politicalbetting.com

But survey shows he’d be 5 point behind Brown

As a curtain-raiser for their Tory leadership debate today Sky News has commissioned YouGov to test different Tory-Labour leadership combinations. It’s headline conclusion is that the 39 year-old cyclist, David Cameron, is ahead of Tony Blair. In a form of polling that forces respondents to choose between two options without any regard for any other party these were the main splits:-

Cameron-Blair 41-38

Davis-Blair 36-41

Cameron-Brown 38-43

Brown-Davis 46-32

We’ve said it before in this leadership contest and we will say it again - we do not like this form of forced questioning because the answer is artificial and it completely ignores the Lib Dems and support for other parties.

There has been no indication in any of the main General Election voting intention surveys that the leadership contest has given the Tories a boost. The last main YouGov poll at the end of October had Labour eight points ahead of the Tories with the Lib Dems on 19. Two days ago ICM was showing a Tory deficit of five points with Cameron’s party still stuck on 33% - the share it got on May 5th.

For the Tories the significance of the poll is that it’s a taster for the likely media honeymoon that Cameron will enjoy after, as he surely will, he is announced as formal winner of the contest on December 6th.

For Labour the survey will have little effect. There have been many polls showing that the party would do better under Brown than Blair and the incumbent of Number 10 is still firmly entrenched.

The key polls will be the General Election voting intention ones from December onwards. Latest prices on the betting markets rate Labour’s chances of being top party in terms of seats next time at 59%.

With so many votes having been posted in the Tory leadership contest the latest poll and today’s SkyNews debate will have little impact.

Mike Smithson

It’s 2/1 that there will be an air-strike within 18 months

With Tony Blair renewing his tough comments on Iran there’s now a betting market from the US-focused Dublin betting exchange, Tradesports, on whether there will be US and/or Israeli air-strikes against Iran. There are three options and the opening prices are:-

9.1-14.8 that there will be an ” an overt Air Strike against Iran by 30 June 06″.

12.6-24.5 that there will be “an overt Air Strike against Iran by 30 December 06″.

15.8-34.9 that there will be “an overt Air Strike against Iran by 31 March 07″.

These price ares based on chances out of 100 - so the market view of an attack by the first quarter of 2007 is about 2-1.

These issues are almost too important to consider betting on - but if relations continued to deteriorate then the most likely first military step would be a bombing strike.

Certainly, as we saw with Tony Blair’s comments yesterday, the rhetoric is being stepped up on both sides of the Atlantic. But there was no threat of military action in his comments. Instead he said Iran was a “quite a different country from Iraq in many, many ways..It may well be the change in Iran comes from within ultimately”

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SITE NEWS Within the next week or so we are upgrading the software that we use which hopefully will be more robust. We are also going to restore our “latest comments” facility which eats into our server capacity and brought the site down during the Tory Conference. Also changing will be the line-up of pictures in our masthead. The current plan is:-

OUT WILL go Michael Howard, Boris Johnson, George Bush and Lembit Opik.

IN WILL COME David Cameron, George Osborne, Angela Merkel and one other.

Any ideas or suggestions. I cannot recall why we included Lembit and Boris in the first place. One suggestion is that we should include Saddam to represent the huge impact that Iraq has had on the politics of the world.

Mike Smithson

Still not through the 33% ceiling

Tucked away in the Guardian today is the November ICM poll showing CON 33(NC)LAB 38 (+2)LD. Given the high profile that the Tory leadership contest has had in the media this must be something of a disappointment to the party.

The 33% share is what the party achieved in the General Election itself and is just one point higher than what ICM recorded in their final pre-May 5th survey.

In one way it might be useful for the Cameron camp because it is a further reminder that the party has a huge mountain to climb. There will be big expectations when the 39 year old takes over on December 6th and each poll will be analysed closely to see if he is making a difference.

The poll will also be a disappointment to the Liberal Democrats who have been rather crowded out of the media in recent weeks. Even the latest change on tax thinking did not command the attention it might have done.

For Labour the maintenance of a solid ICM poll rating will be a welcome reassurance following all the rumpus over the defeat on the Terror Bill. It might also take the pressure of Tony Blair.

