Tories draw level with Labour in General Election betting
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For the first time since March 2012, Labour have lost outright favouritism to win most seats at the general election.
Labour were as short as 4/9 this time last year – the Ladbrokes’ customer who had £10,000 on the Tories at 2/1 at that stage can afford to be feeling pretty pleased with their bet.
As Anthony Wells sensibly points out, the IPSOS-MORI poll that has caused these latest price changes is somewhat out of line with the other numbers we have seen this week. As is usual though, the betting markets tend to ignore the polls that are (relatively) positive for Labour and arguably over-react when they go the other way. Most political science models, and a lot of the media pundits, have been predicting a Tory lead for a while. Anything that confirms the standard narrative gets a lot more attention.
For the first time, David Cameron has taken over from Ed Miliband as favourite in our betting on who will be PM at the next Queen’s speech.
We’ve actually taken a fair bit of money on both Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson here. Hard to say which of those is the least likely result.
