The spread firm, SportingIndex, has just put up its new general election commons seats spreads following the YouGov poll overnight suggesting that Labour are on just 23% - a massive 26% behind.

When we last looked at this, a week last Tuesday and two days before polling, I posed the question - “Will punters believe in a Tory majority after Thursday?”.

Well they have and the Tory spread has moved from 318-324 seats up to the latest 342-348 seats. So taking the mid-point in the spread the market is suggesting a Tory seat total of 345 seats - or an overall majority of 40.

I think that this is just about the first time ever since spread betting was launched in the UK that gamblers have been prepared to risk money on the Tories getting a workable majority.

Clearly the polling has helped and so has Boris’s victory in London. Market sentiment has now moved to believing that David Cameron will be the next prime minister.

Mike Smithson

A key thing that polling does, apart from to give some idea about the outcome of a future general election, is to help create the environment in which the political process operates. As we have seen so often the pressure on party leaders can be driven by poor polling numbers.

For there’s little doubt that shocking polls for Labour, like the one in this morning’s Sun, can affect the whole way that contemporary politics is perceived and one set of bad numbers can lead to another.

But judging from the Sun’s report of its poll this morning it looks as though the top-selling tabloid newspaper might have switched to YouGov. The report notes that the paper “…chose YouGov after they accurately predicted the results of last week’s London Mayoral election.”

For the last couple of years or so the polls the paper has carried out, almost on a monthly basis, have been by MORI. Now if today’s development means that future Sun surveys will be by YouGov then there could be a pattern of at least three a month from the online pollster. YouGov, of course, already does regular surveys for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.

I’m not sure whether this is a good thing - different approaches by different firms can give us a clearer picture and help us to understand better what is going on.

More YouGov polls could also affect the betting - particularly the spread markets on the number of seats that the main parties will get at the next general election. Market movements tend to be drive by the latest polling numbers and, not unexpectedly, the Tory spreads have moved upwards overnight.

The Conservative seat price on Spreadfair is now at 343-347 seats - the lower figure being the sell level and the higher one the buy level. Profits and losses in this form of betting are determined by working out the difference between the contract level and multiplying by your stake amount. So if you sold the Tories at 343 seats at £50 a seat and Cameron’s party ended with 373 seats then you would lose 30 times 50 = £1,500. On the other hand if they only got 323 seats you would win 20 times 50 = £1,000.

With this firm the prices are set by what other punters want to offer. The other spread firms fix the levels themselves and both of them have been down overnight. Expect a new price fix this morning.

Mike Smithson

In what is perhaps the most sensational opinion poll for decades the pollster that got the London Mayoral election spot on, YouGov is tonight reporting a 26% lead for the Conservatives.

The shares are CON 49%: LAB 23%: LD 17%

The last survey from the firm had an 18% Tory lead so this is a very big shift upwards.

Clearly Gordon Brown and Labour have had an appalling week and the fact that the Tories can win something big, the London mayoralty, indicates almost certainly that a sea change is taking place.

Before people start knocking YouGov it is worth remembering that in the days after Gordon’s conference speech last September the pollster was recording the biggest Labour leads of any media-commissioned survey.

The big question now is what this will do to the overall political environment.

Clearly the Tories have to take Crewe and Nantwich if this really is the state of public opinion.

Mike Smithson

The main political story on ABC News this afternoon is that “..intermediaries” have resumed discussing the possibility of an Obama-Clinton “dream team” ticket…”.

A former top Bill Clinton aide and now ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, George Stephanopolous, said: “I think it’s very much a possibility and there are others around Sen. Clinton, other top Democrats who think the strongest ticket would be a joint ticket..There are intermediaries discussing this very scenario”

He went on:”..Right now Sen. Obama is probably reluctant to do this, given the feelings coming out of this campaign right now…”I do think that if it were accepted, Sen. Clinton would be under some pressure and would like to accept, I think”

Meanwhile a group of activists party insiders have set up a web-site to promote the the idea and this is getting a lot of coverage.

Latest Democratic V-P betting is here

Mike Smithson

I don’t claim to understand the intricacies of Labour party internal politics but after pondering over the past few days I have come up with a couple of names of people I believe could turn round voters views of the party and make the next general election less of the disaster than it looks at the moment.

