General Election Betting

[Old Vic]

Not interested in hosting a political debate on here

but looking at betting angles on the general election. There is betting on 650 constituencies plus lots of special markets. Must be a rick or two out there ?

Can SNP really go from 6 seats to the 50ish that is split for unders/overs market ?

[Istabraq]

I'll take a good look tomorrow OV but a few that struck me earlier:

Green Party not to win a seat 100/30
Turnout under 68.5%
Cameron next PM Evs
UKIP seats 0 or 1 3/1 - 2 or 3 seats is 6/5 as cover, can't win 4 can they ?
Clegg and Farage to win their constituencies 19/20

Good luck !

[Old Vic]

Cheers Istabraq - being doing a bit of research myself but no bets yet

[Old Vic]

I found a couple of decent resources and think the betting angle edge might be in finding seats where tactical voting will change expected results. Mike Smithsons political netting site is worth a browse ...think he is the Tom Segal of this area

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2015/05/06/with-so-much-potential-tactical-voting-the-overall-national-party-vote-shares-wont-mean-as-much/

Tomorrow is about seats not national vote totals

There’s lots of talk at the moment about the electoral “system being bust” and “no longer fit for purpose”. What is being pointed to are possible disparities between national aggregate vote shares and the total of MPs each party ends up with on Friday morning.

Yet as we’ve seen strikingly in Monday’s ICM Hallam poll or last week’s Ashcroft survey in Jim Murphy’s Renfrewshire East a very large slab of electors on Thursday will not be voting for the party of their choice but seeking to ensure a specific outcome in their seats.

The readiness of Hallam CON voters to switch to Clegg to stop LAB is a good pointer to other LD defences as well as what might happen North of the Tweed. There the scale of the potential switching by those in favour of the union could be signifcant and the SNP might not sweep up quite as much as some polls have suggested.

The huge differential in 2010 LD voting patterns highlighted in last week’s ComRes poll of English LAB-CON battlegrounds is another pointer. The overall closeness of the election appears to be causing people to think more closely about how best they can use their vote.

Because it is clear that many are not voting for their allegiance winning the national aggregate vote will mean less. The election is about seats.

If the Tories are not the national vote winners you can see them pointing to places like Hallam and Scotland to suggest that those figures are less meaningful in the likely post-election legitimacy debate.

This is a direct product of first past the post. If people want to make their vote count then they might vote differently so adding up national vote totals doesn’t tell you as much.

Ian Dale's seat by seat prediction is a good resource too

http://iaindale.com/posts/2015/04/27/final-seat-by-seat-general-election-predictions-the-complete-list

I will throw up a few bets later

[Old Vic]

Green Party not to win a seat 100/30 - Brighton or bust for them? looks a decent one.

Turnout under 68.5% - agree

Cameron next PM Evs - too many variables for me

UKIP seats 0 or 1 3/1 - 2 or 3 seats is 6/5 as cover, can't win 4 can they ? - Ill have a closer look at this one. there is some possibility that there might be " a shy UKIP voter " when it comes to indicating voting intentions so polls might understate their true support.

Clegg and Farage to win their constituencies 19/20 - yep.

[Istabraq]

Good links those OV, I'll certainly use the Ian Dale site for find a couple of his predictions that are at odds with the market....