Month: February 2016

  • Rubio takes fight to Trump, but is it too late?

    Rubio takes fight to Trump, but is it too late?

    The question, posed immediately after Thursday’s CNN Debate by so many pundits, is why on earth did Marco Rubio wait until the tenth debate to truly take the fight to Donald Trump? There is no doubt that the longstanding GOP front-runner emerged more bruised from the Texas debate than any to date. Constantly attacked from…

  • Is Texas debate the last chance to derail Trump’s bandwagon?

    Is Texas debate the last chance to derail Trump’s bandwagon?

    I’ve long lost count of the number of Republican debates we’ve seen in this extraordinary cycle. They have all been entertaining – in ways never seen before in politics, closer to a celebrity cage fight than measured debate – and in my view, catastrophic for both the image and electoral prospects of the party. Tonight’s…

  • Politico Series Part 4: Rubio in freefall after NH debate disaster

    Politico Series Part 4: Rubio in freefall after NH debate disaster

    This piece was written a few days after the New Hampshire primary, ahead of South Carolina and Nevada. Here, I document the dramatic rise and fall of Marco Rubio on betting markets. First, the market loved him in response to third place in Iowa and the media hype that followed. However as he famously stumbled…

  • Bet update: Taking cover as Trump nomination looks inevitable

    Bet update: Taking cover as Trump nomination looks inevitable

    There is no two ways about it – the scale of Donald Trump’s third consecutive, overwhelming victory, in the Nevada Caucus, sent an ominous signal to his rivals for the GOP nomination. The window is closing on any attempt to stop him, and the logistics of uniting behind an alternative look impossible. With that in…

  • Clinton v Trump is rated likelier than ever

    Clinton v Trump is rated likelier than ever

    From being wide-open when the nomination process began three weeks ago, if the betting is any guide, the race for the US presidency increasingly looks like a three-cornered contest. Despite widespread concerns about her campaign, slippage in nationwide polls7 and the ongoing investigation into her e-mails, Hillary Clinton remains rock-solid, odds-on favourite to become the…

  • SC reflections: The state of play after wins for Trump and Clinton

    SC reflections: The state of play after wins for Trump and Clinton

    From a betting perspective, the latest round produced a decent night. One winner, one loser from two small advised bets, yielding a small 2.2 units overall profit. My predictions were pretty close to the mark. Longer-term, a mixture of disappointment that long-range prediction Ted Cruz looks less likely than any point since the start of…

  • New bets, SC and NV predictions

    Forgive the lateness of these updates – I am in the UK on family business before flying back to Las Vegas tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be joining a fellow British political gambler for an all-night session, trading the GOP South Carolina Primary and Democrat Nevada Caucus – and we plan to go live on Periscope. Follow…

  • Nevada Caucus: The Sanders surge gathers momentum

    Nevada Caucus: The Sanders surge gathers momentum

    The Democrats may have been consistently rated as odds-on favourite to win the presidency, but their primary process has been left trailing a poor second to the Republicans in both the entertainment and betting stakes. A polite head-to-head debate, in which defining your opponent as a ‘moderate’ rather than a ‘progressive’ becomes a talking point,…

  • SC Primary: Race for places behind Trump is pivotal

    SC Primary: Race for places behind Trump is pivotal

    When asked recently to list the ten greatest political betting markets of all-time, I took a minor liberty in awarding the final spot to this year’s US Elections, pre-empting the biggest ever markets in response to a fascinating and highly unpredictable race. In truth, with over eight months until the general election, the Republican Nominee…

  • New bet as key SC endorsements offer Rubio big momentum

    New bet as key SC endorsements offer Rubio big momentum

    As detailed in my latest piece for Politico, the big recent story in betting markets was the dramatic rise and fall of Marco Rubio – based on what amounts, in effect, to very little. First the markets fell in love with Rubio after his much-vaunted third place in Iowa. Then they started dumping him, literally…