SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
According to the Betfair Exchange Manuel Valls and Arnaud Montebourg boast little chance of success in the upcming French election.
Ahead of the first of the Socialist Party TV debates Valls and Montebourg have been given just a 2% chance of victory.
The debates are an opportunity for those wishing to become France’s Socialist Party candidate ahead of the presidential primary elections later this month. Arnaud Montebourg is a 49/1 shot while Manuel Valls is around 64/1. The race appears to be between National Front candidate Marine Le Pen and Republican Francois Fillon.
Naomi Totten, Spokesperson for Betfair, said: “Interest in politics and political betting has never been higher with the recent US Election trading an inconceivable £200m on the Next President market alone. Now attention turns to the market for the next French President which had only traded around £15k on the day of the US Election but now has nearly £2m matched.
“Francois Fillon is the early 4/5 favourite ahead of National Front representative Marine Le Pen trading at 7/2 and also seeing plenty of support, but with the Socialist Party primaries still to come and modern political campaigns stopping at nothing to be elected there is likely to be plenty of moving and shaking in the market over the next few months.”
The outgoing President Francois Hollande has left the Socialist Party in need of a strong leader who can reinspire confidence in it. As it stands, that’ll be a push with Fillon the odds-on favourite at 4/5 with a 56% chance of winning the election having leap-frogged far-right candidate Marine Le Pen who was trading at around 2.92 on November 12th.
Of course that’s no reason to say this won’t change, as we’ve seen more than once in recent times, political markets can be quite volatile.
