Will opinion harden behind Gord or Dave?

On the thread the other day the question was posed as to whether in the build up to any other general election had there been so many turns.

My recall is that while there have been shock results, most notably 1970 and 1992, we haven’t quite had the twists that we have seen in the period from May 2005.

It’s perhaps worth repeating that on only one occasion since 1945 has a party with a workable majority at Westminster been replaced by another party with a workable majority. That was at the shock election of 1970 when Edward Heath’s Tories ousted Harold Wilson’s Labour.

At all other elections when there has been a change of government the outgoing party had lost a workable majority (1951, 1979 and 1997) or the incoming party did not get enough seats and another election followed soon afterwards (1964 and February 1974). It’s also worth noting that elections leading to hung parliaments are a rarity and since the war this has happened only once - February 1974.

I think that in the run-up to the election opinion will harden up behind either Labour or the Tories and one of the parties will be returned with a working majority. Until the last few weeks I thought it would be a clear-cut Tory victory - now I’m not so certain though I do believe that the outcome will be decisive.

The electoral mathematics mean that Labour could hang on to a majority even if they are behind the Tories on votes.

In terms of the “overall majority” betting the value bet seems to be that 5/1 on Labour. If the hung parliament price gets much tighter than that might be worth a lay on Betfair.

Like all these things this is not a prediction - but an assessment by me of where I think the betting value lies.

Mike Smithson

Do we expect further moves to Labour?

As expected the latest Ipsos-MORI poll putting Labour just 3% behind has caused movement on the spread betting markets - the political betting arenas where you can win or lose whole piles of cash by trading the number of seats the parties will get at the general elecxtion as though they were stocks and shares.

The latest spreads from from PB’s co-sponsor, Sporting Index are: CON 334-340: LAB 242-248: LD 42-45 seats.

With IG Index it’s CON 332-338: LAB 244-250: LD 43-46 seats. On the Spreadfair spread-betting exchange the mid-points are CON 336: LAB 250: LD 43.

So the average mid-points suggests a Tory majority of 20-22.

Everything seems to depend now on the public reaction to next Monday’s pre-budget report from the chancellor. If the proposals here are popular you could see further movement on the markets.

My betting: I remain a Labour buyer and my positions have moved so that the level I bought at is now below the level I can sell - so I could cash in and pocket a profit today. I’ve now also sold the SNP at 10 seats. Salmond’s party is going to struggle to hold onto the seven seats they currently hold.

Mike Smithson

Is the Mirror’s Maguire right - Cameron panicked?

The big political shift in the past 24 hours has been the abandonment by the Tories of their commitment to match Labour spending plans and, instead, start talking about tax cuts.

This is Kevin Maguire’s take on it on the Mirror website: “..Every nurse, teacher, care worker, soldier and their families now has a vested interested in voting Labour at the General Election. No wonder the Prime Minister’s struggling to keep a straight face in his Downing Street bunker..Brown’s enemies have played into his hands, walking into a trap, exposing political bankruptcy in an economic crisis. These days it’s the Tory leader who should be hoping for a second chance..Because Cameron and Shadowy Chancellor George Osborne have screwed up royally”

We saw a touch of the political battle ahead at today’s PMQs with Cameron reiterating his warning that tax cuts now would lead to future tax rises. He asked: “Taxes will have to rise; isn’t that true?”.

The government’s main argument seems to be that nations round the world are following this approach - so why not the UK?

A challenge for Brown is that it is repeatedly going to be put to him that his strategy will inevitably lead to tax increases in the future - something that he refuses to answer and he could start to sound as though he is being evasive. Refusing to answer questions is a powerful charge that can be developed by the opposition.

Mike Smithson

Were there enough 2005 Lib Dems in the MORI sample?

My apologies for the third post in succession on the Ipsos-MORI poll but it produced numbers that were so startling that it deserves further scrutiny.

Yesterday it was all doom and gloom for the Lib Dems over the MORI 12% yet a close study of the data raises the question of whether were there enough 2005 Lib Dem supporters in the sample?

It will be recalled that on May 5th 2005 the party led then by Charles Kennedy secured 22.7% of the vote. Labour by comparison chalked up 36.2%. So for every two Lib Dem voters last time there were just over three Labour voters. You would have thought then when respondents were asked how they voted last time that MORI would have found broadly similar proportions. They didn’t.

When the field-work was done over the weekend they found (see the panel above) about seven 2005 Labour voters for every two Lib Dems which, surely raises questions over whether the sample was politically representative.

This would not have mattered too much if this had been an ICM or Populus poll. A weighting adjustment based on the past vote responses would have been attached so that the intentions of those who voted Lib Dem last time would have been scaled up and those who voted Labour would have been scaled back.

It’s hard to make calculations because of demographic weightings but my back of an envelope sums suggest that with the same data the other telephone pollsters would have put Nick Clegg’s party at 16-17% almost all of the difference coming from Labour.

As I argued here yesterday getting the Lib Dem share right will be critical for pollsters as we head into the general election.

This touches a raw nerve within the polling industry because Ipsos-MORI is the only remaining national pollster that does not weight by past vote or party identifier. As a result UK Polling Report has taken special measures to marginalise MORI in the new polling average that it has just introduced.

Statement of disclosure. I have been a member of the Lib Dems since its foundation and have been a parliamentary candidate and a councillor. Would I have been raising this issue if MORI had found a much higher proportion of the sample saying they voted for the party last time than actually did so? I like to think that I would.

Mike Smithson