How real were the betting markets? On the morning of December 1st we received an email from William Hill saying that the odds against David Blunkett not being Home Secretary on New Year’s Day were 7/2. We put this out on the site saying the price looked tempting but it did not appear to be online. Throughout the next few days we repeatedly checked the Hill’s site wanting to put some money on but the market was not there. We…
Will the loss of the Mail’s “Giant amongst pygmies” hurt Blair? The best bookmaker price on Labour winning most seats has eased from 1/7 to 1/6 in the aftermath of the Home Secretary’s dramatic resignation yesterday. Although not a big move it does reflect the importance that David Blunkett had in leading for Labour on the key theme of their pre-General Election legislative programme. Almost all the keynote bills in last month’s Queen’s Speech, including the introduction of compulsory ID…
Could complacency costs votes and seats It’s generally agreed that a key reason why the turnout in 2001 dropped to below 60% was that the outcome seemed like a foregone conclusion. Nobody could really believe that William Hague’s Tory party posed a serious threat and this caused people to stay at home. The polls, clearly, had a part to play in this but even taking in the 6.6% average overstatement of Labour’s margin the Tories were always miles behind and…
Thanks for all your patience. We have been having serious server problems this week and a completely new server will be installed at the weekend. The original technical set-up was not designed for a site that is as active as Politicalbetting has become. Mike Smithson
Now firm second favourite on both sides of the Atlantic The huge publicity build-up for London’s 2012 Olympic bid seems to have caught the imagination of punters in the UK and internationally. The best bookmaker price in the UK is now 7/2 with just over 5/1 available on Betfair. Interestingly there been a sharp move to London on the Tradesports exchange which is focused on the US market. For a long time New York was in the second spot behind…
Punters on Labour should bet now – others should wait Whether or not you buy our thinking that the coming General Election is much more open than received opinion would have it you can still, we hope, optimise your gambling by following our betting theory. This is that the market – which ultimately is determined by the actions of all punters – becomes less sophisticated and less knowledgeable the closer we get to polling day as more punters come in…
SORRY THE SITE IS SLOW TODAY – WE’RE DOING OUR BEST TO FIX IT BUT WE ARE BEING OVERWHELMED WITH TRAFFIC During the robust exchanges on our election prediction formula we were sympathetic to this response from a professional pollster, Graham, when asked if his industry was going to overstate Labour again. They (we) probably will do it again. When you ask people their opinions and they tell you, as a researcher, your job is to report what they have…
Will Michael Howard only get four more seats? The Martin Baxter prediction based on applying his latest poll of polls to what happened in 2001 on a uniform national swing makes grim weekend reading for the Tories. It shows these vote shares LAB 37: C0N 31.3: LD 21.6 Converting this into seats Martin’s formula produces LAB 390 CON 169 LD 57. So even though Labour would be 5% down on their 2001 vote share they lose just 13 seats on…