A week before Australia votes, it seemed timely to look at the betting odds, and consider what they can tell us about how the campaign has gone.
Week 1: Coalition up 3%.
Week 2: Coalition up 8% (the week of the Jakarta bombing)
Week 3: ALP up 2%
Week 4: ALP up 3%
Week 5: ALP up 2%
Net result of the first 5 weeks of the election campaign: Coalition up 4%. On the day Howard called the election, the betting odds had him a 60% chance to win. Today they have him a 64% chance.
Like polls, there is some margin of error around the betting odds (though I haven’t figured out how best to calculate it). But bearing that caveat in mind, it does look as though Labor has done better in the second half of the campaign, though not enough to overcome the Coalition’s gains in the first half.
But the only reason the Coalition’s ahead is that 8% bounce from the Jakarta bombing…
Tampa 2004.
Possibly. Though if you believe the betting odds, the Tampa incident in 2001 caused Labor to actually lose the election (see Fig 5 in http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/Forecasting%20elections%20(AJPS).pdf). Absent Jakarta, the Coalition would surely still be ahead in the betting market in 2004.