But where are the Labour spread buyers?

They might have been cheering in the conference hall in Manchester but the general election betting markets barely moved in response to Brown’s speech yesterday.

If the speech was the “game-changer” that Labour hoped it would be then most punters did not notice.

As can be seen from the chart above the Labour odds on getting most seats, converted into an implied probability, edged up just one percent in response to the speech on the Betfair exchange – the biggest market where we can monitor these things.

On another market, the chances of Labour hanging onto power with an overall majority moved up from 14.3% at the start of the speech to 14.7% at the end. within a few hours that was back down to where it had started – 14.3%.

At this stage in the cycle general election betting is driven by the opinion polls and all eyes will be on surveys in the coming days to see if Labour’s hopes have improved.

Most punters realise that like in the White House race there is a conference/convention bounce and that we need to wait until the Tory conference has been and gone and its impact worked itself out of the system before we can talk about changes.

On the Spreadfair betting exchange the Labour buy price has actually dropped five seats since Sunday. It was at 239 seats in the wake of the ComRes poll move on Sunday and this morning stands at 234 seats. I’m following the activity here closely because I’m trying to sell Labour seats but, alas, there is an absence buyers.

On the day after Brown’s speech a year ago the same’s market’s buy level was 332 seats – so there’s been a drop of 98.

Live general election betting prices.

Mike Smithson