Post
by robin » Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:32 am
Interesting point, Tut. I suspect the bookies simply follow the money on this one to guarantee a return - i.e. they want to make money on either outcome.
Looking back over the odds history, the odds for yes started in 2011 more or less where they are today, rising all the way up to 5:1 at the end of 2013 before coming back to 3:1 today.
Meanwhile the No vote has taken the broadly the opposite path (clearly, given that the bookies need the odds x bets to balance).
So the bookies seem to "think" that the yes vote is becoming more likely and the no vote less likely, though the no vote is still significantly more likely than the yes vote by a big margin.
What you have to understand, though, is that this is effectively a poll of the betting public, except that richer betters influence the poll more than poorer betters, rather than the usual one-person one-vote approach of a poll.
The other issue is that people often bet with their hearts not their heads; for example whenever England are playing football you will always get generous odds from UK bookies on the other side because so many people bet on England even though they might actually not stand that good a chance of winning.
Even so, the odds of about 3:1 (or 1:3 depending on which side you're looking at) are quite a long way from the somewhere between 40/60 and 50/50 split that polls tend to return on this subject, though the trend is the same - i.e. the gap is narrowing.
Cheers,
Robin
I is in your loomz nibblin ur wirez
#bemoretut
