Four hours and 26 minutes after exit poll Betfair punters rated a CON majority as a 28% shot
Screen grab of Betfair GE2015 outcome market timed 2.26am May 8th
Two months to the day after the election and people are still talking about the outcome which I would argue was a bigger shock than what happened in 1992. Then there was just one poll that was showing a Tory lead. In the run up to May 7th quite a number of the phone polls had reasonable CON margins including a couple which had a blue lead of 6%.
The betting is also something that people still talk about particularly the fact that so few were predicting a CON majority. The screen shot above shows the state of a CON majority on Betfair at 2.26am nearly four and a half hours after the exit poll. Even then a CON majority was an outsider. You could have got the equivalent of 5/2.
I didn’t take that but I know that one leading PB poster, Tissue Price, got bets of 10/1 and more on Betfair AFTER the exit poll. Well done to him.
Over the past couple of weeks on Twitter I’ve had a few arguments over betting being a good predictor of political outcomes. The most that can be said in relation to GE15 was that the Tories closed as favourites to win most seats.