Final straights – New Frontier bulletin explores the predictive power of betting odds in the UK general election

Final straights – New Frontier bulletin explores the predictive power of betting odds in the UK general election

With the UK’s “snap” general election now only days away, Frontier Economics has been examining a potentially rich, and under-analysed, source of predictive information – constituency-level betting odds. As our latest bulletin notes, there is a positive correlation between changes in constituent-level vote shares and the corresponding changes in the party’s betting odds from 2010 to 2015, and these odds help parties track how their policy proposals are playing out in different areas.

The analysis suggests that the Prime Minister may have been more successful in reinforcing her vote in existing Conservative seats than in pursuing her ambition to make big inroads into Labour ones, but that Labour – despite a narrowing in the opinion poll gap – has been shoring up its own core support without making headway outside its comfort zone. Meanwhile the challenges facing UKIP continue to play to the Tories’ advantage.

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