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 ;)