Politics / The Betfair Contrarian / 21 April 2010 / Leave a comment Bet Now View Market

The Tories - perhaps more than Labour - are suffering from an attack by Clan Clegg. Now the Betfair Contrarian turns the heat up under Cam and co. by outlining why the Blues may not even win the most seats at the coming general election.

The Contrarian is rarely swept up in election fever, for the same reason as the rest of the population elections tend to induce coma rather than fever. However, the extraordinary events of this week: the return of volcanoes to daily life, the rediscovery of little boats as a mode of cross-channel transport, and the Liberals waking from a century long slumber have reinforced the Contrarian's faith in the motto he has tattooed on his back: Everything that can happen, will happen.

From nowhere, a third horse has joined the race, which has sent the markets into chaos as they try to interpret what the appearance of this mysterious yellow creature means. And there's nothing the Contrarian likes more than chaos. The Tories are still favourites to win the most seats, at [1.33], with Labour at [5.0]. The Lib Dems, however, are hurtling in from around 900 just a few days ago to 19.5. Here's why the Contrarian says the Tories wont win the most seats.

Some pollsters are already forecasting the Tories won't win
The public opinion polls have gone even more haywire than the betting markets following Nick Clegg's extraordinarily successful performance in the leadership debate, in which he rose majestically above the cheesy quiz show set to touch the hearts of the undecided. However, soundings of the public mood by the pollster ComRes show the ultimate beneficiaries of this assault on the Tory vote to be Gordon Brown, and forecast Labour to win 279 seats, the Tories 245.

A hung parliament is massively favoured
Betfair bettors currently see the hung parliament as by far the most likely outcome, by a margin of 2 to 1. Within this murky cloud there is little consensus as to who will win most seats, but there is no doubt that the Conservative's popularity is trending downwards. Their graphs haven't quite hit the sort of levels that send the nurses into a frenzy on Holby City, but their heartbeat is nowhere near as vigorous and regular as it was just a couple of weeks ago. The pollster Angus Reid, for instance, claims the Lib Dems have caught up with the Tories for share of vote it has them both on 32 per cent.

David Cameron's personal ratings have slumped to William Hague levels
Radio Four's Today Programme came up with this chilling comparison earlier this week. Hague was responsible for making absolutely no headway at all against Tony Blair as Tory leader in the 2001 election, when the party's 31.7% of the vote translated into a paltry 166 seats. While Clegg has appeared as if from nowhere, Cameron has had plenty of exposure and still hasn't clicked with the electorate, and the likelihood of a miraculous Clegg-like transformation happening between now and May 6 feels slim.

The Tories can't expect to automatically pick up the anti-Labour vote any more.
Pre-Clegg betting logic assumed that there was a deep reservoir of voters who had followed Labour since 1997, but weren't prepared to do it again. And that as voting Lib Dem felt foolish in many constituencies, those votes would pass to the Conservatives. That assumption no longer holds. What is worse for the Blues, the seats where the Lib Dems have most chance of making gains are at the expense of the Tories. Of the 25 seats where the Lib Dems need the smallest percentage swings to win, 17 of them are at the expense of Tory incumbents, and they are currently forecast to gain 20-25 seats. If the Lib Dems win 80 seats (they currently have 62), the Tories will then have to take about 38% of the vote to win the most seats. Not a single one of the major public opinion pollsters are forecasting this. And for a group of people who rarely agree on anything, that's a landslide.