What’s needed is a different style and a different tone and a leader who comes over as being authentic and likeable. Absolutely central is to have someone who can communicate and has a high emotional intelligence. So what about a woman?

I am becoming more impressed by Jackie Smith who was a good choice, going for kebabs from her local shop notwithstanding, for Home Secretay - a role that has swallowed up many of Labour’s big beasts - but I don’t she’s quite got it yet for the big job.

Harriet Harman was my eventual betting choice for the Deputy job last year when all the money was going on Alan Johnson. She did well as a stand-in for Gord at PMQs last month but her voice lets her down. She always sounds as though she is whining.

The leading Labour woman who stands head and shoulders above everybody is Tessa Jowell who got demoted by Gordon last year. Her performance on TV last after Labour’s disaster in the locals and as we awaited the London result was superb. There are few other politicians who could have coped so well and come over so effectively

I think David Cameron would find her a very tricky adversary. She would enjoy an amazing media honeymoon when, dare I suggest, calling an election could be on the cards.

Whether she would get it or even wants it I don’t know and she is regarded as too much of a Blairite for large parts of the movement. But I believe she has what it takes. If indeed Gordon was ousted or had to step down on health grounds then I can only think of only one other leading Labour politician who could equal her. His prospects will be discussed in a separate article and I will leave that and his identity dangling there.

Tessa is priced at 100/1 on the next leader market. I’ve put a fiver on.

Mike Smithson

In the aftermath of the Tuesday’s primaries speculation has started on how the Obama-Clinton contest might end and whether we could see a negotiated deal between the two of them.

An experienced political operator who has been involved in such an arrangement before, Dan Conley, has a must read piece in Salon in which he suggests three things that Hillary could demand to pull out.

Firstly there’s cash. The Obama fund-raising operation has been one of the wonders of this election and arguably is at the heart of his success. The reason Hillary has had to lend her campaign more money is that she was forced to deplete her resources in Pennsylvania. Conley argues that part of a deal with Obama would involve the latter picking up her campaign debts. In fact Conley goes so far as to argue that “Hillary can keep lending money to her campaign, at least in the short term, without much risk because it’s very likely that Obama will agree to pay it in exchange for peace.”

Secondly Obama could accept Hillary’s healthcare plan When she does concede she needs to show that her effort has not been in vain and acceptance by Obama of a version of this key policy plank could be vital.

Thirdly Hillary could have an effective veto on the V-P choice. If she did not want the position herself, Conley argues, she could have a means to “..tactfully say no to another woman making it onto the ticket to steal her spotlight. She could ensure that none of the potential 2012 candidates get positioned for a run in case Obama should fail in November.” Conley’s suggestion of a mutually agreeable choice is the Oxford-educated contender from last time, Wes Clarke.

Will it happen? I think we are in the end game and Conley’s piece sounds convincing. His observation about the V-P choice is very telling.

White House race betting is here.

Mike Smithson

Ever since the betting markets opened on the Crewe and Nantwich by election all the money has been going one way. Ladbrokes opened with a 4/5 Tory price which then went to 4/7 and is now at 1/2.

Betfair has seen a big rush to get on the Tories and, as I write, the best you can get is 0.34/1. Another bookmaker has 4/9.

But is punter confidence in the Tories justified - after all we have to go back until June 1982 to find the last time that the party gained a seat in a Westminster by-election?

The central questions are how many of the 22,140 who voted for Gwyneth Dunwoody in 2005 have switched and, the extent to which party machine is be able to get its core vote to the polling stations on May 22nd. For Labour always finds it much harder to get its people out in elections when the government of the country is not at stake - just look at last week’s locals.

The national general election polls are telling us two things: that Labour supporters are much less likely than Tories to say they are certain to vote and that between 12% and 20% of those who say they were Labour in 2005 have now switched to the Tories.

On the face of it then it’s a no-brainer - if the Tories can maintain the bulk of their general election vote of 14,162 and are attracting Labour switchers on the scale that the polls are suggesting then Cameron will do it.

