politicalbetting.com

Your chance to vote for those who have enriched the site the most

This is the first round of voting for the PBC Posters of the Year. Please place your votes before 1830 BST tomorrow to make it count.

Everybody, where they post on the site or not, is entitled to vote in each of the categories.

Tomorrow there will be the final part - the Overall PBC Poster of the Year. The top two in each of the four categories here will line up against two of our most prolific contributors, JackW and SeanT.

Just to say that I am in complete charge and if there are disputes then my ruling over-rides everything. I am right even when I am wrong.

Best of luck - and thanks to all who have contributed to the total of 210,000 separate post that have been published here since September 1st 2006.

Politicalbetting has become Britain’s daily political conversation and a must read for all who try to forecast or bet on political outcomes.

Mike Smithson

These are the nominations for the 2006/2007 PBC Posters of the Year election. First round voting will begin this evening and will last for twenty four hours. The two that top the ballot in each section will go forward to the overall PBC Post of the Year Election which will be published on Thursday evening.

Two people, SeanT and JackW don’t naturally feature in any of the first round sections and because of their prominence I have decided that they are automatically in Thursday evening’s ballot.

If you do not want your name to go forward for these elections then please contact me before 1830 tonight. My email is here.

If candidates or supporters want to make statements to support their case then please us the comments thread below.

In this election I make the rules and all involved should remember - Mike is right even when he is wrong

Conservative poster of the year nominations
Benedict White
ChrisD
David Herdson
Marcus Wood
Sean Fear
Steven Whaley
TJM

Labour poster of the year nominations
Coldstone (AKA Grumpy Old Man)
HenryG
Nick Palmer MP
Red Flag
Roger
Snowflake5
StJohn
Tyson

Lib Dem poster of the year nominations
Augustus Carp
ColinW
Icarus
Mark Senior
SBS
Stodge
UKPaul

Specialist poster of the year nominations
Alexander Drake
Andrea
Chris from Paris
Jan from Norway
Peter the Punter
Sea Shanty Irish
Yokel

Mike Smithson

Are “hard-edged” Tory policies what centre ground voters want?

These are the front pages of the Telegraph and Mail this morning and show support for the Tory leadership that hasn’t come from these papers in a long long time.

The Mail reports the moves in glowing terms and notes that “the focus on crime will delight Tory MPs who have been desperate for their leader to unveil concrete policy proposals on what they see as the leading concern for many voters.” Its main leader appears under the headline - “At last, Mr. Cameron is talking like a Tory”.

It’s the same tone in the Daily Telegraph which reports the moves in these terms: “Answering calls from many in his party for more “hard-edged” Conservative policies, he disclosed a sweeping law and order offensive to address the problems of gun crime, alcohol abuse, lack of discipline in schools and family breakdown.”

But isn’t Cameron simply following in the footsteps of his predecessors - when the going gets tough you swing to the right? How’s this going to go down with the centre ground voters who have moved in his direction since he took over?

Won’t the emphasis on “traditional Tory issues” make it easy when the election finally comes for Brown to argue that the Conservatives are like they have always been. Isn’t this precisely how Labour wants the main opposition party to be perceived?

For the anti-crime programme that is being outlined looks very similar to that which came from his predecessor, Michael Howard, and looks like a major change of direction - which of itself provides ammunition for Labour.

This is going to be a fascinating conference season.

Mike Smithson

Take part in our simple “poll”

An issue that’s often raised on the site is what is the political make-up of those who visit PBC. So to find out and to test some new online polling software I’ve created the following “poll”.

This is not a voting intention question - it asks for the party you most associate with not who you would vote for if there was a general election tomorrow. Many PBC users, I guess would vote tactically and, also, at least 15% of our daily audience is from outside the UK.

So please take part and it will be interesting to see the result.

	What British political party do you most associate with?
	Conservative
	Labour
	Liberal Democrat
	Green
	SNP
	PC
	UKIP
	BNP
	Other
polls

Mike Smithson

Your chance to nominate and vote

With the end of the holiday season and the September party conferences a new political year is about to start. But before the old one, 2006/07 finally closes I thought that it would be a good moment to celebrate those who have enriched our discussions, and in some cases helped us make winning bets, through their contributions to the site’s discussion threads during the past year.

