And this is just a week of polling!

At the end of last week, with the finalisation of the result from Missouri the spread firms finally settled the White House race electoral college votes markets which many of us had been playing for months.

For me, having an average Obama buy position of 320 ECVS, it meant that I won the difference between the bet and the outcome (365 ECVS) multiplied by my stake level. Nice but it would have been even nicer if Missouri’s 11 votes had gone to Obama as well.

And looking back how apparently easy it all was. We had a vast array of national and state polls coming out every day and by the time we got to November 4th it was pretty clear what the outcome would be – Obama was going to have a decisive victory and those who bet on him getting anything upto 364 ECVs made money. As it turned out the election day prices were about 10-15 ECVs below what happened so those who put their faith in the polling are a bit richer.

But what can you say about British commons seats betting? Just look at the panel above showing the projected totals of Labour seats when you feed the polling outcomes of the past week into the UK Polling Report seat calculator.

Just how do you predict how its going to go because with this form of gambling the more you are wrong the more you lose and the more you a right the more you win?

Of course we are not in an immediate pre-election period and no doubt the polls will converge as we get close to election day but the variation shown above is astounding.

We’ve got more to look forward to during the week with the public reaction to tomorrow’s PBR statement likely to be the key issue for months.

Me? I’ve just reduced my Labour seats buy position though I’m still in there.

Mike Smithson