There is still a week to go till the election result, but in the betting world the winner is clear cut: Labour.
Up until Friday morning, the online betting site interwetten.com was taking bets for “Maltese Parliamentary elections”.
Labour was clearly the favourite with odds of around 11/8 on a PL victory while the return is better on a Nationalist win at 3/1.
By Friday afternoon, the site had stopped taking bets on the Maltese election and most of the other online betting sites contacted by The Times said they were not offering odds on local elections.
Illegal betting – rife in Hamrun, Marsa, Fgura, Msida, and Valletta – is also predicting a Labour victory on March 9.
An investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that in head-to-head betting (ras’imbras), odds being offered on a PL victory are around 5/4 while a PN victory is 4/1.
Although the PL are hot favourites, people are holding back from betting on a landslide. Very few are risking predicting a win of more than 10,000 votes. “People are scared because the PN have a habit or recovering at the very last minute,” said a source who preferred to remain anonymous.
At one point, such was the reluctance to take a risk that the...
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