It’s 5/2 that Darling will be out this year William Hill have put up a market, which is online, that “Alastair Darling Will Be Out Of Office By The End Of The Year? (2008)”. I’ve checked with the firm and “out of office” means no longer being chancellor. Given the poor poll ratings that he’s getting and the growing problems he’s facing this seems like a pretty good bet. The handling of Northern Rock will be a major Tory and…
Is Ken being ousted the best bet around at the moment? Cards on the table straight-away: quite simply I believe that the 1.84/1 that’s available on Boris Johnson to win the London Mayoralty is by far the best value political bet that’s currently available. Last October I pocketed £3,400 on Gordon’s general election U-turn and in the coming eleven weeks I’ll be investing at least half of that on Boris – when the prices are right. As Sean Fear observed…
The above are the mid afternoon (1545 GMT) prices on the races for the Democratic and the Republican nominees for this November’s US Presidential election. The picture is getting much clearer as we move into the next crucial phase of state primaries. On Saturday 26 January it’s the South Carolina Democratic Primary and the following Tuesday there will be the crucial Republican and the Florida Democratic primaries. Once all those have been completed we should have an even firmer view…
How the primaries have changed the betting The above charts show the dramatic betting price changes, expressed as implied probabilities, that we have seen in the Republican and Democratic nomination races in the past month as we have gone through the first phase of the primary and caucus process. The big change overnight has been in the GOP contest where for the first time we are getting some real clarity. It’s hard to see how Mike Huckabee can now get…
Two more polls show increases in the Labour deficit A week ago Gord returned from his holiday and went on the publicity offensive with a series of set-piece interviews and high profile announcements. For days there was hardly a TV bulletin without him featuring. This wasn’t a re-launch, we were assured, but it had all the makings of one. Brown was trying to get the initiative back and to build on the improvements in Labour polling fortunes that we had…
McCain is simply too old With John McCain looking set for victory in the New Hampshire primary tomorrow night there’s been a big move towards him in the betting and he is now the solid favourite for the Republican nomination. I like McCain, I think he has acquitted himself well, but I can’t but believe that his age, 72 in August, is going to be a big issue which will be magnified if he’s facing Obama who is still in…
CON 42%: (+1), LAB 35% (+3), LD 14% (-3) The massive face-to-face monthly survey by Ipsos-MORI involving a sample of 1859 has just been published. The changes above show the variations on the the firm’s November telephone poll where the sample was only about half the size. The firm’s latest Political Monitor shows the Conservatives with a 7-point lead and also that David Cameron has the best net satisfaction rating (+6) of any Conservative leader since John Major won the…
Tied for second on Betfair and average 17 points ahead in the last two Iowa polls One of my first introductions to betting was John McCririck’s book on the subject which came out in the early 1990s. A concept that he mentions, which will be familiar to many users of pb, is that of the “steamer”, a runner whose price shortens dramatically – although as I’m sure that PtP and other racing experts will testify, simply because a horse is…