If you want to bet on London do not use a UK bookmaker which have it as second favourite of the five cities still being considered. The international betting prices, through Tradesports, has London second from bottom at double the odds.

NOTE: When we make a call we are stating that we believe that the chances of something happening are better than the odds that are available. All prices quoted are as at time of posting. We endeavour to ensure that material is accurate when posted. However Politicalbetting.com can accept no respnsiblity for the information on the site or opinions expressed. Users make bets entirely at their own risk.

Post Updated Sunday - 0530

But be careful about rushing in to bet

Unsurprisingly two opinion polls this morning show that a big majority of UK voters would vote NO in the planned referendum on the EU Constitution that was agreed in Brussels on Friday. YouGov for the Sunday Times has 23% in favour to 49% against. An ICM poll, commissioned by the non-party NO campaign, has 28% in favour to 57% against.

But political gamblers should be very wary about puting up money at this stage. Six months ahead of the 1975 referendum on whether the UK should stay or leave the EEC the polls were showing big support for the NO position. Yet by the time it came to the actual election 67.5% voted to stay in.

Just one bookmaker has a market at the moment which is very much in line with the polls. We expect other bookmakers to follow as this become a bigger issue.

The prices are:- YES 2.62: NO 1.44. Thus if you bet £100 on it being rejected and it was you would receive back £144, including your stake. A successful £100 YES bet would produce £262 including your stake.

The main problem with betting on this at the moment it that you do not know when the vote will take place or what the question will be - and this proved to be critical in 1975. You could be locking up your money for at least a year and a lot can happen in the intervening period.

These long-term political markets are fine if you are convinced that the prices will move substantially one way or the other. In this case neither the YES or NO odds seem to be particularly attractive and we would suggest, at the minimum, waiting for other bookmakers to come into the market. It would also be good if one of the betting exchanges came in though, until some of the key political issues are settled, there would be little liquidity in the market.

Our CALL - DON’T BET AT THE MOMENT.

A week on from the London Mayoral Election and our abortive call you cannot but admire what an extraordinary politician Ken Livingstone is.

Looking at the results again the striking feature is that more than a third of all those who gave Ken their first preference did not vote Labour in the London Assembly election at the same time. They were voting for the man and not the party.

To work out why all you have to do is get on a London bus.

While all the media focus has been on the congestion charge it’s easy to ignore the transport revolution that’s having a huge impact on Londoners - the transformation of London bus services that have become cheaper, faster, more comfortable, more regular and much more convenient to use. This is being funded by the planned revenue from the charge and Ken has been getting the credit.

New fast services, the new comfortable “Bendy Buses” and a whole new approach to ticketing and bus infrastucture have boosted bus usage to upto 6 million trips a day - an increase of 31% since Ken was first elected.

Achieving this has cost an enormous amount and many in the Capital believe that London is better for it. Ken is popular because many believe he’s made the capital a better place to be - and we misjudged the impact.

All our thinking had been based on the view that Tories and Lib Dems would find it much harder to vote for Ken as Labour candidate than as in 2000 when he stood as an independent. In the end almost the same proportion of Tories who went with Ken last time made the same mayoral choice this time. .

But the level of voters switching party for Mayor has left Ken with an enormous headache as he seeks to lead London. The part of our call that proved to be 100% accurate was the huge increase for the Tories in the Assembly election. This has now elected a Tory chairman , who is very pro-motorist, and Ken has got some battles ahead.

Labour’s Barry Sheerman

Polititcal gamblers should ignore what appears to be a concerted campaign, that includes Downing Street, to rubbish YouGov, the internet company that this week proved itself to be the UK’s most accurate polling company.

Only two of the four organisations that regularly look at voting intention in the UK carried out surveys ahead of the European elections, the results of which came out on Sunday and Monday. One was Populus that uses conventional methodology - the other YouGov that carries out all its work on the Internet. Given the difficulties of polling a low turnout election both did a reasonable job but there is no doubt that YouGov was the clear winner.

The eventual order of the parties was 1. CON: 2 LAB: 3 UKIP 4 LIBD which is precisely what YouGov had predicted. Populus , by contrast, had 1 LAB: 2 CON: 3 LIBD: 4 UKIP. YouGov 4 Populus 0.

Almost since it started YouGov has been accused of over-stating the Tories. In the real test against real votes last week YouGov’s Tory prediction actually put them 0.7% below what they got. For Labour YouGov over-shot by 1.4%. These are pretty good results in which those who bet on elections can feel some confidence.

Populus, meanwhile understated the Tories by 2.7% and over-shot with Labour by 2.9% - not a bad performance but not as good as the internet pollster.

The biggest deviation for both pollsters was with UKIP. YouGov had 21% against an actual 16.1% - Populus had them at 13%. It is this that those who are gunning for YouGov are focussing on.

The leading Labour MP, Barry Sheerman (above), is quoted as saying - “The online poll organisations are a worry because they do not seem to show how they balance their polling methods - only 50% of people are online, how do they account for the other 50%? What is the mechanism, is it trustworthy?”

Perhaps he ought to be asking why the telephone pollsters have to make six phone calls for each person they find to interview. Does not this restrict conventional surveys to just those with landlines who happen to be in when the polling firm calls? Does not that distort the sample?

Also joining the bandwagon is Lib Dem Campaign guru and CEO, Lord Chris Rennard, who said”We believe that internet polling has consistently overstated the Conservatives and understated the Liberal Democrats. We believe that may have had a decisive influence on the London mayoral contest.” That’s fine except - YouGov predicted that Simon Hughes would get 18% - he actually got 15%.

The Lib Dem strategy in London was to get Hughes seen as the only alternative to Ken in the hope of attracting Tory switchers. Hughes would then make it on 2nd prefs. This is standard Lib Dem campaigning - get the party seen as the challenger. At one stage they were quoting out of date betting odds to reinforce this. The polls, mostly YouGov, put paid to that strategy.

Behind all of this is the devastating fact, proven by the Euro elections, that far from inflating the Tory shares and under-estimating Labour - the opposite has been the case. YouGov’s pretty accurate prediction of the Tory and Labour shares in the Euro vote is dynamite. No other polling organisation can point to passing such an harsh test and, almost without exception, the other pollsters have been putting Labour in a better position than YouGov.

The General Election spread-betting markets which are totally sensitive to opinion poll changes are unmoved.