politicalbetting.com

In looking at the above splits remember this was carried out amongst the group that you would expect to be most loyal to Johnson. If there is such division amongst CON members what do the wider pool of CON voters think? The polling was commissioned by SkyNews and comes after what has been the most difficult period of Johnson”s time at number 10 culminating in a second humiliating Westminster by-election in the formerly solid blue Tory seat of North Shropshire….

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Last September, the politics team at Smarkets decided to start offering a market on one local by-election every week. We’ve had a look back at the results to see if we could learn anything about whether the betting markets provided any useful information about the outcomes. On average, there are about five local by-elections across the UK every Thursday. Unsurprisingly, we’re usually going to pick whichever one we think looks the most competitive. (One other factor we sometimes consider is…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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