Give a political bet as a present!

If you’ve been celebrating or commiserating after Thursday’s by-elections you might be interested in a new gambling service where you can give political bets as presents. It’s all done online and you can give one to yourself.

What’s promising is that the service, Flipem, does well thought out political bets and ran what we think was the only “size of majority” market on the Leicester South by-election, where we came across them. For a unit cost of £2 to you you could have given someone £12 if the Lib Dems had had a majority of 1-2,500.

They’ve now got a market on how many seats the Lib Dems will get at the General Election with some reasonable odds.

For 71-75 seats a £2 “gift” will produce £20 for the recipient of your choice if that’s what the party eventually gets. The 45 or less “price” is £32 for the £2 stake which might be popular amongst Labour or Tory supporters! No doubt other political markets will emerge and we will keep an eye on them.

General Election spread-betting gets cheaper. After last week it’s even more tricky to predict the number of seats that each party will get and punters seem to be keeping well away from the spread betting markets. These have now reduced their prices – the spread between “buy” and “sell” – in order to make themselves more attractive but, apart from the Lib Dems, we do not see any value.

Labour did well to “spin” the disaster of the by-elections but there’s no sign that the voters are returning. It’s a bold gambler who bets on them getting more than 350 seats especially as they’re down a certain 10 seats in the Scottish boundary changes and the tactical anti-Tory voting that gave them an extra 30+ MPs last time will not be there to the same extent.

the Tories are, in spite of the doom-ridden headlines, holding their position but the by-elections show that they are not advancing. Less tactical voting, and a smaller margin with Labour, should push them well above 200 seats whatever but we are not confident about the “buy” level of 230.

the Lib Dems are the main beneficiaries though it’s much harder for them, because of seat distribution, to convert votes into MPs. We think that they will get more than 63 seats.

The new reduced priced spread markets are:-

LAB 343-350 (+3) : CON 223-230 (-8) : LIBD 59-63 (+1)

The main General Election market move in the opposite direction. The Labour price went from 2/7 to 1/3 on William Hill and this is the current best value. These markets are about Who Wins Most Seats and not on who gets a majority and it’s very hard to see how there can be any other result than Labour coming out on top even if it suffers a huge drop in votes.

TONY BLAIR. He’s still there and while he wants to stay in the job we think that he will remain. Two markets – will he be there on election day and who will be the Labour leader?

There’s even now a market on him being Prime Minister longer than Mrs Thatcher. You can get l!1/2 that he won’t and 6/4 that he will. We wonder whether Gordon Brown has any money on? We do not like markets where you do not know when you will be paid and the prices are not good value.

WHITE HOUSE RACE
Just a week off the Democratic Convention in Boston when John Kerry will be selected, formally, as the party nominee for President in the election on November 2. For those with winning bets on Kerry for the nomination this should mean that we get paid out.

The frustrating thing about this market is that it was all resolved in early March yet we have had to wait for so long for the pay-out.

Next time the bookies should define getting the “nomination” when a candidate has secured enough delegates.

The polls have hardened on the Kerry-Edwards ticket and so have the betting prices. Bush, at 9/10, is at his weakest point ever. We stick with our BACK KERRY call.

Other markets have started to emerge including ones on who will win particular states. Included amongst them is Florida where there was all the fuss last time.

POLITICALBETTING.COM We will be away for a few days though reader comments, no doubt, will continue. Next post – Thursday July 24.

Image: http://www.sbac.edu/~tpl/clipart/Holidays/present%2002.jpg