politicalbetting.com

A 24 seat shift to Cameron’s party in just ten days

The spread firm, SportingIndex, has just put up its new general election commons seats spreads following the YouGov poll overnight suggesting that Labour are on just 23% - a massive 26% behind.

When we last looked at this, a week last Tuesday and two days before polling, I posed the question - “Will punters believe in a Tory majority after Thursday?”.

Well they have and the Tory spread has moved from 318-324 seats up to the latest 342-348 seats. So taking the mid-point in the spread the market is suggesting a Tory seat total of 345 seats - or an overall majority of 40.

I think that this is just about the first time ever since spread betting was launched in the UK that gamblers have been prepared to risk money on the Tories getting a workable majority.

Clearly the polling has helped and so has Boris’s victory in London. Market sentiment has now moved to believing that David Cameron will be the next prime minister.

Mike Smithson

Will the mood about Tory prospects now change?

One of the most satisfying moments in betting is when you are transferring your profits into your bank account and it was good to see that Betfair settled the London mayoral market so so soon after last night’s results.

For this activity is more than about the money but tangible confirmation of your predictive abilities. Anybody can have a view on a political outcome - the gambler backs up his with hard cash.

But what should punters do now? Is Boris’s victory in London going to change the view about Cameron’s prospects in a general election? Will received opinion move to the idea that another old-Etonian in his 40s is on course to take the biggest prize in UK politics - becoming prime minister of a majority Conservative government?

For one of the consequences of the London result is that it underlines what I described last week as the golden rule of polling - “that the survey that’s likely to be the best election predictor is the one that shows Labour in the least favourable position.”

It will also mean that greater credence will be given to the findings of the sometimes controversial online pollster, YouGov, which for the second London mayoral race in succession got the final result right to within one per cent.

And since the budget it has been YouGov which has been showing the biggest Labour deficits - a colossal 18% in the last survey.

The SportingIndex and IG Index spread betting markets on general elections seats were closed yesterday but new post-mayoral election spreads should be published this morning. The Spreadfair spread betting exchange has been operating but most of the best bargains - Tory buys and Labour sells - have been swallowed up (some by me!)

This is the form of betting where the number of seats the parties will get are traded like stocks and shares. It’s high risk but high reward because the more you are right in your prediction the more you make. Sadly the reverse is true if you get it wrong.

Mike Smithson

When a 48% polling lead became an actual 11.9%?

My most profitable political wager of all time up to eight years ago was a spread bet that Ken would get less than 50% in first preference votes in the first London Mayoral contest. For all the signs were that Ken, then standing as an independent, was going to overwhelm his opponents by a staggering margin and many took it as read that he would get 50% on the first round.

For the evidence from the last two elections is that Ken’s supporters appear much more willing to say they will vote for him than in practice they actually do.

The pie-chart on the right from March was from six weeks before the 2000 election when Ken’s share topped the 60% mark with an amazing 48% lead over the person who was to finish second, the Tory, Steve Norris. As it turned out when the votes were counted Ken’s eventual lead on first preferences was just 11.9% - some difference.

It got a little bit better by polling day but not much. The eve of poll survey in the Evening standard had these shares Livingstone 51%: Norris 17%: Dobson 16%: Kramer 12%.

Compare those numbers with the actual votes Livingstone 39%: Norris 27.1%: Dobson 13.1%%: Kramer 11,9%. So Ken’s eve of election polling lead was 34% which was almost triple what actually happened.

In that election every single poll from every single poster that carried out surveys came up with huge over-estimates of Ken’s margin over the Tory.

Move on four years to 2004 and most of the polling was done by the internet pollster, YouGov. The only survey by a phone pollster produced an inflated margin for Ken though not on the scale of 2000. Thus the equivalent to yesterday’s YouGov survey had Livingstone 41%: Norris 27%: Hughes (LD) 17%

The final YouGov poll four years ago had it at Ken 37% to Norris’s 26% on first preferences. In the election the shares were Ken 35.7% to Norris’s 28.2%. So the predicted YouGov margin was 11% compared with the 7.5% that actually happened.

It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves when we see current polling predictions in the 40s that last time Ken’s share of the first preferences was not much more than a third.

My default position on the 2008 race is that Ken is still enjoying a polling bonus and if the final surveys have them level-pegging I would still bet against him.

Latest betting prices are here.

Mike Smithson

Could the GOP be repeating the mistake of 1996?

Anybody thinking of betting on John McCain for the White House should take a look at one or two articles recently that have started to draw parallels between his presidential bid and the last time the Republicans chose a candidate in his early 70s - Bob Dole.

