Huge blow for Trump as GOP loses the Alabama Senate election on a hugely exciting betting night
The chart above is from Betdata.io and shows the dramatic changes in the Betfair price.
As was widely predicted this was amazingly tight with the markets changing all the time as more information came in. What was particularly good was a New York Times model that was looking at the demographics of each polling area and impacting on the overall outcome as the information came in.
This turned out to be highly predictive and those who followed that for their betting did extraordinary well.
I have been saying for a week so that where you’ve got something that appears a toss up the value bet is on the one that is the outsider and so it turned out to be. Unfortunately at the end of the day I did not take my own advice and cashed out my winnings when there was a sudden movement for the Republicans and I thought I had lost. I ended up making a few hundred pounds but nothing like what I was hoping to achieve.
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The fact that the Republicans were unable to hold onto a seat which is solidly Republican will have huge ramifications. This means that the Republican-Democrat split in the Senate is now 51-49 as opposed to 52-48 which creates a situation where only one Republican senator needs to rebel.
Of course everything in US politics now is set against the background of President Trump who made a huge effort in the final stages of the campaign to get backing for his man, Roy Moore, over whom there were several allegations of sexual abuse of underage girls.
Britain’s Nigel Farage, a former UKIP leader, was also a loser. He has played his part speaking for Moore at a rally prior to the primary that selected Moore as the candidate.
There can be little doubt that the result undermines the President who will even more be seen as an electoral negative.