Who should be more worried?

Over on politicalbetting.com they are asking who should be more worried about the latest bouts of polls about the leaders of the three main parties (click here for the full thread).

All 3 leaders have gone up but Cameron (up 2) less than Clegg (up 6) and Miliband (up 4). Should the PM be concerned about this?

Maybe not as much as you might think; the details show that 95% of Tory voters think that Mr Cameron is doing well; compared to 79% of LibDems voters for Clegg and, most worryingly of all, just 72% of Labour voters for Miliband. Any leader needs to be at 90% plus for his or her own supporters, really.

What is also noteworthy is the cross-over between the LibDems and the Tories; 71% of LibDems feels that Cameron is doing well and 68% of Tories think the same of Nick Clegg.

So where does that leave us? God knows, but it shows that if you pay too much attention to the polls it can make your head hurt and leave you more confused than where you started!

Best Post Ever (and possibly the best idea for a new voting system too!)

Amazingly good from the ever brilliant politicalbetting.com:

Here’s a suggestion for a fairer voting system. Everyone gets 6 votes. They can either split them 3-2-1 for their favoured parties, 2-2-2 if they’re not too bothered, 4-2-0 or even 6-0-0 if they feel really strongly. People who can’t add up to 6 are disenfranchised and the outcome reflects the strength of people’s feelings as well as its direction. It would be a bit like ’spending’ the green plastic charity tokens that you get in Waitrose. I would have voted 5-1 Tory-LibDem. (”Toss the bums a dime” as the great man sang.) by History Boy January 5th, 2011 at 20:21

Political Betting vs. The Independent

I urge you to read this demolishion of the Independent's headline story today by PB.com, which goes to prove why it is the leading political website. Excellent article and, of course, spot-on. It's just a good job so few people read the Indy. I used to be a daily reader of the paper but things like this remind me why I quit it last year. I did phone up the Indy to tell them why I was ceasing my subscription and they really didn't care one way or the other - amassing losses clearly mean nothing to them.

PB's Super Six on Norwich South

There are very few people left who really believe that "only the LibDems can beat Labour here" (including very senior LibDems who say to me privately that they don't expect to win). I was speaking to Costessey residents in the last week who desperately wanted Labour out - surely a good target then for the Libs? No, they wanted a proper change and were voting Conservative. You can only be sure to get rid of Brown by voting Tory, they added.

And now PoliticalBetting.Com's Super Six Predictors have had their say; these are the best political tipsters on the site.

2 say it will be a Conservative gain; 1 for Labour, 1 Green and 1 LibDem.

Hardly scienfific and hardly authorative but nobody can say this is anything but a wide open race. People who say otherwise are deliberately misleading the voters.

Political Forecaster of 2007: Bronze medal

With being away for the New Year celebrations I totally missed the news, helpfully e-mailed to me by friends, that I came third in the PoliticalBetting.Com Forecaster Competition 2007 beating off some very serious political commentators. I am surprised I did so well as, although my local predictions are normally spot-on, my national ones tend to be less so.

It should be noted that I didn't do fantastically well on all sections of the competition - I said Sir Ming would be ousted but I said he's be replaced by Huhne - but where I seriously made up ground was in predicting the 2007 local election results as I seem to have forecasted the collapse of the LibDems and Labour quite well. Similarly I picked up points for the levels of Tory support in the polls.

Sometimes when you are close to politics you can't see the woods for the trees and your support for your party blinds your decision making. It was noticeable that the staunch LibDems lost most points because they predicted their party would do well when they didn't! It is nice to know that as pro-Conservative as I am, I can still make good political predictions.