Thanks for your analysis. Do you know if France is a liberal or conservative country, generally speaking? And is there strong support for "Frexit" among France's population?

"She will probably still lose" Are you basing that purely on polling, or other reasons as well?

On what basis are they 'notoriously good quality'?

Are you betting against Le Pen because you have a liberal bias? I ask because there is a clear left wing/liberal bias in this forum - this was abundantly clear during the US election and it still persists even now. So I need to know if you are letting this bias affect your betting decision. Thanks.

I'll answer some of these as I have some bets riding on the French election as well.

Regardless of whether France is a Conservative or Liberal (more leaning to Liberal) they are definitely not Le Pen's version of right wing Nationalism and unless 50% of the country is then she's dead in the water. With these type of candidates your either 100% with them or against them. There's not many people who will back Macron or Fillon (or the other candidates) and then back Le Pen in the second round. It's will also be the same generally for Le Pen voters if she doesn't make the second round there voters are unlikely to vote for anyone (spoil the ballot).

On your Frexit point, support for leaving the EU has steadily declined in EU Countries after Brexit (Polling). Also Le Pen isn't even saying that she knows the massive headache it will be for her to make it happen and would probably would prefer if President to do something less drastic like to get rid of the Euro and would probably be supported when/if the next recession is.

Last point, if you want to make money from political betting you don't do it to support your point of views. There's literally 0 point of doing that and assuming that is just wrong. Many people bet against Trump because all the info polling + early voting info concluded that he was doing terribly. However, he is a swerveball and a one of a kind candidate. Le Pen on the other hand ran in the last Presidential elections so most things are already known about what people think of her and how voters are likely to behave in the second round of voting when it comes to Le Pen.

I'm assuming that's based a lot on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinio...election,_2012

Last time
Le Pen polled 14%-17% and got 17.9%.
Hollande polled 27%-30% and got 28.6%,
Sarkozy polled 24%-30% and got 27.2%

Yes, she's picked up 10% since last time, but given the polls captured her support pretty accurately last time, it's hard to see the polls just being wrong about Macron's 65-35 lead in the 2nd round stage.

A possible argument to doubt the polls is basically that Macron is new, polling around him may be therefore more unreliable. The concrete things that might lead you to think this are that his support seems less sure than for Fillon or Le Pen. In the last poll I looked at around 55% of Macron voters were sure of their choice vs 70% for Fillon and 80% for Le Pen. Also 30% of his supporters said he was their choice by default (he was the best of a bad bunch), vs 16% for Le Pen and 12% for Fillon. The trend for Macron is clearly downwards for the second measure, the first is maybe trending upwards but is fairly flat.

I don't think this can justify discounting such a large lead in the head-to-heads. The other argument is just time, with still around a month to the vote, but as pointed out Le Pen is a known quantity in France, it's hard to see why lots of people are suddenly going to change their minds on her. From her debate performance she's going to campaign on immigration and security, topics she's been consistent on for years.

It's still possible she wins, and there did seem to be a mild shift between the two rounds in 2012 (Hollande maybe lost about 3% in those 2 weeks), but I don't see how you could believe it likely. Even for those crying terrorist attack it would appear from polls that the two major attacks recently in France (Paris & Nice) didn't see either an increase or even a short term boost in FN support.

Some fun Predictit stuff I saw:

Dems to control House after 2018: 28. They are much much closer to 50/50 here. This is insane value IMO.

Nuclear option: 59. This is happening, 100%.

Spicer Press Secretary at year end: 47. This seems much closer to 75.

Trump President at end of 2018. 66. This is like 95+.

thoughts

They might not have to use nuclear option because lol Dems.

I would short House.Dem at 28.

In the French elections, after the 2012 polls consistently underestimated the Le Pen vote by about 2%, how, if at all, have the polling companies changed their "shy Le Pen voter" factor in their models? Anyone know?

Chances of nuclear option probably improved after health care fiasco. democrats have no reason to hand Trump easy victories.

Too many seats to make up in the house to see any long term value at 28.

Any yes bet on Trumps survival is free money at current prices.

Not sure on Spicey. Press secretaries quit mid term all the time.

At what price Before the first round would people sell Le Pen "No"?

0.66 on Trump being president in '18 is strong value. Markets are engaging in wish fulfillment imo

Yeah. Don't have a PI account but would be all over this. Might check what the price is on BF.

Betfair prices it at 0.75, which still seems like thin value, but meh.

What does the nuclear option mean ?

Also it's not guaranteed they would have the votes to employ the nuclear option.

That's complicated; think the wiki is the best place to read up on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option

I think they probably force the nuclear option, but it's far from 100% imho.



Spicey quitting seems like a real wild card to me. How do you predict what happens with this White House? Spicey seems irritated with what he does, but his credibility is so shot I don't know what better job he'd switch to.

I actually think spicer is good at his role considering the dynamics of defending trump.

Mr President, we must not allow a Twitter gap.

Terror attacks benefit right-wing parties to a small extent historically, but the impact is so small that it struggles to be recognizeable over statistical noise.

First pitch up to 65c

lol, it was at 0.29 last time I checked, no idea why this market is so swingy. Think I sell if it goes much over .65.

Betfair "Scottish Independence Referendum before 2019" seems not to have reacted to today's Scottish parliament vote. Yes 4.6 No 1.2.

Market seems confident May won't let it go ahead until after EU negotiations are finished.

Some of these markets completely lose their mind as deadlines approach. The Perdue for Ag Sec market is exhibit A.

you have to remember, it was the 80s, there were still some schlubs making less than $1M/year playing baseball back then