A Labour victory in Saturday’s European Parliament elections is being taken as a foregone conclusion by bookmakers, despite the Prime Minister insisting his party is the “underdog”.
This pronounced trend emerged when the Times of Malta analysed the odds given by various online betting companies of the Labour Party obtaining four out of the six seats up for grabs.
Betting company Smarkets is giving very low returns if such outcome materialises to the point that punters would only win 2c for every €1 gambled.
On the other hand, should the Nationalist Party make a surprise comeback, this would spell bad news for bookmakers and would translate into winnings to the order of €23 for every €1 waged.
Betting company Betway is offering similar odds, though, in this case, a PN victory will bring €10 in winnings.
However, there is the possibility the two main parties share the spoils, each winning three seats. Still, according to betting company Yobetit, such a result – which would be a repeat of 2014, when the PN had managed to win the third seat due to the transfer of votes despite garnering 34,000 first-count preferences less than Labour – is rather unlikely.
The odds are 4.5, meaning that for every €1 gambled the winner would take home €4.50.
Apart from the outright winner, Yobetit is also predicting that the first candidate to be elected will be Miriam Dalli, for the Labour Party, followed by Nationalist Roberta Metsola.
It is an open secret that large sums of money are gambled in illegal bets during an electoral campaign.
Sources told this newspaper yesterday such ‘bookmakers’ were predicting a Labour victory by a margin equal to or even bigger than the 2017 general election.
In view of this, only bets of a Labour victory with a majority larger than 40,000 votes are being accepted. Nonetheless, the likely probability of such outcome means that for every €1,000 gambled, the winner would only take €500.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat reiterated on Sunday that this election was an uphill battle for his party.