first reading: betting markets still roundly predicting a poilievre win
liberal surge in the poll has had little effect on odds that conservatives win next federal election
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first reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of canadian politicos, all curated by the national post’s own tristin hopper. to get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
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with multiple canadian polls now showing a stunning rebound for the liberal party, there is one electoral indicator that hasn’t deviated from predicting a conservative victory: the betting markets.
since prime minister justin trudeau announced in january his intention to resign, all of canada’s major pollsters have shown the liberals experiencing a 10- to 20-point rebound.
multiple polls are now showing that if mark carney wins the liberal leadership race, he is the favourite to win the next federal election. a leger poll this week put a carney liberal party at 40 per cent to 38 per cent for the conservatives.
an angus reid institute poll from last week found a carney-led liberal party polling at 37 per cent to the conservatives’ 40.
but on polymarket – a website that allows users to bet money on future events – the conservatives are still widely favoured to win.
the equivalent of $13 million has been wagered on a question of who will be prime minister after the next election, and the results show a 66 per cent likelihood that it’s conservative leader pierre poilievre.
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carney is in a distant second place at just 35 per cent. and in a decisive last place is ndp leader jagmeet singh. singh has attracted more than $5 million in wagers that he will not become prime minister – a sum that is actually several times the current cash reserves of his party.
and this is consistent across other betting markets. the british gambling firm ladbrokes has 4/9 odds on the conservatives winning “the most seats” in the next election, against 7/4 for the liberals.
this means that if you bet $10 on a tory win, you’ll receive just $14.44 if you’re right. if you bet the same $10 on a liberal win, you’ll get back $27.50 if they pull it off, since the likelihood is lower.
“the bookies are so confident that the conservatives are going to win the canadian election this year that they’ve opened up betting for the party to win the second-highest number of seats, with the liberal party odds-on in that market,” reads a feb. 17 blog post by ladbrokes.
the gambling platform betmgm is also banking on a conservative win, with the liberals in opposition. “the 45th canadian federal election betting odds favour the conservative party of canada to win the most seats,” reads a feb. 19 statement by betmgm.
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there, a $10 bet on a poilievre victory will yield only $12.50 if it turns out to be correct. betting $10 on a liberal win, meanwhile, yields a payout of $37.50 – a near-quadrupling of the original wager.
the betting markets don’t always get it right, with one of the most conspicuous exceptions being the 2016 u.s. presidential election.
bookmakers heavily favoured democratic candidate hillary clinton to win the race, and lost millions in payouts when donald trump claimed victory.
the irish bookmaker paddy power, for one, was so confident in a clinton win that it had already begun paying off clinton wagers when the trump win was secured. “we’re in the business of making predictions and decided to put our neck on the line by paying out early on hillary clinton, but boy did we get it wrong,” a spokesman said at the time.
but in the most recent u.s. presidential election, betting markets did turn out to be a much more reliable predictor than conventional polls.
on the eve of election day, aggregate u.s. polls showed a clean tie between trump and democratic candidate kamala harris. betting markets, however, were all relatively confident in a trump win, with polymarket assigning a 60 per cent likelihood to a trump win with two weeks to go until election day.
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in the end, the prediction markets had it: trump won 312 of 538 electoral college votes, and 49.8 per cent of the popular vote as compared to 48.3 per cent for harris.
“a prediction market was more accurate in forecasting the 2024 presidential election than traditional polls and pundits,” reads an analysis published by the university of cincinnati.
betting markets also yielded an accurate forecast of canada’s 2021 federal election. at the time, opinion polls showed a relatively clean tie between the liberals and the conservatives, with both parties hovering at about 32 per cent support.
but platforms such as polymarket and predictit accurately predicted not only a liberal win, but that they would win a minority government.
in other news
in tuesday night’s debate chrystia freeland seemed to say that she would invite the u.k. and france to protect canada from the united states using nuclear weapons. freeland said she would urgently strike an alliance with both countries “that guarantees our security in a time when united states can be a threat” – and specifically cited the fact that the u.k. and france possess nuclear weapons. as an aside, if ottawa wanted a non-u.s. nuclear deterrent, it wouldn’t need to ask for british or french help; canada has all the necessary wherewithal and knowledge to build a bomb, it would just take a while.
the conservatives have wheeled out a pretty big chunk of oppo research against liberal leadership contender mark carney, alleging that he only just finished moving his financial company, brookfield asset management, from canada to new york city – allegedly to shield it from the effects of any trump tariffs. the “smoking gun” of the claim is a dec. 1 letter to shareholders in which carney urged them to approve the move in order to “gain access to the deepest pools of capital.” this would be wholly uncontroversial if carney was still just a private citizen running a financial company, but it occurs in the context of carney making campaign promises to fortify the canadian economy against u.s. threats. so it’s somewhat awkward that he just finished moving a multi-billion dollar company from canada to the united states – and at a time when trump was already making signals of declaring trade war against canada. and the shareholder letter would seem to pour cold water on carney’s tuesday night claim that the relocation had nothing to do with him. “the formal decision of the board happened after i ceased to be on the board,” carney told reporters after the second liberal leadership debate. “i do not have a connection with brookfield asset management.”
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there’s a non-zero chance that wayne gretzky has unilaterally patched up the threat of a ruinous u.s./canadian trade war. after weeks of u.s. president donald trump issuing a steady stream of insults and annexation threats against canada, he issued a bizarre wednesday night social media post that seemed to be a conciliation of sorts. following an apparent conversation with the hockey great, trump called gretzky “the greatest canadian of them all,” adding “he supports canada the way it is, as he should, even though it’s not nearly as good as it could be as part of the greatest and most powerful country in the world, the good ole’ u.s.a.!”
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