politicalbetting.com

Has the race reached a tipping point i

As the chart shows there was a time at during November and December 2007 when the McCain betting price for President reached 40/1 and congratulations to those on the site who were highlighting this at the time and got bets on at what now seem sensational prices.

Alas I was not one of them. I took the view that the 72 year old Vietnam veteran was just too old and didn’t give him a chance. How wrong can you can be?

For even if McCain doesn’t do it the 40/1 punters have a bet which has a current value which they can lay off now on the betting exchanges or the spread markets.

But should they? Overnight the best McCain price has tightened to 13/8 and that could move even further following the first polls showing the full impact of last week’s Republican Party convention.

The latest USA Today poll makes it 50-46% for registered voters and a 54-44% split amongst those voters who say they are “likely to vote” But you would expect post convention polls to show a boost - we need to wait a week to see the full impact. Just before last week’s convention and after the Democratic one the same polling survey had McCain trailing by 7%.

One worry that the McCain camp should have is that so much of the polling move seems to be down to the Sarah Palin affect - not too McCain himself. That can’t be healthy and it makes her potentially very powerful.

She over-shadowed him at the convention and is continuing to attract all the media attention. She’s become the big star and, unlike McCain, seems to push all the right buttons with the Republican party base.

Maybe this is crazy and I’m throwing money away but I’ve invested £14 of my V-P nomination profits with bets at an average of 422/1 on her to be the next president. It will only take a McCain sneeze or a senior moment for that price to come right in. Remember her quip “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick!”. She doesn’t sound like someone who’ll be content to stay for long as a number two.

Thanks I’ve just got back from my holiday in France and for me me this morning is back to normal. I am most grateful to Morus and Paul Maggs for all they did to keep the site going. They did a great job.

Mike Smithson

Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer

… and Haider is back, as an unstable Austria prepares to vote

This is going to be an extremely busy autumn everywhere - whether in the US, here at home, or in the rest of the world. The Canadian election will be held on 14th October and was previewed in an excellent guest article by Jack Peterson last Sunday, and New Zealand, although we await a firm date, is less than ten weeks away. Two countries are holding key leadership elections, as Mofaz and Livni battle for Kadima in Israel, while Taro Aso is seen as the frontrunner to become the LDP’s fourth PM of this term in Japan. A full list of forthcoming elections is available at Adam Carr’s excellent site.

First with an election is Austria, which votes on Sunday 28th September. While Germany has traditionally been wary of Grand Coalitions (only Kiesinger and Merkel have led one since the war), Austria has embraced them much more warmly, where they held sway from 1945-66, 1987-2000, and since 2007. As recently as 1986, the “big two” Austrian parties, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and People’s Party (ÖVP) commanded 84% of the vote, but with the rise of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) under Jörg Haider, their position steadily eroded in the 1990s, until the landmark 1999 election where the FPÖ secured 27% of the vote and (just) second place nationwide.

An initially extremely controversial ÖVP-FPÖ government, complete with EU sanctions, was formed in early 2000, but when the coalition was renewed after the 2002 elections, with a much weakened FPÖ, no-one batted an eyelid. The disarray in the FPÖ which resulted in their massive loss of support in 2002 continued, until by 2005 Haider (governor of Carinthia 1989-91 and since 1999) formed a breakaway party, the BZÖ, which took the FPÖ’s place in the coalition, and had a powerbase in Carinthia but elsewhere was not much more of a vote-getter than SNP candidates might be in England.

At the 2006 election, the ÖVP slipped back to 34%, allowing the SPÖ to scrape a win by a single point and two seats, and in early 2007, the grand coalition was renewed. However, considering that they lost the election, the ÖVP did very well in cabinet posts, ending up with Finance, Foreign Affairs, and Interior, only leaving the SPÖ with the post of Chancellor itself, in the form of Alfred Gusenbauer. (A UK equivalent of this would see Brown, Osborne, Hague, and Grieve as the “big four”.)

Never a popular government, with Chancellor Gusenbauer getting low ratings quite early on, the coalition collapsed this summer over disagreements on policy, including the EU, and Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm Molterer (Finance Minister and ÖVP leader) pulled the plug. However, not unlike the ALP bringing Bob Hawke to the leadership ahead of the 1983 election in Australia (although they were in opposition), the SPÖ have dumped the hapless Gusenbauer as party leader in favour of the more popular Werner Faymann, Transport minister in the outgoing government.

The polls would suggest that the Faymann move has been worthwhile for the SPÖ, as although the race remains very close, they have eased ahead of the ÖVP in recent polling. The Freedom Party hovers in the high teens, touching 20% in some polls, while the Greens are in the low teens. (Not only has Austria had by far the highest far-right vote in a modern democracy, the FPÖ’s 27% in 1999 comfortably ahead of anything achieved by Le Pen, the Austrian Greens have also chalked up some of the highest scores anywhere in first-order national elections, with 9.5% in 2002 and 11% in 2006, possibly only beaten by their Latvian cousins’ 16.7% in 2006.) Poll watchers should note however that all the polls wrongly predicted an ÖVP victory in 2006.

