Will a July General Election Be the Only Winning Longshot
It was considered a 12/1 shot, but Rishi Sunak, by his own admission “not a betting person,” has dropped a bombshell by announcing the UK will go to the polls on July 4th. Bookmakers believed the next general election would take place between October and December and quoted those months on odds of 1/4.
Rishi Sunak wasted no time getting on the campaign trail following his shock announcement of a July 4th general election. ©Getty
Can the Conservative leader overcome the odds by extending his residency at No. 10 Downing Street after the election? General election betting sites quote the 44-year-old on 8/1 to retain his position as Prime Minister. Election defeat would bring to an end 14 years of Tory rule.
At 1/2 odds, the William Hill online betting site calculates the probability of the Conservative Party losing 201 or more seats at the general election in the neighbourhood of 67 percent. That figure underlines the enormity of Sunak’s task. However, the polls have gotten general election forcasts very wrong in the past.
Election Polls Do Not State the Obvious
In the 1992 vote, the Conservative Party were behind in the opinion polls, and a hung parliament or small Labour majority was widely predicted. Despite the projections, John Major retained his Premiership as his party won the election outright, gaining a record 14 million votes.
According to Wikipedia, the apparent failure of the opinion polls to come close to predicting the actual result led to an inquiry by the Market Research Society. Following the election, most opinion polling companies changed their methodology, believing that a ‘Shy Tory factor’ affected the polling.
There is a long-term trend for the polls to overstate Labour and understate Tory support at general elections. However, following the 2019 election – won by Boris Johnson – the British Polling Council declared, “On average, the final polls underestimated the Conservative vote by 1.4 points and overestimated Labour’s by only 0.5 points.”
The errors were so small that they did not prevent the polls from correctly predicting the overall election result. If the latest polls are to be believed, only the appointment of Sam Bankman-Fried as the head of vote counting can prevent a Labour victory on July 4th.
Labour’s Swell Lead Can Only Shrink
The largest recent poll – conducted by YouGov for The Times using a sample size of 2,093 – shows Keir Starmer’s party has a 25-percentage point lead over its Tory rivals.[1] The advantage puts Labour in landslide territory; somewhere they have not been since landing the 1997 election.
However, territory only becomes real estate once the votes have been counted and verified. Ahead of the 1997 election, some polls put Tony Blair’s Labour Party more than 30 points clear of the Conservatives. A week before the vote, surveys suggested Labour were still 20 points clear. On the actual day, Labour prevailed by a 13-point margin.
Regardless of political beliefs and personal voting intentions, the smart money will be on the Conservative Party out-performing the current polling forecasts. Between conventional bookmakers, spread betting sites, and betting exchanges, there are many betting opportunities for the outcome of 2024’s general election.
This is why I’ve just called the election. pic.twitter.com/z54gZc7w2D
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 22, 2024
Conservative Seat Numbers Are a Lucky Dip
Propositions at prohibitive prices include Labour winning the most seats – 10bet offers the top odds on this outcome, but it is still a 1/20 proposition – and ‘the Reds’ coming to power with a majority. It is top-priced 1/8. William Hill offers 1/9 on the Lib Dems winning 30 or more seats and 1/7 on Labour winning 15 or more seats in Scotland.
The market on the number of seats the Conservative Party will eventually win is intriguing and underlines the uncertainty shared by analysts and odds compilers. Three hundred forty-four of the House of Commons’ 650 seats currently belong to the Tories.
At big odds, the party is 33/1 to retain its numbers with an eventual 300-349 seats (bracketed together and quoted on the ‘double carpet’ odds). 350-399 votes and 400-plus are both 100/1 shots, and a respectable 250-299 seats is offered on 14/1 by Star Sports.
A collapse leading to just 49 or fewer seats is considered more likely. This scenario is 12/1. The shortest-priced brackets are 100-149 seats (9/4) and 150-199 seats (5/2). Third on the betting list is 50-99 seats on 3/1, while 200-249 seats has been given an 11/2 quote.
Sunshine Could Make 64.5+ Buyers and Rishi Happy
Punters have already latched on to the two-way market on the turnout percentage. The line was set at 64.5 percent, and the weight of money has been for the ‘under’ scenario, which, surprisingly, is now priced on 4/9.
Turnout in the 2019 General Election was 67.3 percent, a slight drop from 2017’s 68.8 percent. The figure was higher than the turnout in the four elections between 2001 (59.4 percent) and 2015 (66.4 percent) despite the cold and wet weather and the lack of daylight on the December 12th election day.
A 2023 ScienceDirect study that examined data from 16 countries suggests weather conditions are far more likely to affect swing voters, or marginal voters, compared to core voters with robust voting habits. The document says this applies more to young voters. Overall, it indicates sunshine increases turnout on election day.
And, if a December 2019 survey by the University of Reading [2] is correct, Rishi Sunak will hope July 4th is the hottest day of the year. It claims vote share for Conservatives and other right-wing candidates “tends to increase by around 0.5 percent for every degree warmer it is”.
There are no long-range weather forecasts, but there will be 16 hours of daylight at the beginning of July, and the polls will be open for most of them – 15 hours in total, from 7 am until 10 pm.
- YouGov / The Times Survey Results, (May 23, 2024), YouGov.
- Will bad weather on polling day change the outcome?, (December 12, 2019), University of Reading.
