As Comres joins YouGov in making the LibDems the second placed party, Graham Sharpe, William Hill’s spinner, emails Guido to say that seven out of every ten political bets they took were for a Lib Dem win :- ‘Pre-debate the Lib Dems would be doing well if one in every ten bet was for them, but their support turned from a trickle to a flood on Friday with a mass of modest bets of up to £100 pouring on them to win with an overall majority or to be the largest single Party, with the larger bets were placed by regular political pundits backing a Hung Parliament.‘ A hung parliament maybe, but backing LibDems to win outright?

If you are bullish about the LibDems here is how the punters rate their chances tonight from on Political Smarkets, the specialist bookies:

• Nick Clegg to be Next Prime Minister 15%
• Vincent Cable to be next chancellor : 21%
• Lib Dems to get 70 or more seats : 52%
• Nick Clegg to win second TV debate 51%
• Nick Clegg to win third TV debate 80%
• Nick Cegg to win all TV debates 47%

Cable looks cheap and worth backing at 21% given the polls are pointing to a hung parliament. Gordon would give him the chancellorship for a Lib-Lab pact at the drop of a hat.

Just perusing yesterday’s Lebedev Evening Standard in which they do a vox-pop to get the views of the man in the street on the golden boy of the moment, Nick Clegg. You know the type of article, a paragraph on a student, another about an office worker and the high earner is for contrast.

This article’s high earner is Bhanu Choudrie, he declares Clegg the winner and says that he will vote Lib Dem in the election. Which doesn’t surprise Guido seeing as he is one of the Lib Dems biggest and most controversial donors. Is he actually on the electoral roll?

The Observer says he is a non-dom who “has been accused of accepting tens of millions of pounds in kickbacks from an arms deal between an Israeli company and the Indian government.” So he is not all bad.

Along with his brother he has donated nearly £585,000 to the party in recent years. Despite coughing up a lot of dosh for them he say “the Lib-Dems don’t have much substance.” A very odd article, was it written by Lebedev himself? Who bumps into billionaire arms dealers in the street?

George Osborne writes…

“The ‘spin room’ after the debate told you everything you need to know about Labour’s negative campaign of fear. Realising that their candidate had lost, a trio of Peter Mandelson, Alistair Campbell and Unite union fixer Charlie Whelan fanned out across the room like an ageing rock group getting together for an ill-advised comeback tour. Not so much Spinal Tap as Spin on Tap.”

Nigel Farage in the ’green room’ before Question Time said…

“Yeah, we are going to need to get more wine in here.”

If Labour drops a few more points in polls and is confirmed as the third placed party, it represents an historic opportunity for Nick Clegg’s LibDems to displace Labour as the official opposition.  Except that the electoral system means that depending on the distribution of votes Labour could, as Kevin Maguire gloats this morning, actually benefit from the strengthened LibDem’s taking votes from the Tories.

In Labour held seats where either the Tory or LibDem* candidate is a strong second place contender with a distant third place contender, the voters who want to get rid of Labour should rationally should switch their vote to the second place contender.  Guido makes no bones about wanting to see the Labour Party wiped out as an electoral force.  So over the following weeks the blog will be highlighting seats where an element of tactical voting would unseat the Labour incumbent.

First up, Islington South & Finsbury, where Labour’s Emily Thornberry clings onto a majority by 484 votes. If true blues want to get rid of the red, they will have to vote yellow.  Free Emily and her husband to concentrate on their multi-million pound property empire…

*The same logic applies to the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Hat-tip : Poster via LibDemVoice

If you were not one of the 70,917 visitors viewing 480,403 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• The ANTI Spin Room
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• Ellie Didn’t Always Talk Out of Her Arse
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• Would You Trust These Men?

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…