Why did Betfair get it so wrong?

The postal votes fooled the hedge fund pollters

Downing Street got the nod in afternoon that polls favoured remain, possibly why they were smashed into heavy odds on.
The referendum's expected result was not predicted by most analysts. Several polls released earlier Thursday had pointed to a lead for the remain camp and prominent members of the leave campaign, including Farage, had been ready to concede victory to the remain camp.

I put £90 on to win a tenner just to make sure it wasn't a 100% lose night - never been so excited to lose £90.

I have to say I was shocked and spooked too. It went about 4 I think on Thursday morning. I was so sure it was close on a knife edge. I only put a tenner on 4.8 for bravado really like talk the talk then walk the walk ( even a tenner ). I came back in the afternoon and it went out to 8's and I thought no no no it has to be closer than that but you think someone knows better than you. Anyway I was sure the price had to come down so just rounded up the shrapnel and put just under three squid at 8's. Went to the gym in the afternoon and came back to 6.2 so I thought maybe they realise it may well be close but no it went out again. I was so despondent after that I didn't bother checking.

Even when the polls closed it seemed clear we had lost and Faraggio conceeded. I fell asleep before the first result as I couldn't be bothered as I thought the game was up. I woke up at about 4.30 and couldn't believe that we had won! £50 win and I didn't even bet properly on it. It just goes to sure these Fly Boy Masters of the Universe in the City are just the same as us...Risk Managers....Gamblers....but at least we do it with our own money!

Does anybody know when the Betfair market crapped itself? Anyone got a price timeline?

230am

wow, 2.30

I actually thought that money had exit polls of their own.

It goes to show like I said. These Fly Boys are psycho's. I wonder who put on big bets. They must have some poor positions to cover.

the best theory ive heard for the crash in price during the day was that the exit polls were conducted in london.

also you have to consider that exit polls dont take into account postal votes, predominantly from older folk who wouldve posted them weeks ago when the media had it 50-50.

Anyone know the final matched Brexit amount .
When i went to bed, showing 95,000,00.

Surely this must be the final nail in the coffin of the opinion polls?

They're either being manipulated to deliver the results desired by their paymasters or they're completely useless as indicators.

looks that way crippen, theyre done for.  add the bbc and the labour aprty to the list behind them.


tutan the highest i noticed it was 107mil but it was certain to go higher given Leave was still only 1.15 by then.

Jun 24, 2016 -- 5:30PM, Dr Crippen wrote:

Surely this must be the final nail in the coffin of the opinion polls?They're either being manipulated to deliver the results desired by their paymasters or they're completely useless as indicators.

If you look at last weekends polls they were about right. The latest ones seem to have herded again.

Thanks clacher,must be a record matched on Betfair.

Jun 24, 2016 -- 5:36PM, CJ70 wrote:

Jun 24, 2016 --  5:30PM, Dr Crippen wrote:Surely this must be the final nail in the coffin of the opinion polls?They're either being manipulated to deliver the results desired by their paymasters or they're completely useless as indicators.If you look at last weekends polls they were about right. The latest ones seem to have herded again.

Correct.  All the opinion polls up to a few days before the referendum were very close.  Some polling companies then changed their methodology which skewed them in favour of remain.  Effectively, betfair was 1/3 remain, 3/1 leave which was nuts when you considered how consistent and close the polling was.

Jun 24, 2016 -- 5:45PM, Meadow X1 wrote:

Jun 24, 2016 --  5:36PM, CJ70 wrote:Jun 24, 2016 --  5:30PM, Dr Crippen wrote:Surely this must be the final nail in the coffin of the opinion polls?They're either being manipulated to deliver the results desired by their paymasters or they're completely useless as indicators.If you look at last weekends polls they were about right. The latest ones seem to have herded again.Correct.  All the opinion polls up to a few days before the referendum were very close.  Some polling companies then changed their methodology which skewed them in favour of remain.  Effectively, betfair was 1/3 remain, 3/1 leave which was nuts when you considered how consistent and close the polling was.

