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Month: October 2004

Will the pollsters be as wrong as they were in 2000?

Will the pollsters be as wrong as they were in 2000?

Is the pro-Bush bias repeating itself? With a daily diet of more than thirty new state and national polls predicting very different outcomes the big betting decisions are going to be based on which polling organisations have got it right. To guide us these were the final polls from 2000 to test against the actual result – which had Bush and Gore on 48% each. SEVEN final national polls had Bush upto 5% ahead. WRONG TWO final polls showed Bush…

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Get 5/1 on Osama being captured and Bush winning

Get 5/1 on Osama being captured and Bush winning

Will the world’s most wanted man be found before election day? For months people have speculated and joked that the icing on the cake of George Bush’s re-election campaign would be the capture of Osama Bin Laden – surprise, surprise – a few days before November 2. There’s even been a healthy betting market on the possibility. Tradesports – the Irish betting exchange that is focused on the US – has had a market for nearly a year on “Osama…

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We are sticking with our Kerry call

We are sticking with our Kerry call

We first called for John Kerry in mid-May and we stick with that. We had a little wobble in the period after the Republican Convention and before the TV debates but we now firmly believe that the Democratic ticket is good value at current prices. The 8/5 you can now get on Kerry is out of proportion to the risk that he will lose. With new state and national polls coming out almost by the hour it’s getting hard to…

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Could Michael Howard win by conceding that he will lose?

Could Michael Howard win by conceding that he will lose?

Will the Tories’s new Campaign Chief adopt his winning Australian strategies? The appointment of the Australian campaigning guru, Lynton Crosby, as the Conservative’s Election campaign director should cause all political gamblers to look closely at their General Election betting. For Crosby was the strategist behind the remarkable campaign in 1996 when the Australian Liberal party pulled off a surprise victory in the General Election there by all but conceding that the party had no chance of beating the Government of…

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson – the money goes on!

Prime Minister Boris Johnson – the money goes on!

Will he make it to Number 10 within a decade? After the row over the comments about Liverpudlians in the Specator, the magazine that he edits, the Tory MP, Boris Johnson, has been backed to become Prime Minister on or before December 31, 2014 with William Hill at 66/1. There’s also money going on him 25/1 with Hills and 33/1 with PaddyPower to become the next Leader of the Conservative Party. ‘We have been a little surprised to take several…

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How dangerous is the Iraq troop move for Labour?

How dangerous is the Iraq troop move for Labour?

Will Bush try to capitalise on Britain’s move? Tony Blair must be praying that George Bush does not seek to make political capital out of the planned British troop move to support US forces in the north of Iraq. The idea that British lives might be at risk to help get Bush re-elected could damage the Prime Minister and Labour enormously. A sign of the level of unease was seen in the frosty response that Labour MPs gave to the…

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Is Gordon Brown worth 1/3 for the Labour leadership?

Is Gordon Brown worth 1/3 for the Labour leadership?

Forget the bookie – you are better off with the building society? Even though Tony Blair has made it clear that he will only step down after he’s served another full term there’s a healthy market on who will replace him. Acording to this time-table it will be 2008 or 2009 before the Blairs move from Downing Sttreet to their new house in Connaught Square but the price of Gordon Brown being the successor is a staggering 1/3. That’s with…

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Kerry noses ahead in electoral vote calculation

Kerry noses ahead in electoral vote calculation

Kerry moves up in state polls but down in the national ones In spite of a run of poor national polls the Kerry-Edwards campaign has today edged ahead of Bush in the latest estimate of electoral votes based on the most recent state polls. A new poll in the key swing state of Wisconsin shows that Kerry has overturned a 5% Bush lead and is now 1% ahead. The excellent electoral-vote.com puts the challenger ahead by the narrowest of margins…

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