Prodi betting continues as the confusion goes on

Prodi betting continues as the confusion goes on

More than £150k in matched bets since Tuesday morning The thousands of punters who flocked to put money on the Italian General Election on Monday night might have to wait some time for their winnings. The refusal of Silvio Berlusconi to accept the result and demand further scrutiny of contested ballot papers could leave the result in limbo for weeks. Just like in the aftermath of the Bush-Gore race for the White House in 2000 punters will have to be…

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The Milburn Candidature: Punters underwhelmed

The Milburn Candidature: Punters underwhelmed

..and Gordon says he hasn’t been told the date Until the succession issue has been resolved almost all senior Labour figures are going to have to negotiate themselves through fierce leadership-related questioning whenever they agree to be interviewed. And even after they have left the studios their every word will be subject to intense scrutiny by journalists looking for a story – particularly on quiet news days. Even Gordon Brown is not immune – all reporters seemed to want to…

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The surprise Italian betting bonanza

The surprise Italian betting bonanza

More than £1,000,000 matched on Betfair market It might have been the closeness of the result or the fact that both candidates for PM were relatively well known in the UK but the Italian general election has attracted a vast amount of interest and a lot of money has been staked. Overnight alone on the Betfair market the total of matched bets chalked up has been over £700,000 taking the total to just on £1,100,000. These totals have only been…

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The Italian Election – new thread

The Italian Election – new thread

Who’ll be ahead in the Camera in the morning? With traffic on the site reaching record levels I’m opening up a new Italian election thread to ease some of the strain on the PB.C server. With thousands of people trying to open up a 400-comment thread at the same time it is inevitable that things will be slow. Please post here from now on. Many thanks – and good luck. Mike Smithson

The Italian Election goes to the wire

The Italian Election goes to the wire

Will “Lucky Tony’s” friend manage to squeeze in? An evening of high tension in Italy has led to hectic trading on the Betfair market as the prices on Silvano Berlusconi and Roman Prodi has moved from one to the other as more information came in. As soon as the polls closed the exit surveys seemed to show that Prodi had it and prices swung sharply his way. Then as real results started to emerge there’s been huge swings. At one…

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What if Tony sacked Gordon?

What if Tony sacked Gordon?

Could Rentoul be right – that the unthinkable is now thinkable? In the ongoing turbulence over the Labour succession the main developments over the weekend have been a hint by the former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, that he might run for the job and an extraordinary piece by John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday suggesting that Gordon Brown could be sacked. The Milburn move came in a TV interview in which he repeatedly refused to rule himself out of…

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Harry Hayfield on the 1955 Election Replay

Harry Hayfield on the 1955 Election Replay

The election that saw Anthony Eden’s victory for the Tories When the House of Lords voted to allow the broadcasting of their work in the House of Peers (which led to the broadcasting of the House of Commons), I doubt any of them paid attention to the question “What happens when we’re not at work?”. Well, in this age of multi channel television, BBC Parliament (who holds the responsibility of broadcasting Parliamentary activities) came across a corker of an idea….

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Is it all over for Silvio?

Is it all over for Silvio?

Punters turn to Prodi as the polls open Italians begin two days of voting this morning with the betting markets at least thinking that it is all over for the media tycoon turned politician, Silvio Berlusconi. Under Italian law opinion polls are banned within two weeks of an election so there is no way of knowing whether Tony Blair’s holiday host of eighteen months ago is going to hang on. The markets, as the chart shows, have been moving away…

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