UK General Election Betting Offers & Free Bets – 4th July 2024

Politics is rarely off our screens, social media and our news outlets. This no more than of late with some high profile results produced from the ballot boxes. With such a big impact on our day to day goings on, many of us will have an opinion when the big votes come around.

Where there’s opinion, there will be speculation, and where there’s speculation there’s betting. Politics and elections have become a popular betting medium and as a result a whole raft of markets are produced when it comes to general elections, leadership contests and new US Presidents amongst others.

Here we will notify you of the best political promotions around when they become available.

Existing Customer Free Bets & Money Back Offers

Please Note: This event has now ended.

Schedule

• Wednesday 22nd May 2024 – Prime Minister calls for general election
• Thursday 30th May 2024 – Dissolution of Parliament
• Friday 7th June – Nomination deadline, 4pm
• Friday 7th June – BBC seven party debate, 7:30pm to 9pm
• Tuesday 18th June 2024 – Deadline to register to vote
• Wednesday 19th June 2024 – Postal vote application deadline
• Thursday 20th June 2024 – BBC four party leader debate, 8pm to 10pm
• Wednesday 26th June 2024 – BBC Rishi Sunak & Sir Kier Starmer head-to-head debate, 9pm to 10pm
• Thursday 4th July – Polling day, 7am to 10pm

Politics Betting Explained

Election betting is a very underused and underrated area to bet on. It’s not something that goes hand in hand with betting, unlike horse racing or football, so this is likely why many people either avoid it or simply aren’t aware that you can even bet on it.

These days, the range of betting markets that you can choose from has grown exponentially, even over the last 5 years or so. Election or political betting to be more precise, is an area where winning bets can be made, with the right strategy applied.

Election Betting Results

As elections only happen every few years, it’s not something that you can really look to be betting on every week. But, it’s likely that most of the larger bookmakers will be offering up to date on odds on upcoming or potential future elections throughout the year.

Many people see this as a novelty market and to some extent, they would be right. But, there are plenty of ways to potentially gain a return from it. The reason why we say this is that politics is massively in the public domain meaning information (betting research) is easily obtainable.

In the lead-up to an election you are going to find that the number of markets that you are able to bet will drastically increase. This is for two reasons:

1. Bookmakers have a better idea of who’s running
2. The amount of money that punters are wanting to stake increases, thus a greater interest and more competitive odds are available.

Winning Party

Picking the winning party for an election is probably going to be the most common. You often get three types of pick; the two main candidates that are running and a potential coalition. The issue is that as there are so many polls taken before hand and even during the election, it’s often pretty easy to see which way the public are going to vote.

But, politics is a lot like sport in that it can also be quite unpredictable. Two recent elections in the UK and US have seen two very surprising results. The first being that of Donald Trump beating Hilary Clinton for the presidency, with the second being that of the conservatives not winning the UK General Election and having to form a coalition.

As the odds are often so bloated towards one result over the other, the ability to really make a significant profit is fairly slim. So, we would recommend that if you were betting on this market to consider betting in-play.

The US election is a prime example of how shrewd bettors managed to see where the votes were going and time the swings in favour of Trump and away from Clinton to get a return. When Trump first announced that he was going to run for president he was quoted at odds of around 25/1, with several candidates in front of him at much shorter odds.

As momentum increased for Trump, he was as short at 6/4 at one point, before drifting back to 5/1 before the polls opened. Even at 5/1, the bookies are essentially giving him little chance in a two-horse race.

We spoke about shrewd bettors winning this way and it was reported by an exchange that one punter had managed to get several pieces of Trump after important speeches and campaigns, also reacting to poor press release from his opponent, Hilary Clinton. From several bets placed over the course of a 12-month period, the anonymous bettor won a staggering $2.5million.

Most Number of Seats

Another popular market is that of betting on the most number of seats won. In countries such as the UK, the government needs to win a certain number of seats within the House of Commons to be granted control of the country. If they fail to reach the minimum amount, then a coalition government will be formed via the party with the most and then however many others they agree to include and take them over the threshold.

This can often offer up a more competitive betting market for most punters. Bookies will often offer an over/under line for the number of seats they are expected to win, which means that the odds will be somewhere around even money.

An expansion of this would be the bookmakers switching the number of seats to offer higher or lower margins. Again, this will in turn affect the odds either way and also offer up bigger margins to take higher odds that could potentially come in.

Other Bets

With politics, you are actually going to be able to place bets on some fairly obscure markets. In fact, with each year that passes we find ourselves seeing more and more on offer, which is good if you’re reading this article.

Year of Next Election

The date when elections are run is usually set as five year fixed term. But, it’s not uncommon for this period to shorten, especially if public support is starting to waiver for the party that is leading. In the UK there is widely tipped to be a general election well within the five year term that is originally set out and other countries across Europe and even around the world aren’t illusive to this either.

A good tip for this market is to really keep an eye on big dates within the political calendar. As a punter you’d be looking at trying to work out if they were able to keep up with new demands and if not, probably look to see another general election scheduled sooner rather than later.

Next Prime Minister

The next prime minister ties in with the winning party above, but doesn’t necessarily always relate. You see, it’s possible to bet on this market at any time, so it could be whilst the government from that person’s party is already in power.

It’s good to address these bets as future bets or what could also be classed as ante-post, just without the restrictions. For example, the Prime Minister in the is always massively under scrutiny, so it might be a case of finding who’s next in line within their party to take over. Whilst they won’t have won the last general election personally, they will still technically be Prime Minister.

The flip side is that if the current PM does see if through until the next General Election, their party might be set to lose out to the opposition. So, for this you could either take the current leader of the opposition or their predecessor.

Next Party Leaders

The next party leader is a little more of an open book. Eventually the person currently leading that party will step down, this much we know. So, you will need to work out who is most likely to take over as the leader of that party.

The key thing to work out is timing. When is the current leader likely to leave? If it’s sooner rather than later then it’s much easier to see who could step into line. If they are in for the long haul, then you could be looking at younger, more up-and-coming politicians for this role.

Why is Election Betting so Popular?

Election betting has definitely seen a sharp rise in popularity of the last decade or so. Whether that has to do with the popularity of online betting or the fact it’s just more readily available, we don’t really know.

But, we do know that a lot of money is now wagered on the event. In fact, it was reported that over £30million was wagered on the 2017 general election alone, a record for any political market within the UK.

The popularity has to come down to a generation thing for us. The older generation probably never had access to politics betting, so would never think to bet on it, yet they will have a vested interest in politics. The younger generation who are probably much more aware of online betting and politics betting in particular are also starting to age. As they age they tend to get more invested into politics and what’s going on, whilst also linking it to betting.