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With just a week to go, want to know who will win the General Election?
Forget opinion polls and swingometers, one car insurer thinks it has the
answer, just look at the colour of the cars on our roads.
Financial intermediary, Admiral has looked at the car colours in the
UK's most marginal seats and across the country as a whole, and it reckons
there might just be an upset and the Conservatives could win.
Admiral managing director, Ceri Assiratti, explained: "For many
years red and blue cars were as popular as each other, but in the last
four years, the popularity of red cars has fallen sharply and overall
blue cars are now 58% more popular than red ones."
Admiral also points out that there is a definite colour bias in the constituencies
of the three main party leaders. In Michael Howard's Folkestone seat blue
cars are 10% more popular than the national average. While in Tony Blair's
Sedgefield constituency red cars are 13% more popular than across the
rest of the country. Even yellow cars, which nationally account for just
1% of all cars, are twice as popular in the Highlands, where Charles Kennedy
is the sitting MP."
However, Michael Howard shouldn't start packing up his furniture yet
because in the marginal seats it's far less straightforward. Admiral looked
at the fifteen most marginal seats in the country. In only five of them
were blue cars more popular than on average: Braintree, Cheadle, Guildford
Norfolk North and Orpington. Red cars were more popular than average in
eight of them: Dorset South, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee East, Kettering,
Lancaster and Wyre, Mid Dorset, Monmouth and Weston Super Mare. But the
Liberal Democrats could well win Taunton, as yellow cars are more popular
there than average.
So who does Admiral think will win the election? "Unfortunately our
results are inconclusive, because although the popularity of red cars
has plummeted since the last election, in many of the key marginals, they
remain popular," said Ceri Assiratti. "I'll definitely be keeping
an eye on the results on the night though to see if we are right."
Issue date: 28-04-05
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