The fly in the ointment could be the Lib Dems who polled a creditable 8,083 three years ago. Their initial task is to persuade enough of the electors that voting for them, and not the Tories, is the best way of unseating Labour. They have also got a terrific by election record, hundreds of activists who flood into the area every day to help, and a track record of producing by election literature that works.

Their challenge is not being squeezed out with the media increasingly presenting the current political situation in two party terms. What happened to the Lib Dem vote in London shows where that can lead.

By election polls. We have only seen two of these in recent years - at Hartlepool in 2004 and in Gwent last year. In the former the Labour vote was hugely inflated while in the latter the poll got the final outcome wrong. They are very difficult for pollsters to do because it’s hard getting a representative sample. Also opinion is more likely than at other elections to change during a campaign. I don’t know whether there will be one but if there is I would treat it with ultra caution.

Mike Smithson

Is it time to start using our White House race logo?

With Obama’s decisive victory in North Carolina and Hillary’s victory in Indiana being by a fraction it’s starting to look as though the marathon fight for the Democratic nomination is nearing its end. As Obama spinners were saying overnight - they are now just 200 delegates from clinching it.

Add onto that the reports that she has had to make a further big loan to her campaign and you get a picture of the challenges she faces. The Clintons are moderately wealthy - but how long will others fund what increasingly looks like a doomed venture.

All the predictions ahead of the latest two primaries in Indiana and North Carolina were that she would lose the latter - but she needed to win the former by a big enough margin to convince the party establishment that she still had a case. She’s got a victory but is it big enough?

Her whole strategy was based on stretching this out until the August convention in August and then using the disputed Florida and Michigan delegation issues to bang her case home. That required, more than anything, momentum in the final phases of the primary campaign. The tightness of the Indiana result might just have sealed her fate.

It’s too early for the number crunching to have been completed but Obama is certain to have bettered his position in both the overall pledged delegate count and the popular vote.

So it’s increasingly looking like a McCain-Obama run-off and the serious scrutiny, for the first time, will be on the 72 year old with a furious temper. My 50/1 Obama bet is looking even better.

Mike Smithson

         Will this be over before the Convention in Denver?

If the Superdelegates are reluctant to  finish this race before the final states, Montana and South Dakota, have their say on June 3rd, then it seems likely that Clinton has almost another month in this race. She will almost certainly lose on pledged delegates and is unlikely to win the popular vote either, but is refusing to step aside.

Many have speculated that the Superdelegates are disinclined to side with one party or the other, for fear of angering a potentially very powerful Senator or even the next President of the United States. Many are junior Congressmen, not inclined to raise their heads above the parapet at present, but who may feel more comfortable choosing under the crazed camouflage of Convention shennanigans.

 With Indiana still very close, Clinton clearly feels she is still in this race. With only a couple of hundred delegate-votes between the pair, it seems almost certain that decisions concerning the Michigan and Florida delegations will be decisive in some way or another. The meetings that could end this before the Convention are scheduled for the end of May and mid June. To allow the various DNC Committees to pass judgement on the delegations without prejudicing either candidate, I’m sure Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi will be encouraging Superdelegates to announce their preferences in the first week of June.

 Barack Obama is within spitting distance of his party’s nomination, but I would expect that he still has at least another month before he can be sure that his name will be on the ballot in November.

 Morus

North Carolina - called for Obama, leads 64-34, 11% counted

The May Populus survey for the Times is out this evening and shows a small increase in the Tory lead compared with what the firm reported a fortnight ago. The figures are with changes on that survey - CON 40%(nc): LAB 29%(-1): LD 19%(nc).

So yet another poll is showing the Tories in the 40s with Labour in the 20s. This, I think, is Labour’s worst ever deficit from Populus.

The fieldwork took place from Friday until Sunday so a large number of the interviews would have taken place before Boris’s win in London was made known.

Populus use the now standard model for all telephone pollsters bar MORI of weighting the sample by what people said they did at the last election but their formula is a bit more favourable to Labour than ICM or ComRes. They also apply a turnout filter.

So we have not seen a full post-Boris poll yet. That should come in the next few days.

