Saturday 21 February 2015

Who will win the votes and who will win the seats ?


Lets have a look at the votes/seats for the upcoming election:

Now first stop to get away from any possible bias is to look to those judges of opinion who deal in profits, the bookies.

I'll start by looking at who may win the "Most votes"

Prices:

Conservatives 4-9
Labour 2-1
UKIP 25-1
Lib Dem 250-1
Greens 500-1

First up I'm dismissing Greens and Lib Dems straight off the bat - UKIP you could argue perhaps have a chance, though it's more likely to be of the 1000-1 or longer sort rather than 25-1.

The same argument can be run for seats, even more so - with FPTP "Most seats" is a two horse race. In Scotland it's looking like a 1 horse race, but that's not the UK wide picture.

So taking 4-9 and 2-1 we can split the difference and end up with 17-8 for Labour.

Thats a 32.0% probability. If you think the probability is over 33.3% you may wish to bet on Labour, if you think it's under 30.7% take the Tories. But for the sake of this article we'll assume the bookies are correct...

Anyway moving onto seats:

Labour are best price 7-5 and Tories are best price 8-11.

So knocking out group overround gives Lab 7-5; 11-8... 56-40; 55-40... 111/80 = 1.3875-1 = 41.9%

So now we have the Seat/vote probabilties:

Con Seats 58.1%
Lab Seats 41.9%

Con votes 68%
Lab votes 32%

Now to get down to business on the vote-seat split shares...

First up let us examine the rank outsider:

Labour votes; Conservative seats.

It is almost certain that if Labour win the most votes then they win the most seats. Note the way round this is:

Lab Votes => Lab Seats; I am saying nothing about Labour seats.

However there are some potential flies in this ointment - if Labour have an exceptionally awful night in Scotland (I am talking wipeout), they pile up votes in Northern and London heartlands and Conservative marginal candidates perform exceptionally well against a backdrop of UKIP eating into huge safe majorities but not winning them... then it could happen

Lab votes/Conservative Seats. But it is very unlikely. I've bought this at 50-1, you can make a case that is poor value... you might be right. Certainly 2% is the highest probability we shall asign this scenario.

So Lab Votes Conservative Seats = 2%

Now we can fill the rest in quite easily:

Lab Votes Lab Seats is necessarily the remainder of Labour votes = 30%.

Now we have Con Seats, Lab votes at 2%, we can quickly deduce that Con Seats, Con votes should be 56.1%

And adding to 100%:

Lab votes Con seats 2%
Lab votes Lab seats 30%
Con votes Con seats 56.1%

Which means that Con votes; Lab Seats =  11.9%.

Checking the numbers:

Lab votes = 30 + 2 % = 32%
Lab seats = 30 + 11.9% = 41.9%

So the maths looks OK.

Anyway lets check this against Paddy Power's market:


Con Seats Con votes 5-6
Lab votes Lab Seats 2-1
Con votes Lab Seats 9-4
Lab votes Con seats 33-1

I'll keep their overrounds in this time as we are checking for value:

54.5%  Con Seats Con votes
33.3%  Lab votes Lab seats
30.7% Con votes Lab Seats
2.9% Lab votes Con seats.

So we can deduce  Con Seats Con votes is the best price at 5-6, and is very marginally value if you believe the seats and votes markets are correct.

Otherwise none of the other prices are value, or you might want to take the 33-1, but it's sketchy. The sum total of Con seats comes to 57.4% which means you might want to take both.

The Labour prices, particularly the Con votes, Lab seats is abominable and all the overround is there on this analysis. The Lab votes, Lab seats price is horrendous too.

You may also want to look at this article: http://www.ncpolitics.uk/2014/12/the-skew-aka-electoral-bias-which-party.html/ for another perspective on the "skew" too.

Labour most votes at 2-1 might be worth a punt if you aren't involved, or Labour 7-5 for seats. But definitely not Con votes, Lab seats at Paddy's prices ;)








 





Friday 20 February 2015

Will naming the Lib Dems help them out ?

So - is this http://may2015.com/featured/introducing-the-new-statesman-political-index-lib-dems-to-win-at-least-30-seats/ comfort polling or are the Lib Dems going to outperform all expectations in May ?

Up against the catastrophic ratings for the Lib Dems in the national polls are the seemingly almost invincible "local" candidates - but are they... probably not.

I'm taking a mixed view on this - and also noting the constituencies MISSED in the report, and there are two big ones from a betting PoV

Wells & Somerton and Frome.

Wells could just be an omission, but given the selection problems in Somerton & Frome surely this confirms by omission that the Lib Dems are dead here.

Anyway it was slightly concerning to see Solihull in that list (I can well believe given what I've heard anecdotally that mentioning her name gives the yellows a boost...) Do I think she can hang on... No. The Green party standing there lessens her chances too imo. Nevertheless given my slightly high exposure there I've decided to take some stake back by rebacking the Lib Dems at 10-3.

Somerton and Frome has no such incumbent MP advantage and despite the slightly higher majority enjoyed there looks more dead than Solihull to me, so I've topped up slightly on the CONs at 4-11.


Note I believe they'll both fall, but its a question of odds and so I've acted accordingly.


Wednesday 18 February 2015

A randomly found General Election result.

Some food for thought with a randomly found General Election prediction spreadsheet...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KQxY1NQVHUPR4ezte23z_zz3LscUrDY21NLQMubeK6w/pubhtml#

Some of the results look eminently sensible - Torbay for instance, but the predicted 35.2% for Lib Dems in North East Derbyshire looks other worldly.

Anyone care to own up to this GE prediction :) ?

Sunday 15 February 2015

Hello,

And welcome to my blog. I've been endlessly spamming up my Facebook with political betting tips and am a regular contributor on politicalbetting.com. So I've decided to create this blog as a repository for my political thoughts and perhaps a few tips.

Anyway here's my first post regarding two parties who are seemingly going to suffer very different fortunes at the General Election.

The Lib Dems and the SNP:

It's unfortunate for the Lib Dems that the only people on the centre/centre-right who may well notice that they have broadly been a good egg and decent partner in Government are the very same people who may spot their underhandedness in the boundary changes. Yet if those boundary changed had gone through they could be facing almost total wipeout rather than the expected 27 odd seats or so.

Perhaps, in the same way the referendum could only end up with the SNP winning, as 45% is an awfully big base in a FPTP election,  the Lib Dems always were on a hiding to nothing.