Who, for you, has been the Poster of the Year? Who has consistently provided insights and contributed to our understanding of complex events and has added most to our discussions?

Politicalbetting would not be the site it is but for the thousands and thousands of comments that are posted here each week. Each day, I’ve worked out, there’s something like 30,000 words all of which has made this the site to understand what is happening not just in UK politics but overseas as well.

In the past twelve months we’ve had the dramatic US mid-term elections where against all the odds the Democrats won both houses. We’ve seen the fight for the French Presidency and we have been looking forward to next year’s White House race.

In the UK there’s been the dramatic ousting of Tony Blair and the whole Labour transition, the deputy leadership contest, the big changes in local councils in England and elections for the Cardiff and Edinburgh governments. And of course we had the July by elections.

There will be five categories:-
Politicalbetting.com Conservative Poster of the Year - for the Tory who has who has made the best contribution.
Politicalbetting.com Labour Poster of the Year - for the Labour poster who has who has made the best contribution.
Politicalbetting.com Lib Dem Poster of the Year - for the Lib Dem who has who has made the best contribution.
Politicalbetting.com Specialist Poster of the Year - for the person who has brought special knowledge to a particular area or activity.
Politicalbetting.com Poster of the Year - for the person who, overall, has made the most significant contributions during the period.

How the elections will work. Please record your nominations setting out your reasons on this thread. You can nominate more than one person in each section but please give reasons. This will form the basis of the short-lists that I will draw up.

Nominations will close at 8pm on Thursday and anonymous online voting will start on Friday morning. Voting will continue over the weekend. The winners will be announced next Monday

UPDATE NOTE The competition categories have been changed since this was published an hour ago.

On holiday from this weekend. I will be away from this Friday through to Monday September 17th enjoying the delights of the Basque country with my wife, Jacky. During that period Paul Maggs will be standing in as guest editor. Paul has played a key part on the site running our competitions and I am grateful that, once again, he has offered to take on the role to give me a break. If you have ideas for guest articles then please could you contact Paul ASAP here.

Mike Smithson

The Tories up a point on a fortnight ago

It’s multi-Gordons once again this morning but only half the number that accompanied the last poll, YouGov’s 10% lead, and one less than when the pollster, ICM, last carried out a survey two weeks ago.

The fieldwork for the firm’s August survey for the Guardian finished four days ago on Thursday so is already a little out of date. It won’t have been affected by the Liverpool shooting which has been dominating the headlines. These are the headline figures compared with the last poll from the firm two weeks earlier - CON 34%(+1): LAB 39%(nc): LD 18%(nc).

The one point decline in the lead is only marginal but the current 5% compares with the 7% margin that the pollster was reporting five weeks ago which will give some comfort to the Tories. I was expecting a Labour lead of about 4% so Brown’s party is in a slightly better position than I thought they it be doing at this stage. The Lib Dems will be pleased to be maintaining their 18% in contrast to drops from other pollsters.

As can be seen the headline over Julian Glover’s report is “Poll warning to Brown over October election gamble”. Certainly 5% does not provide the safety margin that the Brown camp would be looking for and as I’ve argued before Brown is not going to go to the country unless there’s a very good prospect that he’ll be returned with a majority bigger than what Blair secured in May 2005. Anything less would look less like an endorsement by the electorate and more like a partial rejection.

One key finding that might dampen the “election now” hawks is that 55% of those surveyed felt it was “time for change”. In the September 2006 poll the firm found 70% agreeing with the statement. So some movement there but that 55% number still looks pretty high.

Glover’s Guardian piece highlights the very different swings that seem to be taking place in the regions with Labour doing disproportionately better in the North. But the samples from these regional segments are too small to draw significant conclusions.

My betting. This poll will not persuade me to be either a buyer or seller of Labour seats on the commons spread markets. My main position is on how many weeks Gordon will serve as PM before the election. I’m a buyer at 80 weeks from last June and I’ll remain one.

Spreading false information. On Saturday night a poster calling himself “tipster” published detailed figures which he said was a leak from the Guardian poll. They showed an 8% Labour lead and this has proved to be a spoof. This is not acceptable on a betting site and he has now been banned from posting.

Mike Smithson