All this will underpin the move to the Tories on the commons seat spread markets though I do not foresee and big movements there until after he Crewe and Nantwich by election.

Mike Smithson

Mayor Competition Results - how did you do?

Congratulations to Andy Cooke, one of pb’s leading analysts and number-crunchers, on a clear victory in the PB London Mayor prediction competition. Andy’s overall score was just 5.07 and he also had the best first preference score of 4.59. Richard Stoneman was runner-up with a score of 6.87 while Dave Hague took third with 7.39. Fourth-placed Jack Peterson on 7.71 had the best final vote predictions, being just 0.12 away from the actual result.

The full results are available to download here:

Mayor Competition Results

Now that Boris has his feet firmly under the desk, a final thought - could Ken be the best available Labour candidate to take him on in 2012, or would they be better off with someone new - experience or a fresh face? Might Livingstone still be the only politician of stature to take on Johnson in four years time, or would he simply look well past his sell-by date? Ladbrokes quote Ken at 10/1 for a 2012 win, or there’s Paddick at 200 for the more adventurous.

Crewe & Nantwich - markets now open for business

Punters will probably be itching to place bets after all the excitement of the Mayor and the locals, and the good news is that the markets for what could be the most important by-election in years are now open. Shadsy has flagged up the Ladbrokes market where they go Conservatives 4/5, Labour 7/4 and Lib Dems 4/1. Personally I think the Conservatives will take their first by-election gain since 1982 and so I’ve made the first trade on Betfair (the “tissue” here is as per the Magic Sign prices) with (£20) at 1.8 - for the Tories it’s a case of “if not now, then when?” and I think that Tamsin Dunwoody won’t be enough to keep the seat in the red column. This will be the key betting event for the next fortnight - please use the PB betting links to help keep the site going. (7.45 update - now 4/6, 2/1, 9/2)

Bye Bye Bertie, hello Dmitry

Not one but two countries will have new leaders tomorrow - Bertie Ahern will submit his resignation as Taoiseach to President McAleese this evening, but will continue as caretaker PM until Brian Cowen’s expected election in the Dáil tomorrow afternoon, while Dmitry Medvedev (making, as Morus has rightly pointed out, a major contribution to the shortest ever G8 leadership) will take over at the Kremlin from Putin tomorrow, following his election in March.

Key questions for Russia watchers are to what extent if any Medvedev will differ from his predecessor’s policies, and how Putin’s new role as PM and head of the United Russia party will unfold vis-a-vis the new president. Meanwhile, Berlusconi is waiting in the wings to take over in Italy, although disconcertingly for those used to UK-style swift changes in government, Prodi is still in the post of Presidente.

Olmert facing new criminal probe - will Shas pull the plug on Kadima?

Israel is another country which may soon see a change at the top - the gagging order on the new criminal probe into PM Ehud Olmert will not be lifted before Independence Day, which begins Wednesday night. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been mooted as a possible replacement should the Kadima-led 4-party coalition manage to survive Olmert’s departure.

However, even if Ehud Barak’s Labor aren’t keen on early elections, the rest of the government looks shaky - three MKs (MPs) from the Pensioners’ Party Gil jumped ship at the weekend, and and on Monday Shas threatened to quit, following reports of progress in the talks with the Palestinians. Could it be Shas with their spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef who finally bring down the two-year old Kadima-led government, prompting early elections (September has been mooted) and the likely return of Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of a Likud administration?

Coming up on PB - Indiana and North Carolina

There’ll be full coverage of today’s primaries in the Hoosier and Tar Heel states - polls close at 11pm/midnight in Indiana (6pm Eastern/Central) and 12.30 in North Carolina (7.30 Eastern).

Don’t forget to use the betting links to help keep Politicalbetting going:

Paul Maggs “Double Carpet”

I have just three positions on the Democratic race.

One my 50/1 and 33/1 long-shot bets from 2005 and 2006 that Barack will go all the way.

Two bets at an average of 5/1 that Hillary will get the nomination

Three bets on her at an average of 6/1 that she will get the V-P slot.

The closer this gets to the convention the greater the chance she has of making it. Even if she doesn’t then I can foresee pressure on Obama to take her as his running mate.

