Oz Politics Blog

The lads at Centrebet are up for a lark. They are running a book on the leader of the Liberal Party at the time of the next Federal Election.

The odds and implied outcome probabilities (late on 14 May) were as follows:

• Howard — $1.80 — 44.3 per cent
• Costello — $2.00 — 39.9 per cent
• Nelson — $11.00 — 7.3 per cent
• Abbott — $13.00 — 6.1 per cent
• Turnbull — $51.00 — 1.6 per cent
• Downer — $101.00 — 0.8 per cent
• Anyone else — $34.00 — 2.3 per cent

According to Gerald Daffy at Centrebet on 13 May,

Normally we don’t entertain betting on leadership battles as more often than not several parties know the answer before the public does.

However, the big news in Australian politics for the past week or so has been the simmering tension between John Howard and Peter Costello in relation to the Liberal Party leadership.

Based on that we have decided to open up a market on who will lead the party at the time the next Federal election is called.

John Howard seems to show a reluctance to hand over the reigns to Peter Costello. Added to that is the release of polls this week showing Mr. Costello as the third choice as leader of Australia behind Mr. Howard and his Labor Party opposite Kim Beazley.

John Howard has always said he will stay on in the job as long as the people and his party want him so he has to be the favourite to go into the next election. Mr. Howard is currently at $1.80 with Mr. Costello next in line at $2.

In a major surprise we have taken more bets for the two “new kids on the block” Tony Abbott ($13) and Brendan Nelson ($11) than we have for the federal treasurer. Alexander Downer is theoretically still in the mix at $101 and just in case a budding young politician pops out of the woodwork over the next two years we are offering odds of $34 for anyone else.

The odds for the Coalition winning the next election are unchanged.

• Coalition — $1.50 — implied win probability: 62 per cent
• Labor — $2.40 — implied win probability: 38 per cent