The coming US presidential and UK General elections will be the first where the internet-based betting exchanges will be the primary betting arenas. Although they have been around in the UK for 4-5 years it is only in the last year or so that they’ve really taken off for political gambling. The moment the exchanges came into their own for me was the day last November when the Tories were ousting Ian Duncan Smith. I was glued to Sky News…
Following the posts about how pollsters try to find elusive Tories a reader has suggested that with the leadership of Michael Howard the party is more sure of itself and that supporters are much more likely to admit this to interviewers. Thus it is not that there are more Tories – just more of them ready to say so! If that is the case, and with all the pollsters’ balancing measures that are in place to redress the Tory position,…
Are punters in the London mayor market being lulled into a false sense of security because the laws on election expenses are preventing Steve Norris and Simon Hughes from actively campaigning at the moment? The “taxi meter” on expenses starts the moment that they declare their candidatures and this triggers a whole series of financial regulations to ensure that every item of expenditure – from paper clips to printing – is itemised and kept within tight maximum spending limits. The…
In the weeks before the last General Election a remarkable techicial innovation took place with almost no publicity. Several thousand households were telephoned by a computer and whoever answered was asked questions about their voting intention by a computer-generated voice to which they responded by using the phone’s keypad. Within hours the UK’s first ever completely automated opinion poll results were published. The opinion poll establishment, if there is such a thing, was horrified. The BBC ruled that this new…
Here we make a call when we believe that the chances of something happening are better than the prices that are available. For the sake of consistency all odds quoted on Politicalbetting.com are in the decimal format. Unlike traditional UK bookmaker odds decimal odds do include the stake. So a price of 6/4 would on this site equate to 2.5. You put on £100 and you get back 2.5 times the stake – £250. All prices quoted are at time…
The worsening situation in Iraq is taking its toll on the Bush campaign according to the latest batch of US polls. Almost all of them are showing healthy leads for John Kerry even when the potential wrecking candidature of the independent, Ralph Nader is factored in. The Newsweek poll has Kerry-Bush on 50-43 if Nader is not there but still 46-42 if he is. The American Research Group figures makes it 50-44 to Kerry without Nader and 48-43 with. These…
With the Tories polling at between 34-39%, Labour finding it hard to get more than the mid-30s and the LDs on a solid 22% there’s just a chance that the next election could produce a hung Parliament. If that was the result what would happen? What deals would be done? What sort of Government would we have? This has the makings of a really interesting betting market – what will be the make up of the Government after the next…
If Blair is considering an October election then the latest opinion poll figures, from Populus in the Times, could be seen as encouraging. But this is only because the next General Election will not be fought on a level playing field. The scales are tilted very firmly in favour of Labour. These are the figures together with the seat distribution, using Martin Baxter’s excellent online calculator, assuming a uniform national swing. LAB 34% – 346 seats CON 34% – 202…