This might all look so different in the morning.

Mike Smithson

Some depressing words for Labour supporters in Polly Toynbee’s Tuesday Guardian column this morning.

After having this to say about May 22nd “..for the Conservatives are no longer the stupid party. Watch them win the Crewe and Nantwich byelection, easy…” she goes on:-

“…It is Labour that has become the stupid party - dumb, directionless, depressing. That’s why the voters gave them that 24% sucker punch: it wasn’t about ideology, it was about basic political competence. As the Conservatives unfurl new policies for the next election, how can Labour oppose them? It’s a poser because Labour has no firm territory of its own to stand on. They can hardly castigate Tory “reforms” out-sourcing more of education and the NHS. Labour did that too. Or rebut Tory promises to be even tougher on crime, sentencing and filling up more prisons, because Labour did that too. Favouring business and the hyper-rich? Labour did it too. Ungenerous to the poor? Labour will trip over its 10p tax debacle. Housing? Labour built the least since the war. Europe? Labour has been as Eurosceptic as the Tories are likely to be. So the party risks being struck dumb on almost every Tory policy - left to whinge on the sidelines about small differences of detail…”

Mike Smithson

I’m just arrived in the Peak District to celebrate my Boris winnings on a short break.

Tomorrow is, of course, the next mega-round of primary battles. Paul Maggs will once again be in the guest editor slot, assisted by Morus.

Mike Smithson

One thing that Friday’s London mayoral result showed was that I term “The Golden Rule of British Polling” still applied. For based on the results of the last four general elections and all three London Mayoral races the most accurate poll has always been the one showing Labour (Ken in 2000) in the least favourable position in relation to the Tories.

The rule was the key factor that determined my betting in last week’s election and in the end I had considerably more than a month’s after-tax income at risk. But I never had any real doubts that it would come good. If we had taken an average of the polls we would not have been right.

So taking the latest output at any one time of the five major firms carrying out general election voting intention polls - ComRes, ICM, Ipsos-MORI, Populus and YouGov - the numbers from the poll that satisfies the rule will be put into the two major online seat predictors and be published here.

The calculators, from Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus site and Anthony Wells’s UKPollingReport have a different mathematical approach. There has been lots of discussion about the way these two work and others have also developed their own models which we might include in the future. They are, of course, just a guide and are less robust than the Golden Rule. I think that they both understate the Lib Dem position.

The central thing here is the input data which will be restricted to the poll showing Labour in the least favourable position.

This is controversial but the Golden Rule has been tested against real results over a long time period and until it is proved wrong it seems the best approach to take.

Mike Smithson

Is this really “public service broadcasting”?

I started ranting about this on election night itself and my anger has not subsided even though that was three nights ago. This is simply unacceptable. The BBC cannot expect to receive licence fee income if this is how it interprets its public service remit over the reporting of the democratic process.

We need an assurance now from the Corporation that a totally different approach will be in place for the 2009 Euro and local elections. A fast and accurate results service with proper analysis as well as telling the story of night is what’s required.

A bit of fun might just have been acceptable if the rest of the programme had been OK. It wasn’t.

Everyone concerned with election programming at the BBC should be ordered to watch CNN’s coverage of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries overnight on Tuesday and told to work out a plan to create a BBC equivalent.

That’s how results television should be handled. If the BBC cannot manage it then licence fee income should be diverted to fund an organisation that can.

There must be no repetition.

Mike Smithson

Mike Smithson

It has become one of the great hardy annuals in UK political journalism - the Sunday papers after the May elections when year in year out the main story has been about the future of one party leader or another.

And so it is today and above are a couple of the front pages. But is it different this time? Does Labour’s worst local election performance for forty years combined with the loss of the London mayoralty add up to something more.

Quite simply is Gordon going to survive to fight the next general election? For the problem this weekend is that there are maybe 200 Labour MPs who are anxiously looking at the numbers in their own seats and thinking that they might be out of work in the not too distant future - that their political careers could be over.

Brown’s greatest asset is the same as it was a year ago when the parliamentary party gave him the leadership and the keys to Number 10 without a contest - there is no obvious alternative.

