Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

average odds on "Stay" still 2/5. not saying it's impossible, but i trust bookies' odds way more than newspaper polls

also i want people to fully enjoy the consequences of their voting decisions

[I don't understand odds enough to know if that's good but I hope that that's good]

Also my sample size isn't much larger than relatives on facebook sharing Britain First-esque videos that suggest the world wanted to be a British colony until WW2 and it's all Germany's fault that we're no longer a great nation. (Most of these relatives will probably be dead before the true after-effects of leaving the EU (and global warming, which they also don't believe in) take hold)

the odds mean that roughly speaking bookmakers and their customers consider a "stay" win to be twice as likely as a "leave"

Brexiters are far noisier than Stay voters, for a number of reasons

i'm still firmly in the Mercutio camp

Brexiters are far noisier than Stay voters, for a number of reasons

again going only by my sample group one of those reasons is flatulence

The odds are narrowing at a rate tho. Was way more comfortable even a week ago.

we've postal voted already (will be in the anti-EU enclave of Switzerland for the vote) so won't be able to discover if I'm susceptible to vile anti-Turk racist scaremongering after all

Yeah I saw that, I think they've only got so much ground to make tho. Don't know if there are enough true neutrals to swing the poll

But hey, we Brits love an underdog

Basically after 2015 I'm braced for disappointment with every election.

"Call me Morbz."

Will never be disappointed by a free electorate expressing its values and opinions through a democratic vote

lol

Time to go out and get a swastika tattooed on your tit.

My understanding at this point is that more people overall favour Remain but likely voters favour Leave.

well fucking vote then

There is a pro-Remain majority in the House of Commons of 454 MPs to 147.

Anyone remember what the share of pro-PR MPs was?

Don't know but I'm sure they were in the minority.

the whole campaign is so depressing. Remain or the sky will fall in! Leave and it will be sunshine every day! surprised anyone can muster the will to vote after all this.

If we do vote to leave as a nation, wtf are you going to do? I don't want to live in a country that votes to leave.

move to Scotland

I'll put in a good word for most of ye

Some of ye

The odds are narrowing at a rate tho. Was way more comfortable even a week ago.

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Monday, June 6, 2016 4:36 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true in the sense that they've narrowed, but it's still around 70% remain, which is more than it was a couple of months ago:

http://predictwise.com/politics/uk-politics

individual polls should not be reported as news stories. it's professional negligence on the level of the "thing gives you cancer" stuff in the daily express, which always based on a single study, not a meta-analysis. the only things worth paying attention to are polling averages and the betting markets.

apart from the betting markets.

The money in political betting is pretty tiny in the bookies scheme of things though, it's basically just for publicity they even bother.

apparently it's enough for bookies odds to be far more predictive and reliable than individual polls

Who (the fuck) Are You.

Wish I'd put £20 on Corbyn to win when the stupid bookies had him at 200/1.

the money on the exchanges is not remotely tiny

'far more predictive and reliable than individual polls' is, as you say, a pretty low bar. You don't become more all-knowing just because you've put some money on - generally the opposite in fact.

But presumably the betting shops that define the odds are doing so based on their own research re: who might win, and stand to lose £££s if they are wrong? [I have never bet on anything so forgive me if this is all wrong]

But also on the betting they receive - if lots of folk bet on one side it shifts the odds.

In a liquid market like Brexit that's all that matters. This is not some William hill people reading the papers and estimating probabilities based on the tone of the guardian editorial section. It's just supply and demand of bets.

I'm not saying they (or poll average trackers) are perfectly predictive but they are both much better than individual polls (and light years ahead of pundits).

Assuming both sides are equally likely to bet, in equal sums, no?

but that assumes that people only bet how they will vote...

these markets are mostly people betting with their head rather than with their hearts/personal preferences. we know this because the average better does a good job of predicting the outcome.

remember how the markets work: people bet on odds that are too long (or shorting odds that are too high, which you can do at betting exchanges) until the odds on offer on the market match the consensus estimate of the probabilities. so the betting markets are ways of getting at the consensus probability. the consensus is not necessarily the true probability, but it's a but better estimate than that of an individual poll or pundit.

fwiw i don't bet myself but i do work in probabilistic programming/machine learning, etc.

Ah, yes, it does x-post

How did the bookies get on at the last General Election? I don't recall them predicting a Tory victory - did they?

(I mean, I don't recall them being closer to the eventual outcome than the published polls, I guess - I think that's a difference I'd have noticed.)

(I'm not stanning for individual polls either, btw, and what Caek says is all quite right, I'm just pessimistically wary of taking too much comfort from the bookies' odds.)

Put it this way, Betting is a combination of "attractive odds", and "let's not lose money"

So, for example, they'll offer low odds for "England to win the world cup" because England supporters are quite likely to bet, so they don't have to make it too attractive. (Say if Eng were vs Germany in the final, would Eng supporters bet on Germany, so at least if England lose, they can cheer themselves up with the money)

Anyhow, if you have a bunch of people who are not invested either way, but will place a bet based on what they think will happen, the odds have got to get it right.

they predicted a tory victory, yes

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-you-know-who-will-the-uk-election-want-to-bet/

CB: Your odds imply a roughly 80 percent chance the Conservatives win more seats than Labour, compared to a 66 percent chance according to the forecasters who created the FiveThirtyEight model. With your markets backing the Tories more than the poll-based models, are you taking more bets on the Labour side?

MS: Nobody wants to back Labour at pretty much any price. When we get to the odds we have now, the rational thing for us to do is to take the money.

Since we opened up the betting, something like 90 percent of the money we’ve taken has been on the Conservatives to take the most seats, our biggest market, and 92 percent on the Conservatives to win the most votes. That’s even though half the time since the last general election, Labour have been the favorites.

So, if loads of brexiteers pile into Ladbrokes and place bets on "Exit", this will not shift the odds if the 'intelligence' suggests that the "non-exit" will win.

That was a 2 part post, obv.

any large group piling in for any reason is going to shift the odds.

what is "intelligence"? why would people pile in if the "intelligence" contradicted that?

yes there are people who bet on who they are going to vote for, not who they thing is going to win. empirically though it turns out there aren't enough of them to mess up the odds.

That article is on about biggest single party and share of the vote, though. According to this, about a week out from the election you could get 7-1 on a Tory majority:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11571601/Pensioner-places-30000-bet-on-Conservative-majority-at-general-election.html

I realise the referendum only has two outcomes and so is simpler, but a tightening 5-2 is not all that reassuring to me.

Having said all that, if I had to bet, I'd bet on Remain, but I'm not confident at all.

yes there are people who bet on who they are going to vote for, not who they thing is going to win. empirically though it turns out there aren't enough of them to mess up the odds.

If everyone bet on who they voted for rather than who they thought was going to win, then it'd be 100% accurate*! It's people who vote for who they think is going to win (based on no better information than anyone else) that make the betting markets worthless.

*apart from people who don't make it out of the bookies to vote that day.