General Politics Guide - Mike Robb
17 Politics 
/ Betfair Education / 20 March 2008 / Leave a comment
People disinterested in politics often face the accusation of not taking their 'civic duties' seriously (whatever they are). If you don't vote in an election you are a lazy and uneducated sloth, with no right to ever complain about anything. What a load of complete rubbish. If you're disinterested in politics that's fine - but just make sure you're aware that you are still an idiot for the simple fact that you're missing some cracking betting opportunities.
People disinterested in politics often face the accusation of not taking their 'civic duties' seriously (whatever they are). If you don't vote in an election you are a lazy and uneducated sloth, with no right to ever complain about anything. What a load of complete rubbish. If you're disinterested in politics that's fine - but just make sure you're aware that you are still an idiot for the simple fact that you're missing some cracking betting opportunities.
Ask people what some of the biggest markets have been in Betfair's history and I'll offer anyone 1.01 that nobody answers with a politics market. The 2004 US Presidential Election, however, matched a colossal £17.8m, just on the 'Winning Party' market alone, and the Bush/Kerry showdown could well be smashed this time around. At the very least you can expect over £30m to be matched.
In the lead-up to election-day, Kerry was trading at prices between 2.0 and 5.8, while on the day itself he traded as low as 1.24 to win. The market traded ferociously throughout the night, with in excess of 4,000 bets being matched between 12am and 8am UK time - a remarkable number bearing in mind that Betfair does not accept bets from the United States.
It perhaps should not come as too much of a surprise that this is the case as the savvy punter would realise that polls on America's west coast did not close until 3am, which meant that the market was swing-tastic as more results and exit polls came in. At 2.37am you could get as high as 4.9 on Bush to prevail, which goes a long way to show quite how volatile politics markets can be and how much value exists right up to the end.
A more recent example that saw some ferocious trading, if not quite as impressive in terms of volume, was the UK next general election date market. After Gordon Brown's speech at the Labour Party Conference, the odds of a general election being held before the end of 2007 fell from 3.7 to 1.5 in the space of 48 hours. The market was then trading with swings between 1.4 and 2.5 for the next week until David Cameron's speech at the Tory conference, which saw the price shoot out before Brown officially announced that he would not call an election on 6th October.
You need to be careful what markets you pick, however, as not all are as volatile as this. The good thing is that the markets to steer clear of are usually easy to spot. The next Lib Dem leader market at the end of 2007, for example, was a bit of a non-event as it was a one (maybe two) horse race, certainly one with a very hot favourite in Nick Clegg. This meant that swings were harder to find. Saying that, these markets (ie those with such a short favourite) can turn out to be the most volatile - Hillary Clinton traded as low as 1.21 to win the Democratic nomination, but is now out to 3.8.
The next general election markets are prone to swings, with events having a notable impact on price - the loss of 25 million personal details records by HMRC in October 2007, for example, saw the odds of a Labour majority at the next election drift out to 3.55, even though that event is going to be largely forgotten by the time the next election comes around in 2009 or 2010. The savvy trader could have locked in a decent profit by simply reacting to events.
The primaries to select the Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2008 Presidential Election started with Iowa on 3rd January, and at the time I said that the nearest thing to a dead cert was that there would be huge swings between the 2nd and 4th January. With Obama winning and Clinton finishing third, I was correct in the most emphatic manner.
Those of us who think politics is boring might well be right, but any good punter should look beyond the façade of suits, sound-bites and scandals and see politics markets for what they really are - a myriad of opportunities. The intricacies associated with what makes prices move are significant, and the comparatively fewer people trading on these markets gives punters a fantastic opportunity to react and get their bets in ahead of the game. The moral of the story is that politics markets on Betfair are bigger than most people think and tell a story that opinion polls and news outlets often miss. Even if you don't fancy a bet they are well worth watching anyway.