What could add to the turmoil within Labour ranks is the Crewe and Nantwich by election in just eighteen days time. For if the Tories are smart they will make it a referendum on Gordon Brown’s prime ministership and the future of the government. The voters there will be told that they have it in their power to send a “we want change” message to Westminster.

In other by election defences since Labour arrived in 1997 such an approach simply did not resonate because the Tories were so weak and did not look like a government in waiting. But opinion is shifting as Alan Watkins notes in the Indy on Sunday “….the change during the morning after May Day was that, for the first time, people became convinced that Mr David Cameron could win an outright majority.”

You can, of course, bet on Brown’s survival or not. I like the “leaders at the next election” on Betfair which has yet to really take off. You’ve also got the “Brown departure date” where it just 3/1 that he will be out in Q2 2008.

Another possible betting opportunity is on the next Labour leader where David Miliband is the 2/1 favourite.

Mike Smithson

Following last nights results the pollster Ipsos-MORI has announced that it will be carrying out a review of its approach and the phone firms generally asking “why empirically, they appear to have tended to over-estimate the Labour share of the vote”.

An issue for the firm, of course, was that its final poll was completed a week before the election and a lot can happen in the final few days. That’s certainly true but there was a disparity between its figures and those of the online pollster, YouGov from February onwards when details of the first MORI survey were made public.

The results from MORI, MRUK and ICM have been far better than previous phone polls ahead of the 2000 and 2004 races. The big difference this time is that the contest was far closer.

To my mind the difference between completing an on-line questionnaire and responding to an unsolicited randomised phone call is that with the former you decide when you want to respond. The nature of the phone survey is that you have less control of the timing and this, I would suggest, might lead to different sorts of people taking part.

The internet responder is being proactive while a telephone responder is passive.

This factor has become increasingly important as in this online age we use the internet for so much more. The user is in the driving seat so much more of the time.

In comment on UK Polling Report Ben Page of MORI writes: “…we will be reviewing our political polling methodology to look at lessons learned and publishing our conclusions and any changes we make in a few months’ time. In my opinion that’s the best thing to do. There is nothing to be gained from just blaming a result that looks wrong on a late swing, the right thing to do is to look in detail at the figures, try and work out what if anything did go wrong, and see how it can be put right.”

We will follow this with interest.

Mike Smithson

One of the most satisfying moments in betting is when you are transferring your profits into your bank account and it was good to see that Betfair settled the London mayoral market so so soon after last night’s results.

For this activity is more than about the money but tangible confirmation of your predictive abilities. Anybody can have a view on a political outcome - the gambler backs up his with hard cash.

But what should punters do now? Is Boris’s victory in London going to change the view about Cameron’s prospects in a general election? Will received opinion move to the idea that another old-Etonian in his 40s is on course to take the biggest prize in UK politics - becoming prime minister of a majority Conservative government?

For one of the consequences of the London result is that it underlines what I described last week as the golden rule of polling - “that the survey that’s likely to be the best election predictor is the one that shows Labour in the least favourable position.”

It will also mean that greater credence will be given to the findings of the sometimes controversial online pollster, YouGov, which for the second London mayoral race in succession got the final result right to within one per cent.

And since the budget it has been YouGov which has been showing the biggest Labour deficits - a colossal 18% in the last survey.

The SportingIndex and IG Index spread betting markets on general elections seats were closed yesterday but new post-mayoral election spreads should be published this morning. The Spreadfair spread betting exchange has been operating but most of the best bargains - Tory buys and Labour sells - have been swallowed up (some by me!)

This is the form of betting where the number of seats the parties will get are traded like stocks and shares. It’s high risk but high reward because the more you are right in your prediction the more you make. Sadly the reverse is true if you get it wrong.

Mike Smithson

With the final result imminent it’s looking as though the final result will be in the region of a 6% margin for Boris Johnson - almost exactly in line with YouGov’s final poll that was reported exclusively here on Monday evening.

This will come as a great relief to the online pollster which has found itself a political issue in the campaign. Right from the point that the firm was reporting significant Johnson leads the Labour party, the Livingstone campaign and some prominent journalists have been attacking the YouGov approach.

