politicalbetting.com

What lessons can we learn from last time?

At 1.05am EST on November 3rd 2004 the US news channel, CNN, showed the above graphic on the screen illustrating the result of an exit poll in Ohio, the key state that Senator John Kerry had to win if he was to beat George W. Bush for the Presidency.

The message was clear. Kerry was ahead in Ohio and the chances were that the state would give him enough votes in the electoral college to become the next President. The exit polls and the leaks about them the previous evening had completely turned the White House Race betting market on its head.

When the polling stations had opened on the day before Bush was an odds on favourite to win. By the time the exit polls had been published things had changed dramatically. Those few hours saw the biggest political gambling spree ever seen with an estimated £25m being bet in the UK alone.

The exit poll results had been produced for a consortium of the major US news organizations, working as the National Election Pool (NEP). They were based on interviews with voters in 49 states. In the days and months that followed there were huge investigation into why the NEP figures, particularly in key states such as Ohio, has been wrong.

The co-director of NEP, Warren Mitofsky, was quoted as saying “the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters”. Another suggestion was that women, who were marginally more pro-Kerry and certainly in the early polls they represented 58% of the sampled voters.

Whatever the post-elections explanations this was completely irrelevant to the betting. Punters were making decisions in an instant and the conclusion from what was being reported about the polls was that Kerry had won. Many gamblers lost a lot of money that night and one of the bosses of a spread-betting company told me later that it was one of their most profitable sessions ever.

Live White House race betting odds.

Mike Smithson

Who’s going to win the Glenrothes betting war?

There are more betting opportunities on next Thursday’s Glenrothes by election and this one, from PB’s spread-betting sponsor, Sporting Index, allows you to have a punt on which party will end up third.

Thus if you bought the Tories at 3 points and they did make it to third then you would win twice your stake unit. If they lost you would lose three times the amount. Sounds complicated? Well the firm is offering to give a free copy of my book, “The Political Punter” to all those who sign up for an account through the links on this site and have a first bet.

I find this a hard call – because it was only two and half years ago that the Lib Dems pulled off their sensational victory over Labour in the seat next door – Dunfermline.

Meanwhile there have been reports that both the SNP and Labour are urging their activists to bet on their respective parties to show that they have the momentum.

According the The Scotsman emails are being sent out by a group linked with the SNP urging this action.

The email says: “It is essential that everyone does this, as our intelligence indicates money is going into William Hill’s from Labour activists throughout the UK in order to make them bookies’ favourites. If you have no previous experience of going into a betting shop then don’t worry – they are most helpful. The young woman who placed this bet had never ever been in a betting shop in her life before, and just went up to the desk and asked for help.”

This seems to have been kicked off by Labour and Michael Crick reported on Newsnight last night that the party faithful were being asked to put a tenner on.

My view is that the political atmosphere is not as highly charged as it was in July for Glasgow East and there just might be less of a desire to give Labour a good kicking. If that’s the case then you could envisage a Labour hold. Nothing has happened since Monday to change my suggestion that Labour at better than evens is a value bet. I wrote that just after I had got as much as I could on Labour at 2-1.

Get the latest live prices from PB’s other sponsor – Bestbetting which has the fullest range of political prices available anyhere from a wide group of bookmakers.

Mike Smithson

But are the marginals behaving differently?

The Daily Telegraph YouGov poll for October is out this morning and shows almost no change on the last survey from the pollster a fortnight ago and is producing numbers fairly in line with other pollsters.

The Tories will be relieved that the paper’s still has them comfortably in the 40s while Labour is only polling three points down on its general election level.

There’s little doubt that the last month and a half has seen a step change in public opinion and what we are getting is a “new normality” where there has been enough of a Labour recovery to suggest, on a uniform swing, only a bare Cameron majority.

But Brown’s party really needs to see the Tory share slip below 40% from a range of pollsters to have a realistic chance of the outcome being a hung parliament.

Feeding in the latest poll into the UKPollingReport seat calculator and we get CON 333: LAB 265: LD 24: OTH 28 seats. This almost certainly underplays the Lib Dem position but gives a broad view of where we are – a small Conservative majority.

What is interesting is that between the last national YouGov survey a fortnight ago and this one there has been the Channel 4 YouGov poll of the marginals which pointed to an overall Tory majority of 54 seats. This seems to indicate the things are working differently in the key seats where the election will be decided and where the parties are putting most of their campaigning effort.

Coming on top of the ComRes poll on Tuesday I would expect a tightening of the position between the parties on the spread betting markets. The current levels from PB’s spreadbetting sponsor, SportingIndex are now CON 338-344: LAB 238-244: LD 43-46 seats – down a couple of notches overnight and showing an eight seat Tory drop during October.

I am currently a Tory seller and will stay that way.

Mike Smithson

When are they going to clamp-down on pro-Labour samples?

One most Fridays when parliament is sitting BBC2′s “Daily Politics” programme announces the results of its latest ComRes poll on matters of current concern. This generally gets picked up by other parts of the media who treat it, quite naturally, like any other ComRes political poll. It’s not and the BBC should say so.

For the Daily Politics polls have one fundamental difference compared with the standard ComRes voting intention surveys – there’s no effort to ensure a politically balanced sample which almost inevitably means that its skewed towards Labour supporters.

In every single ComRes voting intention poll since they introduced past vote weighting the influence of Labour supporters has had to be scaled back when working out the final figures – yet the BBC allows its political surveys on matters a significant current political interest to be carried out without this adjustment.

It’s been known since the early 90s that a disproportionate number of Labour supporters respond to unsolicited randomised polling phone calls. Who knows the reason? Ipsos-MORI think it’s because they get too many public sector workers answer the phone. Whatever – those involved in polling recognise the issue and do something about it.

In fact for the first time ever we will be going into a general election when every single pollster that carries out voting intention polling will be taking measures of one sort or another to avoid political sample bias.

This should be applied to the Daily Politics surveys even though BBC rules prevent voting intention questions. If that’s not possible then Andrew Neil needs to explain that no effort has been made to make such an adjustment and their poll cannot be compared with a standard ComRes poll.

And other parts of the media need to treat these surveys with the utmost caution. Without this they are misleading their viewers, readers and the public at large.

Mike Smithson