politicalowl

The opinion polls have been showing it for some time and now the markets are catching up. The current Owl's election indicator shows the Coalition's chances of re-election have dropped considerably in recent weeks. The probability of a Coalition victory is now just 53.6%.

The Owl’s market based election indicator still has Labor quite a firm favourite to win tomorrow’s Victorian state election but its chances have not improved any over the last week. To me this suggests there are believers in the underdog theory of elections alive and well. One chance in six of a Coalition victory is enough to make election night worth following for at least a few hours.

Labor is the popular pick in the Owl’s first election indicator on the Victorian State election. It assesses Labor’s chances at two in three. Indicators on other elections along with the outcome of past results are at  The Owl’s Indicators

The strong showing by UKIP in the UK’s local government elections has resulted in the markets making a five percentage point improvement in the assessed probability of that party gaining most votes in the elections of members to the European Parliament. Those votes for MEPs were caste on the same day as those for local governments but will not be counted until Sunday when elections in all European countries are concluded. At this point of proceedings I am happy with my recommendations: EUROPEAN ELECTION $460 on Labour at $2.20 to win most votes in the UK at the European parliamentary election $450 on UKIP at $2.25 to win most votes in the UK at the European parliamentary election. UKIP and Labour are both winners. Full details of my political betting are at my  political speculator’s diary blog .

Wednesday, 7th February, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Treasurer Peter Costello will he happy this morning that the Reserve Bank has kept interest rates steady and hoping that in the months to come that the seven out of  24 economists surveyed by financial news agency Bloomberg  are correct in predicting a fall before year’s end. Costello knows that his chances of becoming the next Liberal Party leader, and perhaps the next Prime Minister, depend on economic conditions remaining favourable. He certainly does not want the three economists who told Bloomberg this morning that the next interest rate movement will be up to prove right. The government, and Mr Costello, could live with the majority of 14 in the no change brigade getting it correct provided other things go their way. In the view of the betting market, things are now getting very close. The Crikey election indicator based on the odds offered by the country’s three leading bookmakers ...

In three weeks the West Australian Labor Government has gone from the 42% outsider to the 67% favourite on the Glug WA Election Indicator. It is a dramatic reversal but not completely surprising. I noted back on 28 January that despite the opinion of the bookmakers and the predictions of the pollsters "Governments rarely lose office after a single term and the underdog is the position to be in when campaigning gets underway."

The Glug Election Indicator performed creditably in picking the United States election result. It had George W. Bush a 56.6% chance of remaining President which translates in to a prediction of a 50.3% national vote for Bush. That was lower than the 51.1% shown by the current actual figures but substantially closer than the 49.4% prediction of Messrs Zogby and co. If you are wondering how a 56.6% chance of winning becomes a predicted vote of 50.3%, we assume a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 1.5 percentage points. That is the standard deviation which the University of Iowa found applied to its Iowa Electronic Markets on political elections. (See  So Who is the Underdog ) in our Election Diary archive. The Glug indicator, incidentally, predicted that the Liberal-National Coalition in Australia was a 77.8% chance of winning. That assumed a two party preferred vote of 51.2%. The final figure was 52.7%.

1 October, 2004    - Richard Farmer   The Coalition has had the United States Government as its cheer leader during this campaign with President Bush going out of his way to sing John Howard’s praises. Now the Russians have come to Mark Latham’s aid. By agreeing overnight to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the Russian Government presented the Labor Leader with the opportunity to centre another day’s campaigning on an issue that is favourable to him. I bet Mr Latham cannot believe his luck as he goes about comparing his Green credentials with those of a Prime Minister who has refused to join most of the world community in committing to policies designed to prevent global warming. Interpret This If You Can AC Neilsen’s last poll had the Liberal-National Coalition eight points in front. Newspoll has Labor four points in front. According to Morgan it is a dead heat. I’ll stick with the Glug election Indicator which is based on the odds at Betfair. It shows that over...