Only on Wednesday the Livingstone campaign made a formal complaint to the Market Research about the firm’s methodology.

Right from the start I have put my faith in YouGov - solely on the grounds that the firm got it within one percent in 2004. In this business its form counts and this is what has guided my betting.

So if the final figures turn out as expected then the pollster might have got it right in two consecutive elections - a remarkable achievement.

For a whole series of reasons London has always been very difficult to poll and some firms have come a cropper here in the past.

If Kellner and his YouGov colleagues are opening the champagne tonight then they deserve it.

Mike Smithson

Please continue the thread here.

The story is illustrated with one of the stupid gimmicks that the BBC used overnight to masquerade the fact that their election coverage has been abysmal.

What we saw was Jeremy Vine going into a bar in the Wild West and “shooting” at cans which then produced number showings how the Lib Dem did at previous elections. Eh?

How the BBC must despise us by substituting this for a proper results service and good analysis…and we pay a licence fee for this rubbish!

Please continue the thread here.

Mike Smithson

The Irish bookie has already started paying out - even though it’s won’t be until this evening that we get the actual result.

Looking at the bet date and time it was placed just after Monday’s YouGov poll became public. As soon as the poll news came out I went to every bookie I could to bet before prices were adjusted. The odd stake amount was the most they would let me put on.

Nice to see the return come in.

Mike Smithson

Reproduced above is the first Lib Dem bar chart of the Crewe & Nantwich campaign which has been cleverly designed to present the party as the one that will be able to challenge Labour.

It’s smart and no doubt will be on leaflets that will thrust through thousands of letter boxes this weekend as hundred of activists pile into the area to support the campaign.

The party’s great expertise is Westminster by elections and literature is a key part. Don’t write them off.

Mike Smithson

After reading Stehert’s comment on the previous thread I’ve just watched the GMTV morning news when it looked as though the Labour Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, was conceding defeat in London.

When pressed on the Mayoral race she said that she “did not expect the London result to be any different to the rest of the country.”

Certainly there’s been a lot of Tory celebrations and I was amazed that ConservativeHome was ready to call it for the party just after the polls closed last night.

We have not seen any hard numbers but the general impression is that there were signgicant increases in turnout in the out London Tory controlled boroughs.

Latest Mayoral betting is here.

Mike Smithson

Those who were on the site at about 6.30pm last night would have followed the attempt of a ramper to influence the Ken and Boris betting prices by creating exchanges as though they were by regular posters here.

The “dialogue” started with him creating what purported to be a comment by me saying I had information about an exit poll saying things could be quite close. It then went to cover quite a few regular contributors and these looked like genuine posts. There was, of course, no exit poll.

Looking at the Ken and Boris prices during that period it did appear to lead to some laying of the Tory and betting on Ken with the result that the prices moved a bit. Some people commented last night that they had changed positions as a result of what was being said.

To stop this happening again the only posts that will be accepted for instant publication will be from those people that our server recognises as having contributed here before without problem. So the name and the email address must match up with previous posts.

If there is a discrepancy the post will be put into moderation to be approved/rejected when I get round to checking it. I will be giving Paul Maggs the facility to approve/reject such comments as well

Most contributors will find that they will not be affected by the change. If you are please be patient.

We cannot be operating 24/7 and there might be periods where posts by new contributors might be blocked for some time.

The important thing to remember is that one you have had a comment approved then you will be publish instantly provided you operate in a proper manner.

Mike Smithson

PB - the place to be on election night

Double Carpet

Double Carpet

Double Carpet

It’s very easy, especially on election days, to believe that there is some mystical quality about betting prices. If changes are taking place you assume someone knows something and that you should be following yourself.

Quite often price changes are based on very little and in the absence of a real reason for a move it’s usually wise to hold your nerve.

There was no better example of the markets being wrong-footed than the Dunfermline by election in February 2006. As the returning officer got to his feet punters decided that it must be Labour. The price tightened to 0.2/1 seconds later the Lib Dem victory was announced.

London mayoral betting is here.

Mike Smithson

Mike Smithson

I am not aware of any exit polls tonight.

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This was all the work of one person who was trying to influence the betting markets.

Mike Smithson