What might be a winner with one firm won’t be with another

Over the next three months, the big political betting activity will be on the US Midterm elections. On the first Tuesday in November the whole of the House of Representatives will be up as well as about a third of the Senate seats.

Elections for the latter take place every two years on a six year cycle in which about a third of the seats come up each time. It is here where the Democrats have got their biggest hopes and some polls are starting to suggest that they might just get a majority.

In 2020 the result was a 50-50 split somewhat below expectations for Biden’s party.

One thing that punters should know is that Betfair compared with other bookies has a different definition of victory. This reads:

 A majority of seats requires either party to control at least 51 of the 100 Seats in the US Senate. Independent or any other party Representatives caucusing with either the Democrats or Republicans will NOT count for the purposes of this market.

This is important because at least two Senators including Bernie Sanders are not Democrats although they caucus with the party. For all intents and purposes they are Democrats but not officially and are widely treated as part of the part when election numbers are being talked about. This is how Smarkets regard it:

For the purposes of this market, any independent senators will be added to the seat totals of the party they have publicly stated their intention to caucus with (for example, independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders caucus with the Democrats). Any independent senators that have not publicly stated an intention to caucus with any party will not be added to any party’s seat totals.

Mike Smithson