PoliticalBetting.com and Jon Cruddas
PoliticalBetting.com has this graphic of the odds on different Labour deputy leadership candidates. The clear trends, after the Newsnight hustings, are the odds shortening on John Cruddas (he’s doing well) and lengthening on Peter Hain (he’s doing badly). Alan Johnson and Hilary Benn are on a different graphic as their odds are much shorter - between 1.7 and 2.
Certainly, Cruddas has improved and Hain is generally seen as being in a weak position, but I have the impression that Political Betting functions as part of the blogosphere and so the information it gives reflects the mores of that section. I don’t know whether it’s represenative or not, but a few things are certain. Jon Cruddas does (it seems to me) have a clear advantage in the blogosphere (with some notable exceptions), but you can’t blog if you don’t have access to the internet. The wonderful people at National Statistics have this release on internet access by region, with this chart:
Hazel Blears, for instance, represents the North West of England, which has rather lower internet penetration that London, where Jon Cruddas hails from. If it is right (and I’m not saying it is) that there is either a London or a blogger bias (or both) towards Cruddas, this would explain the success on PoliticalBetting.com.
xD.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:51 am
I’d say there’s a bit of both, to be honest. But there is a question as to where PB gets its odds from. Are they always independently drawn, or are they an aggregate of any variety of real price?
London and blogger bias are both obvious. The question is, exactly how much bias do they create?
June 1st, 2007 at 10:57 am
Indeed, looking back, it seems that the graph is actually drawn from the betfair index.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:07 am
Yes, they’re from Betfair - I think the point stands, though, as it will be Cruddasite bloggers betting (if you see what I mean).
June 1st, 2007 at 4:58 pm
There a a number of points that could be made. Firstly, apart from the regional factors you have mentioned, the support for Cruddas could be higher among bloggers than among ordinary trade union members and party members. By definition, bloggers are a rather self-selecting group and, perhaps, Labour bloggers are to the left of most Labour supporters.
Also, the betfair prices are based on a rather small amount of cash. At the moment, there is only about 30 grand staked on the outcome of the deputy leadership contest. By contrast, more than £10 million was staked on the outcome of the last England/West Indies test match. As such, perhaps the view of the (small) number of punters in the market is unrepresentative of the wider population.