Sporting Index Spread Markets

The market average: CON majority of 62

Today Politicalbetting’s projection for the general election based on what’s going on in the betting markets takes on a new dimension with the inclusion for the first time of Betfair’s new election line betting market. This was launched last week and involves punters entering into bets at evens on whether the parties will get more or less than the stated numbers.

The great thing about this new type of betting is that you know precisely how much you can lose at the moment the bet is placed. This is unlike commons seat spread betting where your winnings or losses are determined by how far your bet is off the actual result.

I’ve reported before the bet of an unlucky punter who bought Labour seats just before the 2007 autumn election that never was when the buy spread was at 332. Today the sell price is 220 so if he wanted to close it down he would lose the difference, in this case 112, multiplied by his unit stake of £100 a seat. That works out at £11,200 – ouch!

As it is the Tory numbers from both forms of betting are very close. It’s the Labour numbers which seem to be out of line.

The markets could be further affected by two news polls due out in the next day and, of course, the budget statement on Wednesday.

I’m expecting to get news of the ICM survey for the Guardian this evening while the Ipsos-MORI Political Monitor for April should be made known tomorrow morning.

Technical note: The PB index is calculated by taking the mid-point of the the buy and sell prices of the most popular party from the Betfair line market and what’s available from the spread-betting firms. This is then used to extrapolate a majority size. If no party is on 325 seats or more then the Index will report how many seats the leading party is short. With the addition of the new market 50% of the weighting is from Betfair and 50% from the spreads where, often, more than one firm is quoting at any one time.