The betting markets haven’t caught up Last year I opined on Twitter that there were several markets at once with odds which I’d usually call ‘Bet of the Year’. I’ve previously written about all but one of these: Andy Burnham to be next Labour Leader. He’s currently 7/2 or so at the bookies and a tad longer at exchanges, but he should be far far longer. The reason for this is that Burnham really only has one clear path to…
The Smarkets betting exchange has just introduced a new market on whether or not there will be an electoral pact at the next election. The firm has defined a pact as Labour standing aside in five or more GB seats. I’ve not bet on this yet but when the odds are right my money will go one no pact actually happening. It is just too much for Labour and the LDs and others to be able to reach an agreement…
Is the Foreign Sec trying too hard? With just the possibility that Boris Johnson might not survive the year there continues to be a fair amount of interest in the next leader betting market on the betting exchanges. The Betdata.io chart shows how prices have moved on Betfair in percentage terms during the past month and as can be seen Liz Truss moved up very sharply just after Christmas but that has started to fade. Having been promoted last year…
This is the second thread on the theory behind the recently established Smarkets market on the prospects of a Conservative lead by end of January (covered here). The first part presented the theory of this bet. This part presents a simplified worked example and has a mathematical annex, following which: The next part will examine historic evidence on the volatility of opinion polls, which is an important input variable and interesting in itself The final thread will look at the…
The betting exchange Smarkets is planning a new market on whether Rishi Sunak will still be Chancellor at the end of the year. I like this a lot because of there are just so many possibilities about what will happen politically in the next 12-month which could affect this. As we saw in the recent named leader polling from Opinium Sunak is by far and away the most popular member of the of Cabinet when those sampled were asked to…
As infections surge governments are looking at new measures The sheer scale of the number of infections to the latest omnicom variant and the speed that it is spreading have caused Italy to be the first major country to make vaccinations compulsory. This will be for those of 50 and above. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that those who are fully vaccinated are less likely to be spreaders than those who have yet to have the jab…
Boris Johnson has invested in a very high quality and no doubt expensive suit and he looks a lot better for it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to have helped his self-confidence for the above Times Radio interview when for a time he was barely coherent. Just click the link in the Tweet and the 46 seconds that is played is really quite shocking. I just wonder whether there is an issue here. I cannot recall any of his predecessors over…
The above polling from Ipsos-MORI came put over the holiday period and highlights the biggest challenge facing the Tories. Undoubtedly the party has and will continue to get political credit for the vaccine programme but that cannot be the be-all and end-all of the party’s appeal. It is also nothing like as important as it was a year ago. The NHS with just 21% saying “good job” is increasingly going to be problematic as people with needs other than those…