Election Betting

From a look at the betting markets, punters seem to have lined up with pundits to call this week a nil-all draw.

While the campaign descended into a Fromelles-style bloodbath, the negativity of both sides also stagnated the head-to-head betting market and we’ll go to the polls with Labor paying $1.28 to win, and the Coalition pegged at $3.60.

You’ll remember that last week saw Julia Gillard’s campaign finally stem the haemorrhaging that saw her odds on next PM drift out to $1.62, which was as bad as they got under Rudd. Once Sportingbet took over $400,000 on Labor in a week including a bet of $200,000, they were always going to head into the election as favourites.

Continue reading "The punters: Labor to win, with a major loss of skin" »

In the hours following Sunday night’s Leaders Debate, a strange thing happened: punters started backing Tony Abbott for the first time since the election was called last Saturday.

In doing so, they not only pre-empted yesterday’s Newspoll but confirmed most of the analysis about the Opposition leader’s performance in the papers: it could’ve been a lot worse.

As someone who has been taking bets on elections for years, it was a hard to imagine a bigger game changer in a betting market than when the ALP changed jockeys just weeks out from this election campaign.

Continue reading "Follow the money: punters finally getting on Abbott" »