Are Labour certainties to win the Birmingham Erdington by-election?

For understandable reasons, there isn't much attention being paid to Thursday's by-election in Birmingham Erdington. The seat became vacant following the untimely death of Jack Dromey and very few are expecting anything other than a routine Labour hold.

Labour have held the seat ever since its creation in 1974, although the Tories have gone close to taking it on a couple of occasions. At the 2019 general election the result looked like this:

A 10% Labour majority when nationally Labour lost by 11%. So, this should be a formality now that Labour are ahead in the GB polls. The betting markets don't really seem to be indicating any prospect of a surprise, with the latest Smarkets' prices giving Labour a 97% chance of winning. The favourites don't always win these by-elections, but a Labour loss here would count as the biggest shock in recent history.

There is no sign that the Liberal Democrats are making much of an effort here despite their sensational win in North Shropshire in December. Is there any way the Conservatives could even get close? Well, their polling slump over recent weeks is clearly in reverse. The double digit Labour poll leads we were seeing in January are over as the "partygate" stories have disappeared from the news. I suppose there might be a chance that this vote could be closer than expected. With the war in Ukraine dominating everyone's attention perhaps there could be some sort of "rally round the flag" effect and, combined with a likely low turnout, maybe something surprising could happen. 

One other small problem for Labour could be the presence of former Coventry South East MP Dave Nellist, now standing for TUSC. Based on past results, it seems unlikely he will save his deposit but they do seem to be campaigning quite hard here.

The Conservatives are currently trading at around 25.0 to win on Thursday. I'm not sure I could recommend that, but maybe betting them at odds of 6.0 or over to get over 40% might be worth looking at.