Political betting calls US election outcome
Betfair punters continued to back President despite increasingly close poll results - £7m placed on Obama on final day alone.
The polls leading up to yesterday’s US Presidential election may have shown a race that was too close to call, but the political betting market had long-predicted a second term at the White House for Barack Obama.
Exchange betting operator Betfair recorded its biggest ever political market in 12 years of trading with some £32.2m traded throughout the campaign compared to £23m in 2008. And despite almost all polls emerging from the US suggesting Republican candidate Mitt Romney stood a strong chance of victory, bookies’ odds predicted only one winner.
As eGR reported yesterday, an estimated £40m was placed on election outcome industry-wide, with Sportingindex reporting that 80% of those bets were backing Romney.
However the big money was behind Obama all the way, and the odds of a second four-year term shortened from 1-4 yesterday afternoon to 1-5 on Betfair as the early exit polls came in, moving to 1-10 by the time news of victory in Florida emerged. The operator took £7m of bets for an Obama victory on final day alone.
Mike Smithson, editor of Politicalbetting.com, told eGR the political betting market had been a strong indicator of the likely Presidential victor throughout this year’s eventful campaign.
“Throughout the long night of the White House race the most striking for the punters was how the betting markets were much faster responding to events and the information available than any of the so-called pundits,” he said.
“As the news was coming in I Tweeted a number of shots showing the Romney price movement on Betfair and how sentiment moved so sharply away from the Republican challenger which were in the initial batch of state to end voting. An hour and a half later the decline had continued even more yet even when Betfair punters had all but given up on Romney the media was still calling it a tight race.
“What this all shows is that those looking to profit from making political bets are, when taken as a mass, good at making the big predictions.”
Betfair spokesperson James Midmer added: “This election showed once again that if you ‘follow the money’ on a political event you are likely to get a very clear picture of the eventual result. Whilst Mitt Romney’s campaign sought to draw momentum from a variety of opinion polls in recent weeks, Barack Obama was consistently backed on the Betfair Exchange.
“Political bettors make decisions based on a wide variety of factors, not just polls, and they kept the faith they had shown for several months on election night.”
(Picture: Barack Obama courtesy of BeckyF – all rights reserved)