UK Bookies Doing Huge Election Business

For a great many students of politics, opinion polls are the life's blood of a campaign. At the same time, it is common to refer to the campaign as a horse race. So the question is what about the people who do horse races for a living, that is, Britain's bookies, or as the Brits so genteelly put it, "turf accountants"? It appears that they are barely able to keep up with demand.

As of this morning, the odds on the Liberal Democrats being the largest party in the next parliament have dropped from 150 to 1 down to 8 to 1. Graham Sharpe, of William Hill (one of the betting chains with shops all over the UK), told The Times, "I have been doing elections since the 1970s, and even the SDP was not a phenomenon to compare with the scale of what has happened in the space of a 90-minute television programme." The Social Democratic Party split from Labour in 1981, went into alliance with the Liberals, and merged with them to create the Liberal Democrats 22 years ago. At the time, they were supposed to be "breaking the mould" of British politics. Instead, they sort of bent it, splitting the anti-Tory vote and putting Thatcher in for years.

The real political sophisticates are betting on a hung parliament. Odds on that happening are now a rather unattractive proposition at 4 to 7. For those whose misspent youth doesn't include a line of credit at William Hill, that means a winning wager of £7 means a profit of £4 (before taxes). Mr. Sharpe said, "In the history of political betting, a hung Parliament has never been an odds-on chance before a general election." A Tory majority runs 13 to 8, and a Labour majority is at 12 to 1.

The game-changer as far are the bookies are concerned was the first debate among the putative prime ministers last Thursday. David Williams, of Ladbrokes (a rival of William Hill), told the same paper,

The gamble really started on Friday, and on Saturday it went berserk. It is unprecedented, without a shadow of a doubt. We cut the odds in the hope it would stem the flow, but the more the odds have shortened -- the less punters could win, the more they bet.

We always knew that the debates would be a signpost, but we did not envisage them having this big an effect on the market. It has been very volatile. But money finds its level, and it will settle down at some point. But there's no sign of it yet.