Like McCain Bob Dole is a war hero having won two purple hearts and one bronze star. Only a few weeks before the German surrender in 1945 was seriously injured while engaged in combat in Northern Italy. When he won the nomination in 1996 he was even older than McCain - 73. Bill Clinton went on to win his second term by a massive margin.

The latest edition of New York magazine (hat tip Taegan Goddard PoliticalWire) carries a long critique by John Heilemann on the McCain campaign which is best summed up in the following extract.

“….Yet for all the hosannas being sung to him these days, and for all the waves of fear and trembling rippling through the Democratic masses, the truth is that McCain is a candidate of pronounced and glaring weaknesses. A candidate whose capacity to raise enough money to beat back the tidal wave of Democratic moola is seriously in doubt. A candidate unwilling or unable to animate the GOP base. A candidate whose operation has never recovered from the turmoil of last summer, still skeletal and ragtag and technologically antediluvian. (“Fund-raising on the Web? You don’t say. You can raise money through those tubes?”) Whose cadre of confidantes contains so many lobbyists that the Straight Talk Express often has the vibe of a rolling K Street clubhouse. Whose awkward positioning issues-wise was captured brilliantly by Pat Buchanan: “The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars.” A candidate one senior moment—or one balky teleprompter—away from being transformed from a grizzled warrior into Grandpa Simpson. A candidate, that is, who poses an existential question for Democrats: If you can’t beat a guy like this in a year like this, with a vastly unpopular Republican war still ongoing and a Republican recession looming, what precisely is the point of you?..”

Latest betting on who will be next President is here. My view is that until now there has been almost no examination of McCain’s weaknesses and whoever comes out top in the Obama-Hillary contest will end up as President.

Mike Smithson

The current odds-in favourites in the two most active betting markets are Obama for the Democratic nomination and Boris for the London mayoralty. The former is at 0.4/1 and the latter at 0.68/1.

I think that the prices are the wrong way round and that Boris has a substantially better chance of making it than Obama does.

Of course with Boris everything depends on how Londoners vote on May 1st while with Obama the majority of state battles have taken place and he has a significant, though not overwhelming, delegate count.

But the Democratic process has more variables and, just maybe, ending up with most pledged delegates might not be enough. Hillary could just conceivably end up top dog in the popular vote which which give her an “in” with the super-delegates who could decide the thing.

What persuades me about Boris’s position is the polling - not only the latest survey from YouGov but the fact that Labour has not given any details of its latest private polling. Last month their MORI poll was published to defuse the YouGov survey that had Boris ahead for the first time - in March there has been silence and silence is very telling.

A new bit of detail from YouGov reinforces my confidence. Unlike the 2000 and 2004 contest Boris is holding onto the Tory vote. Four years ago, it will be recalled, a significant proportion of party supporters in the GLA election on the same day switched to Ken for the mayoralty. This time that is not happening. A total of 87% of those surveyed who had previously identified themselves to YouGov as supporting the Tories are sticking with their man on May 1st.

That compares 68% of Labour supporters staying with Ken and just 38% of Lib Dem identifiers saying that Paddick is their first choice.

The big challenge for Labour will be to get its vote out and my guess is that with Ken being seen to be in trouble they will do quite well.

I don’t normally bet big on such tight favourites. I am with Boris. On Obama I have lowered my exposure hand have a healthy positive position with Hillary.

Mike Smithson

This could be about the narrative - not the numbers

Firstly can I make clear that the last post was by my son Robert and not me - as some on the thread suggested. I have not changed my mind from Wednesday and believe that in spite of the apparent mathematical disadvantage that Hillary might just still do it.

A good test of US opinion is the Iowa Electronic Market - an institution that was set up by the state university there as an academic exercise and where US citizens can legitimately trade in “political futures”. The overnight prices had the prospect of her winning the nomination at a level which suggested a probability of about 29%. I rate her chances at about 25%.

I think that Nick Palmer MP summed this up brilliantly in a comment on the previous thread: “If she does win I don’t think it will be the precise arithmetic, though, but momentum. If she wins a smashing victory in PA and then wins IN, NC and WV on the trot, I think it’ll be hard for the Obama camp to tell the superdelegates that hey, you gotta go for us, we got all those votes back in January. I think we’re all sort of subconsciously assuming that the national race will stay pretty much as it is, but the pendulum has swung a lot in the last week and it’s possible it will just keep going. But I wouldn’t put it higher than a 20-25% chance.”

As for my personal betting I am in a great position thanks to getting on Obama for the Presidency in 2005 and 2006 at 50/1 and 33/1. I can take fairly big risks on Hillary and still be certain of coming out of this exercise with several thousand pounds. I’ve got a pocket of cash ready to put on Clinton when the price is right.

Latest Democratic nomination betting is here.

Mike Smithson