No idea why the changed the methodology so often in the last two weeks of the campaign. Perhaps hedging their bets?

Pollsters can now say that they were right but the final methodology was wrong. Get out of jail card.

I think the postal votes made their job impossible on this occasion.
This is their get out of jail card .

Alex Salmond looked fine this morning in interview, must have made a few sausages on the betfair market Thought it was comical when he was on the bbc panel yesterday studying the market, giving David Davis tips on the betfair market

that was lucky kust had a nibble on over 27.5 runs in 5 overs and he just hit that 4 as the bet was accepted!

oops!

Jun 24, 2016 -- 6:04PM, tutan wrote:

I think the postal votes made their job impossible on this occasion.This is their get out of jail card .

Postal votes shouldn't make a difference or if polled for already voted increase the accuracy.

what i found amazing was that once it was becoming clear brexit was winning by significant margins across england with yorkshire and the humber votes still to come it was odds against

we all couldve made fortunes.

The markets were just stupid.

The shocking part for me is that for a lot of the night the remain market had 55-60 (strong remain win) at less than 2/1 while 45-50 (scraped leave win) was more like 10/1. So they werent just looking at the 52-48 poll that people were talking about, they thought there might even be 3 or 4% error in it. How right they were!

A lot of polls had Brexit ahead. From that I thought it should be 50/50 bet but everyone was saying leave needs to be 10 points ahead in the polls to actually win due to the undecided voters going with the status quo. It seems for some reason they did not do that.

Personally I feel that the main reason Leave won was Labour's inability to get their remain vote out. When the Newcastle and Sunderland results were announced, there was a quick follow up on the BBC by the reporter in Yorkshire saying leave were doing very well. The writing was on the wall then but Leave was still trading here at 3.8+.

Those first two bigger results in Newcastle and Sunderland showed leave would doing better than 'expected' for a 50/50 national vote. The BBC methodology was proved to be very sound but through the night the gamblers on here just did not believe it. Money kept surging for remain even though area after area was beating the 50/50 expectation in favour of leave. I think only a couple of London places did better than 50/50 expected for remain.

When the SNP ex-leader bloke was saying it was still favourite on here for remain (4/7) and 7/4 leave the BBC host looked at him as if he was crazy. At the point all the BBC analysis was showing remain was may behind.

The bookies never get it wrong ! How often have we heard that rubbish on TV ? Robert Peston even said it and we all know what a plonker he is.

I'm thinking now that many of those polled probably lied (saying they'd vote Remain) out of fear of being accused of being racist/xenephobic/bigoted blah blah. Its understandable when you look at some of the tv debates and how the audiences behaved. The assumption (including mine) was there might be a silent majority of status quo voters, but this could also apply to those on the other side. This campaign has been so vicious and divisive, its nothing like a Gen Election for example.

seemed utterly crazy that remain got smashed into 1.06 shortly after 10pm

nigel farage gave a very non committal response in that he thought remain had edged it and the you gov exit poll was 52-48 certainly close enough to indicate leave could have won

to be backing at 10s on and below i think you'd want to be pretty certain leave had got 55% and above

Jun 24, 2016 -- 5:22PM, tutan wrote:

Anyone know the final matched Brexit amount .When i went to bed, showing 95,000,00.

113.7 Million. Must have smashed the record for one single market. Would like to know the all time top 5 tbh.

55-60% remain was actually favourite at 12.45 in the afternoon. I remember as well that at some point after 10pm the 45-50% remain (leave win) fired out to over 20/1 for a few seconds (i didnt get on).
Just the sheer weight of confidence was amazing though for a bet that had no precedence, based on ballots that were still sitting in locked boxes on a subject where as has been pointed out, leave voters ŵould be forgiven for at the very least refusing or avoiding polls in the last few days if not lying in them. Some people must be wondering why on earth they have done their ballacks on that.

I was reading a forex blog a few days ago where traders were discussing the referendum, lots of people were saying ignore the polls and look at the betting odds instead, makes you wonder who is following who.