Who’s right about the GOP? Polls or the market?

Marco Rubio's have freefallen since the start of the TV debates

Rubio’s odds in freefall despite poll showing Carson 18% ahead

Sunday’s re-election of Turkish President Rayep Erdogan dealt a further blow to the most established means of predicting politics. Erdogan’s AKP won decisively with 49.4%, compared to an average of 43.7% in the last five opinion polls.

In fairness, late opinion polls were banned from publication so perhaps they would have picked up that significant late swing, but there’s no recent evidence to suggest they would have.

They certainly didn’t in May’s UK election, when even polls published on the day predicted a virtual dead-heat, rather than a 6% Conservative victory. Nor was NO projected to win the Scottish Indepedence Referendum by anything like 10%.

Likewise in the 2012 US Election, polls were famously predicting virtual a dead-heat, rather than a landslide Obama victory. At the same time as pundits were claiming it was ‘too close to call’, Betfair’s Next President market rated him over 80% likely to win.

No wonder what seems like the entire commentariat are dismissive of polls for the GOP Nomination showing outsider, non-politicians Donald Trump and Ben Carson dominating, sharing around 50% of the vote.

Click here to read the full article for @BetfairExchange 


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