The final spread levels on general election day had a CON lead of 19 seats, 80 seats short of what actually happened
May 7th 2015: The afternoon when CON seat buyers panicked
CON lead on @SportingIndex http://t.co/rSKroIPwt1 spreads down 6 today – now 19 seats pic.twitter.com/l3SVpTf2cj
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 7, 2015
A lot has been written about the predictive nature of betting markets – a theory I do not subscribe to.
Just look at how the Commons seats spreads moved on general election day and the comparison with the actual result.
My understanding is that there was a huge panic on the afternoon of May 7th which led to a huge amount of selling by punters who had long CON buy and LAB sell positions. This led to a change in the prices reducing the CON lead on the market from 25 seats to 19 seats.
As we all know the election produced a CON seat lead of 99 seats and an overall majority.