It’s Anyone’s Guess in Britain

Justin Wolfers: “British voters are heading to the polls Thursday, and it looks as if it’s going to be a nail-biter. Political prediction markets suggest that it’s basically a 50-50 bet as to whether the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, will serve another term or be ousted by Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband. I can recall very few elections where the bookies couldn’t pick a favorite by election eve.”

“The traditional two-party system is breaking down in Britain, which makes the outcome more uncertain because it renders traditional approaches to predicting the outcome less useful. Multiparty elections bring a type of complexity that traditional polling — and computer models based on polling — are ill-equipped to deal with.”

Washington Post: “After a bitter, bruising and unusually fragmented six-week election campaign, British voters began to vote Thursday knowing just one thing with near certainty: Nobody is going to win.”

The final pre-election Guardian/ICM poll shows Labour witha a one point lead.