It’s inevitable as politicalbetting.com gets known that candidates running for office are going to use what’s said here if they think it to their advantage. The website of the Steve Norris campaign in London has included some of our observations on the opinion polls. When we make a call here we do so because we believe that on the basis of the evidence the chances of something happening are less than the current betting odds. Our objective is solely to…
The first Politicalbetting.com Monday Call, a week ago, has been 100% accurate in predicting political betting market movements. All the BACK calls have shortened in price or the bets are no longer available. The Markets, the Trends and the Calls UK General Election The main UK General Election market has seen a small shift to the Tories during the week. Two bookmakers are now offering 1.28 on Labour and the betting exchange price is 1.31. As we’ve said repeatedly do…
The third post on the ways of politcal betting looks at at the traditional bookmakers where getting the best price used to be laborious and time-consuming and involved switching between upto 20 sites. But that’s all changed with the emergence of the betting odds search engines. These link to the online bookmakers, continually scan prices in each market, and then present them on the screen in an easy to digest table. The odds search engines end once and for all…
The second of a series of posts looking on the different forms of political gambling looks at spread betting which before the exchanges were fully established was about the best way to make interesting and profitable political bets. The spread firms take a market such as the number of seats will Labour win at the General Election and offer a spread of prices. Currently it is 332-342. If you believe that Labour will get more then you BUY at, say,…
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…