Can money buy you votes?
December 22nd, 2004
-
How UKIP outspent Labour in the Euro Elections
UKIP’s stunning performance in the Euro Elections on June 10 was on the back of having the budget to outspend both Labour and the Liberal Democrats according to new figures out today from the Electoral Commission. These show the following amounts were spent by each party on the campaign.
Conservatives £3.13m
UKIP £2.36m
Labour £1.7m
Lib Dems £1.19m
Greens £404k
The campaign took UKIP into third place, ahead of the Lib Dems with an extra 10 MEPs.
Much of the UKIP funding came from Yorkshire millionaire Sir Paul Sykes, who helped bankroll the party’s campaign. Whether Sykes will do this for UKIP at the General Election is unclear. In a welcome boost for Michael Howard at the start of the the Tory conference in October Sykes said he would not support UKIP party if it put candidates against Tory Euro sceptics.
Because UKIP does not have the same on the ground organisation of the other parties it needs to be able to spend big money in the media to get its message across. Whether Sykes or other donors will be available could have an impact on the General Election outcome.
The UKIP Commons seat spread with Sporting Index is 1-1.5 seats while IG have the party at 0.6-1.4 seats. A sell with SportingIndex might be a good bet and provide coverage if Robert Kilroy-Silk is still with the party and does run for a Westminster seat. We cannot see any other UKIP MPs being elected.
MessageSpace Advertising
How can you offer a spread with fractions of a seat?
Why not? If you buy for 1.5 at £s per seat, and UKIP win x seats, your profit/loss is £s(x-1.5).
Proportionately, it’s still a very wide spread - as if the Tories were 200-300!
Sorry (embarressed smiley) - ita a evice to peg where the spread lies … ie the betting company thinks it will be one seat for UKIP, so that fixes the spread at none, or 2 or greater. I know next to nothing about betting … hoping that Mike & Robert’s Christmas revamp includes a FAQ … not that I can view the betting part of the site at work
You see it quite often for prices in the single digits, even where the outcome must end up as an integer (e.g. goals in a football match). You only don’t see it on the Lab/Con/LD spreads because integers give you 2 or 3 significant figures in that price range.
And also, what the betting company thinks it will be doesn’t need to be an integer… e.g. if Sporting Index reckon it’s 10% chance of no seat, 55% chance of one and 35% of two, their expectation for the number of seats will be 1.25. (Yes, I fiddled the numbers!)
The equation I gave you above is general for spread bets. For a sell you just flip the signs in the bracket.
Oh, and obviously replace 1.5 with whatever the actual price is that you trade at!
BV - thanks for the info. Very well explained.
No problem. Cooking the books for the percentages in post 4 reinforced my agreeing with Mike that it’s worth a sell. There seems a reasonable chance Kilroy will have completely fallen out with them by May, and I think 2 or more seats is very unlikely.
I was chatting to someone who may be a UKIP candidate in the election the other night. This is someone who has never stood as awest,inster candidate but has quite a bit of campaigning experience. He thought he was being lined up for a fun three weeks with a bit of media as he is a bit of a media tart at the moment.
He went along to a constituency meeting to discover they have 60-70 activists, a detailed plan to double this number and the prospect of significant amounts of cash.This is in a very marginal seat in the North of England. Although UKIP were talking about winning the seat the reality from what my friend tells me is that they could well get 10-20% of the vote throwing the result into chaos.
The trouble with the UKIP spread as a bet is that you have to put quite a lot on and the upside is limited (they can’t win fewer than zero seats).
However, in the very, very unlikely event that they find a new sugar daddy, have a brilliant campaign in a dull, low turnout election they could win several and you could lose a lot of money. I am not saying there is a strong possibility of it happening but if it did you have a lot to lose and not much to win.
James - the spread firms usually let you limit your risk to your maximum potential winnings. I’ve never placed a bet at these prices before but I would assume that a sell at 1 your would be limited to your stake level. So if they get no seats you win; if they get one seat you are even; if they get 2 or above you lose your stake level.
Has anybody else on the site experience of such a bet?
Hello and congratulations, I really like your blog. In fact, my wife and I are running a new project about change management software and I found your site while searching for information in this field. Your writing skills are good and we think that you would be perfect to work with us. If you are interested, you can contact us by email. Keep up your work, it’s excellent!
celebrations seminaries!protectively Nibelung Dow bemoan determinable?popularizes inheriting
Hello, congratz on your blog! It’s a great resource of information.