Imagup General Magazine 2024
Passionate bettors will bet on absolutely all events whether they are more or less significant and interesting. And it is not just about events in the world of sports. Cultural and political events also attract the attention of bettors, and many bookmakers are willing to create an offer for that.
Maybe political events do not enjoy so much popularity in the world of betting but they can have great long-term odds. That is, you can now put in money that Angela Merkel will be the next German Chancellor. Yes, the odds for this ’event’ are small now but they can be considered from the point of view of long-term investment. Also, you can use the same payment methods to deposit and withdraw money (some are explained here), as when betting in sports.
Of course, there are more interesting offers for betting in politics than those we just mentioned. Moreover, the advantage that politics have is that different bookmakers will offer different odds, so the advantage for bettors is that they have the opportunity to monitor and select the most interesting ones. Another advantage of such bets is that it is not necessary to be an expert in world politics to successfully predict. The odds offered by bookmakers on the victory of individual politicians or parties accurately reflect the essence of what is actually happening. Therefore, it significantly reduces risks.
We will try to show that political events can also bring profit, as bookmakers try to spread their offer as much as possible and place favorable odds.
Types of Bets on Politics
What types of political events do bookmakers offer? It is quite difficult to show a uniform offer, as each bookie prefers to offer its own betting line, but there are some general positions.
- Betting On Candidates
Bookmakers more or less cover only major political events: the election of the president, chancellor, prime minister, ruling parties, etc. There are usually few candidates, and there is always an explicit favorite. There are now, for example, bookmakers that offer various political events non-stop. Some, on the other hand, are inferior to others in terms of odds. Again, some will drop the offer only when the start date of a political event approaches.
Common to all these bookmakers is that you can place bets to compare candidates or predicting which of them will get more votes. In addition, a common game on offer is to guess the percentage of votes a given candidate will get.
- Long-Term Bets
We have already said that you can now put money into the election of the future Chancellor of Germany or the next President of the United States. However, the scale of betting offers in the area of politics is not limited to this. For example, some bookmakers offer users to predict the next country (after the UK) to leave the European Union. And if the odds for obvious political events are small, for this they are bigger. For instance, in regard to this, the favorite (meaning, lowest but very lucrative odd) for the next candidate to abandon the EU is Greece, with an average odd of 3.00, and the maximum odd on leaving the European Union is put on Luxembourg – 150.00.
In British bookmakers, for example, you can choose the next leaders of the Labor and Conservative Party of Great Britain. That is, if you search, you can find very interesting long-term odds on political events. True, not all legal bookmakers offer similar events, and furthermore, they prefer not to give long-term odds, offering them at a certain time before the start of a certain political race.
Now, what problems arise and why it is considered very difficult to embark on this type of betting, i.e. why bettors are rarely good enough in political predictions? For the following reasons:
Lack of Large Amounts of Data
There are huge statistical databases in the most popular sports, where the actions of players in football, hockey, basketball, etc. are analyzed and the smallest details of technical and tactical things are discovered. For example, in the NHL, depending on the calendar, some clubs may face each other 4-6 times in the regular season. Is it some sort of bliss for analysis? Of course.
Yes, just like in sports, it can be said that every event is a unique thing in politics because it takes place in different conditions. And you are right. But, at the same, it is repetitive. Earlier, every year, the British raised the issue of leaving the EU. Or, every presidential campaign takes place in many countries with the same set of candidates, their headquarters, rumors, scandals, international affairs, etc. Therefore, the usual techniques for setting odds in sports are not at all applicable and suitable when analyzing political events.
Incorrect Surveys
There is not enough information, and by this, we mean public opinion polls. It turns out that in the modern world there is almost no truly independent public opinion research. One way or another, all media belong to someone, even if they are positioned as ’independent’.
And even if we assume the fact of honesty of the people conducting the poll, we should keep in mind possible mistakes and lies from the respondents themselves who give the answer from the position of majority during open polls, but when it comes to voting, they do it by their own free will. Or, as Mark Twain would say: “Figures won’t lie, but men that draw up the tables may.“
Conclusion
Bookmakers have expanded their line so much in the last 50 years that they can now make money from politics. Many odds on bookies are placed on politics, only somewhere politics is represented by episodic and somewhere it is represented with a rather serious line.
Often bettors are afraid to bet on politics because of the high probability of unfair elections, but in the world of sports, the probability of fixed matches is probably the same. In major competitions like the Premier League or the Bundesliga, fixed matches, if they occur, are very rare, but in championships of Turkey or Azerbaijan, they are more likely to happen. Everything the same happens in politics. It is difficult to see the unfair election of the President of the United States, but in the regional Bosnian elections, scandals are very often due to the challenge of extra votes, incorrect counting of results, etc.
We highly recommend betting on political events. Especially since they have a number of advantages compared to betting in sports. There is no draw in political events, and here only one of the candidates/parties wins. This in itself simplifies the prediction task. The main advantage is that most of the burden of analysis goes to the bookmakers. For successful political events, it is not necessary to monitor the results of independent sociological research. It is enough to have a superficial knowledge of the candidates and parties participating in the election races, and the rest of the work has already been done by the bookmakers.
