19 September 2008

ACT Election Betting Market

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Although there aren’t any published polls so far on the coming ACT Election (nor are there likely to be – a poll with a decent sample size costs in the ballpark of $10k to commission, which is just too expensive for our local media), there is at least one betting market open where you can lay down your hard earned on the result. There are many who believe that a betting market such as this tends to be an accurate distillation of all the knowledge that is out there concerning the state of play in the election. There may be something in this idea – after all, the mind is concentrated wonderfully by the prospect of winning or losing money.

In light of this, I’ve been collecting the current prices from the ACT Election market on Centrebet daily, and converting them to implied probabilities of an ALP or Liberal win (this market does not offer an “any others” option). Without further ado, here’s the current state of play:

ACT Election Market implied probabilities

As you can see, the market is currently pricing in an almost 70% chance of an ALP victory. Additionally, this has been slowly widening over the past week and a half. To me, this was a surprising result – I do think the ALP are more likely to win, but I think it’s closer than the market is indicating. You can currently triple your money with a bet on the Liberals – 3 to 1 odds aren’t bad in a two horse race.

If the indulgence of the Riot-ACT administrators is forthcoming, I intend to post an update to this chart every Friday until the election.

[ED – sounds good to us]

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i would love to be able to place a bet that stupid John Hargraeves gets the boot.

When you think about it, almost everything that has sucked about the Stanhope government is about the minister for stuffing up everything.

Someone told me that he is from the extreme right of the ALP and that he only got preselected by a few votes. even his own party was nearly got rid of him

Anyone want to bet me on him getting the boot by the good folks in tuggers??

Well we all know how accurate the betting markets are, from memory they predicted the Labor party would romp home in WA… based on this theory the Libs will hold power by 1 seat.

If I had money to burn and wanted to place a bet, I would place a bet on the Libs as it would pay me a fairly good return.

I don’t know that policy incoherence actually counts against anybody – frankly, I think “has a dude who’s on the radio in them” might get them at least one over the line. In a small market like this, name recognition counts for an awful lot (I gotta say, I don’t think either Steve Pratt or Paul Osborne necessarily ever epitomoised coherence)

My gut says this is probably about right on a pure ALP/Lib spectrum that we don’t have. The Libs haven’t got a lot of traction and their candidates are even more limited than the fairly depressing ALP lot. As others have noted, the imponderable is the near certainty of one Green, a reasonable chance of two and some possibility for Mr Mulcahy. The C(R)AP probably won’t make it, which is just as well given their policy incoherence.

Greens for the balance! Are there odds on that?

yeah from memory election betting is the most accurate way of predicting results and these probabilites would seem about right to me….

i’ll tell you what though; the greens (or anyone else who might hold the balance of power)could make a killing fixing the outcome.

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