Are Bookmaker Odds More Accurate Than Polls?

When it comes to making predictions, political forecasts for election betting, are the bookmakers better than the pollsters and journalists?

Given that the polls are so often wide of the mark and the bookies much more on point the answer looks like being a resounding yes.

Of course, it’s the bookmaker’s job to have a more attuned opinion on how things are going to play out, albeit normally in the world of sport.

But surely pollsters should be as well informed as anybody.

And yet they, on both sides of the Atlantic, they routinely get it wrong.

Leaving The EU

Think back to 2016. The pollsters all agreed that in no way would Britain vote to leave the European Union and in no way would Americans vote in Donald Trump.

Each of the referendum forecasts, which consider a huge range of sources, from forecasting models based on polls, to citizen forecasts, to betting markets, predicted remain as the most likely outcome.

Going to bed on the night of the Brexit vote, it looked as though the pollsters were right, but waking up the following morning and it was clear they got, what was an admittedly extremely tight result, very wrong indeed.

Fast forward four months and the Americans would have their chance to vote for the unthinkable, something pollsters said they wouldn’t, but sure enough they did, again with things looking different the night before.

Shock Results

Both were shock results and neither made any sense, but the bookies were far closer to calling things the right way than their political predicting and commentating counterparts.

Political observers whose job it is predict markets like this believe polls take in enough data, political news and political opinions to accurately forecast the outcome of the next general election or alternative vote.

Betting markets, on the other hand, need traders to factor in many other variables as well as being able to account for financial risk. Lazy traders will lose and on a professional level too, while hard working odds compliers will be of value to a successful bookmaker.

This, in turn, forces the bettors, who will likely be using the polls to base their bets on, to be systemic and discriminating in their thinking.

Peach State

At the 2020 US general election, international bookmakers took in record amounts of wagering and saw what was a major interest in the betting odds as a way of forecasting the election’s result.

What the final result told us was that Joe Biden was the odds on betting favourite in 50 states on offer in the election and won in 49 of them.

Georgia, where Biden took the pools by surprise by beating Donald Trump by roughly 14,000 votes, becoming the first Democrat to win the Peach State since 1992, it was that was the exception.

The US is known for having dyed in the wool betting allegiances when it comes to states voting for certain political parties.

In terms of the overall election, the polls went with a Biden win of up to as 350 electoral votes, while the bookies predicted a win of 310 electoral college.

In the end, the bookies were much closer as the margin of victory turned out to be 306 electoral votes, just shy of betting markets’ 310-vote projection.

At the end of the day, betting markets give the best guide to likely outcomes because the odds they are based around, and are impacted by, the direct result of real people betting real money on an actual prediction and the decisions made give a more realistic indicator of how things will play out.  Often with polls people may say one thing and then do another, but when it coming to putting money on something people will go with what the believe.