Mike Smithson

Has the PM turned the corner after the Terror Bill defeat?

The collective view of people prepared to risk their money predicting political outcomes is that Tony Blair has a 22.7% chance of completing the majority of a normal third term as Prime Minister.

Using implied probabilities based on historical and current betting prices we are making a regular feature of how punters are rating the key political issues. Our first - the betting market assessment of Labour winning most seats at the next General Election - was on Sunday. Today we focus on the political gamblers’ view of how long Tony Blair will stay at Number 10.

There are many different betting possibilities and the one we have chosen is the market on him still being at Number 10 after January 1st 2008. Although betting on these long-term markets is relatively light it does show the levels at which punters are tempted to bet.

As can be seen there has been a sharp movement since the summer and now the market assessment is that he has a less than a one in four chance of still being there at the start of 2008. In August the rating was in the high 30s.

The big driver in recent weeks has been the defeat on the vote on the Terror Bill although there is just a sign that a recovery is on the way. We think that there is good value at the current price level on Blair staying and in coming weeks a lot depends on how he handles his fifth Leader of the Opposition. We think that he will do quite well and the third term index will rise.

We also plan to run “Gordon Brown” and “Hilary Clinton” indexes.

Mike Smithson

Could “Daily Mail-speak” be having less influence?

Will Labour’s first big Labour onslaught on David Cameron after, as expected, he becomes Tory leader on December 6th be on illegal drugs. Not only would an attack focus further on the ambivalence of the 39 year-old’s personal statements but it’s the one policy area where he has said a lot on the record that Labour spinners could use against him.

For one aspect of Cameron’s relative lack of front bench experience is that there is a dearth of material of him saying things on key policy issues in public. One of the reasons, I believe, why Jeremy Paxman was less effective on Thursday night was that there wasn’t much for Newsnight’s researchers to get their teeth into.

On illegal drugs the Cameron approach is to take a much softer line than we have been used to and it will be fascinating to see if this is a vote winner or a vote loser. The danger for Labour in using the issue is that society has moved on and attitudes to drug use might be much less close to a Daily Mail front page than they were a few years ago.

We got a touch of it in yesterday’s second leadership debate on ITV’s Dimbleby programme. Cameron put the emphasis on education and treatment urging the creation of proper residential rehabilitation. Rejecting suggestions that he was soft on drugs he argued that it wasn’t credible that ecstasy and heroin were in the same drugs classification.

Davis responded in the typical “Daily Mail speak” hard-line manner that has characterised Tory drug policy. The reason, he said, why ecstasy and heroin were in the same category was that they both killed - while cannabis always caused harm and downgrading sent a disastrous signal.

A young man in the audience echoed what many have been saying - that the criminalisation of what several million people do in private discredits the political process and the rule of law.

Will the Cameron soft-line hold under the likely Labour barrage or are we seeing a change in the accepted orthodoxy that being less tough on drugs is a vote loser?

Meanwhile, in the betting , Cameron has eased just a touch on the the exchanges to 0.06/1. This might have been prompted by a Times reports this morning that 44% of Tory members have now voted. Such a figure might be misleading because the return envelopes are going FREEPOST and these can take 5-7 days to get through the system.

Mike Smithson

Punters give Labour a 57% chance of winning most seats

In spite of the emergence of David Cameron, the higher media profile over the leadership election and Tony Blair’s first ever Commons defeat punters still make Labour a very strong favourite to come out top at the next General Election.

Our latest chart based on best betting prices shows how punters are viewing the party’s election chances whenever it is held. The implied probability of a Labour victory is, like on all our charts of historical betting prices, calculated by looking at the best price available over time.

Although betting on who will get most seats at the next General Election is relatively light it does give a snap-shot of how gamblers are rating the chances. This is about which party gets most seats - not whether they get enough to have a majority.

The trend shows the enormous challenge facing the new Tory leader. We are a long way from the point where gamblers will risk much on the Tories coming on top.

From a peak at the time of the Labour conference in Brighton things started to move slightly downwards with the Tory leadership publicity and this was added to by the Terror Bill defeat in the Commons. In total there’s been a 9 point movement against Tony Blair’s party in six weeks.

Our plan is to revise the chart every week between now and the next General Election.

Mike Smithson