Modern Austrian politics would not be complete without Jörg Haider, on the scene since 1986, and after a period where he has taken a back seat, he is now the BZÖ’s lead candidate, after his predecessor ran over a policeman’s foot at Euro 2008. His national re-emergence has generated much interest and the BZÖ’s poll ratings are improving. Austria has undergone a fundamental change in the last 20 years, and the “big two” look set for their lowest ever combined score, maybe below 60%, as the country moves from a political duopoly to something more like Denmark or the Netherlands, with the winning party under 30% - and there are a record number of parties at the election, including the Liberals and the Citizen’s Forum, who scored 18% in the recent Tirol Landtag elections. Parties need to clear 4% to secure representation in the Nationalrat.

It’s anyone’s guess as to what the new government will look like. Austria has never had a minority government or a three-party government, but these are now possibilities as the party system fractures. It may well be that the electoral maths means that the only two-party majority government is another Grand Coalition, which would probably not be widely welcomed, while another possibility which has been touted is a “black-green” coalition (ÖVP-Green) to mirror the situation in Upper Austria (and indeed Hamburg). The FPÖ may find it difficult to enter government due to their anti-EU stance. Whatever happens, for those observers of politics who look beyond the major countries, Austria is at present very far from being dull - and indeed is in one of its most unstable periods in the Second Republic.

Links:

Austria background & polls

Canada background & polls, Jack Peterson guest article

New Zealand background & polls

Double Carpet

The leading political stories from today’s papers

Once again, a dismal set of stories for Downing Street, as the fin de siecle feel continues for the government, rather like 1995-7.

There’s another unhelpful intervention from Tony Blair, courtesy of the usual “well-placed sources”. Brown should consider standing down rather than face the humiliation of an election defeat, says the former PM, while the same article reports that Ruth Kelly is expected to quit in a Cabinet reshuffle expected this autumn.

Someone else who might be leaving the government sooner rather than later is health minister Ivan Lewis, after he admitted bombarding a young female aide with suggestive text messages. Meanwhile Frank Field has joined Conservatives such as Nicholas Soames in calling for a limit on the number of immigrants to the UK.

David Cameron outlines his tax plan for “hard-working Britons” in the Sunday Telegraph, while taunting Brown for being weak over Miliband - “if my foreign secretary behaved like that, I’d sack him”. Elsewhere, Unite boss Derek Simpson has launched an outspoken personal attack on Miliband, accusing him, in a stream of swearwords, of being ’smug’ and ‘arrogant’, while there’s been another data loss - this time of details of prison staff.

In the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley argues that while Labour despairs of Brown, “there is no sign of a Brutus”:

“Paralysed between fear of the consequences of moving against him and despair about carrying on with him, the Labour party is imprisoned in the worst of all worlds. It is clear that it ought to make a collective decision either to back its leader or to sack him. It is also clear that it is currently incapable of doing either.”

The only silver lining for the government appears to be the avoidance of a rebellion over the fuel windfall tax as reported in the Independent, while in the same paper John Rentoul asks “if the PM is so useless, why is he still in No 10?”

Finally, if you want to back Andy Murray in the US Open or Lewis Hamilton in the Belgian Grand Prix, don’t forget to use the Bestbetting links to help support PB.

Double Carpet

Is now the moment to resume spread-betting?

Ever though Labour has been in serious trouble since March budget there has been a marked reluctance punters to acknowledge the evidence of the polls and bet on the Tories and against Labour on the commons spread betting markets.

Quite why this should have been I do not know especially if you compare the above seat numbers with UKPolling Report projections of what the latest polls suggest if there was a uniform national swing. The Tory seats won range from ICM’s 378 to Ipsos-MORI’s 455.

The last couple of days, however, and we have seen a sharp move to the Tories with the spread moving up four seats. This does not seem to be in response to anything like a new poll or other political development. Maybe it is just that as we get closer to the election and the polls remain static that punter confidence in a big Tory victory has started to increase. Maybe now is the time to bet.

The commons spread markets are the places where the numbers of seats the parties will get at the general election are traded like stocks and shares. There are always two figures shown - the higher one is what you “buy” at the while the lower one is what you sell at.

Your profits or losses are based on the difference between your “trade level” and what actually happens. So if you buy the Tories at the latest 352 seats and they end up with Ipsos-MORI’s 455 then you would make the difference multiplied by your stake. In this example that would be 103 seats - so if you are on at £20 a point you would pocket £2060.

Three elements make this especially seductive for punters. Firstly you can get out of your bet at any time. If you have bought and the level moves up you can then sell and pocket the difference there and then. You don’t have to wait until the general election.

Secondly two of the main bookmakers, Sporting Index and IGIndex offer credit terms so you can bet without have to put up cash now.

Thirdly with this form of betting the more you are right the more you win. Alas the reverse is also true - the more you are wrong the more you lose.

These markets are where the serious general election betting takes place and are the ones that I play all the time.

My approach is to sell Labour seats rather than buy Tories ones. This is because I expect more movement here with Labour losses to the SNP, PC, the Lib Dems as well as the Tories.

Be warned! Two days before Brown called off the November 2007 general election I bought Labour at 332 seats. That went down considerably in the days that followed and I took a hit getting out at 318 seats. Thus my loss was fourteen times my stake level which I recall was about £100. This form of betting can be very costly if you get it wrong. (I’ve made up up the losses several fold since as Labour has edged downwards.)

Be advised. One of the main income sources that keeps PB going is the commission the site receives from Sporting Index for new accounts opened through links on the site.

Mike Smithson