Posted by Chris Gilson and Patrick Dunleavy
Latest Poll Information for 5 April
| Party | BBC Poll Tracking | LSE Poll Tracking |
|---|---|---|
| Per cent | Per cent | |
| Last Change | 1 April | 5 April |
| Labour | 32 | 29 |
| Conservatives | 38 | 38 |
| Liberal Democrats | 19 | 20 |
| Other Parties | 11 | 13 |
| Tory Lead | +6 | +9 |
With Gordon Brown universally expected to travel to Buckingham Palace to ask for Parliament to be dissolved, Labour may be facing some major problems now because of the Conservatives’ attack on Labour’s planned National Insurance (NI) rise, followed by the business-rallying coup of the last week. Labour’s support on our measure now dips clearly below the 30 per cent mark. The last YouGov polls also put Labour on 29 per cent – a particular blow because they have consistently had Gordon Brown’s party on 32 per cent for the last month or so. Meanwhile an Angus Reid poll from last week put Labour on 27 per cent, and while normally this might be seen as a lower outlier, it finds some support from the most recent ICM results. However, the Tories have not been the net beneficiaries of this drop on our measure, although they are still on 38 per cent, on the ‘high’ level of their recent range. Instead the Lib Dems and the Other Parties have both gained a point each.
So far then David Cameron seems to have stopped the erosion of the Tory lead with a tax pledge, now something of a hallmark of the Cameron-Osborn team. How will it play longer-term with the electorate though, given the Tories’ other campaign emphasis on cutting the government deficit? If Labour’s warning of a VAT increase to come to pay for it gains any traction, it may also become relevant that far more people pay VAT than pay NI – especially amongst the over 50 year olds who will dominate this year’s voting. But for the moment it is Labour on a back foot.
Thanks for your query Adam. There are three main reasons why spread-betting results may show much more optimistic results for the Tories and much lower results for Labour than the seats projections that we have recently summarized:
1. Spread-betting prices respond to how people are actually spending money on trying to guess the election result right. Their defenders argue that spread betters will be more careful because they are risking their own resources. Hence they represent a kind of ‘collective wisdom’ that surpasses what any single poll or seats projection can accomplish. In the 2008 US presidential election, spread-betters got the result almost exactly right. So it could be that in the UK also the strengths of many more ‘ears to the ground’ will win out.
2. However, if big-money spread-betters are drawn from a biased sample of the population, their collective access to political information may also be systematically skewed. If spread betters are mostly middle class, or have above average incomes, they will tend to have good information about trends in middle class areas, and know little about what is happening in other parts of the country. So from their local knowledge they may have an exaggerated estimate of both Tory and Liberal Democrat support. It is interesting that as well as tipping the Tories to do well, the spread-betting expectations for the Liberal Democrats are also markedly optimistic, giving them around 6-9 more seats than most seats projections currently report.
3. Finally, some spread-betters (especially those with more resources to spare) may be deliberately betting to try and create a ‘bandwagon’ effect, reasoning that if the betting odds make Cameron look a winner it will actually help make a Conservative majority a self-fulfilling prophecy. For strong Tories who don’t want to pound the doorsteps, this is one way in which they could contribute to achieving a result dear to their hearts.
Best wishes,
Patrick Dunleavy
I’ve read with interest your blog on the expected election results. I’ve been following the market on igindex.co.uk, the spreadbetting firm, which has the following spreads for number of seats
Tories 329/334
Labour 222/227
Lib Dems 61/64
so indicating a Tory majority, with a ‘mid’ expectation of 331.5 seats. The low for the Tories on 26th March was 322/327.
I don’t understand how this tallies up with the polls that have eg Conservatives at 300 vs Labour at 262 (http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/). Are the markets really pricing things so differently, or am I missing something?