The office sweepstake on elections had picked up quite a reputation as a battle ground for the hardcore political reporters with their reputation for keeping their ears and noses to the ground and those more inured to being the back office types who put it all together for the readers. Having wandered into it from the world of sport and the bit of wagering that invariably goes with it, the challenge lay in whether you could acquire a sweep of knowledge of things political. The test began well because it was too easy to see the real trends as you came into it with an outside perspective.
In the world of sport it is well-known fact that it is easier to pick up a reputation than to keep it. The problems began because it seemed too easy to get it right in the beginning, like picking the Derby winner or the World Cup champion of cricket or football on the first try. Picking up the first prize in the first or second election was too easy. As the l’etranger or outsider, seeing the wood despite the trees was easy enough. And the world of the Dravidian duopoly was a 50:50 one like many sports in which the contest is mostly between the top two sides. How often does sport throw up a Leicester City at 5,000-1?
The 2016 Assembly elections proved a tougher nut to crack. The revolving door of Tamil Nadu politics, with the ruling party always shown the door for 32 years, had to be factored in. A shrewd punter knows that it is still a 50:50 chance – either the incumbent is in or he/she is out. And it is a simple choice of going with the tide or against it. The confusion arose this time because there was also the betting market to consider. Legal or illegal hardly comes into this equation because the market rolls on its own momentum. And would you believe it – the bookies got it mostly wrong this time out.
The men who put their money where their mouth is were convinced that the revolving door principle would work again and made the DMK front the favourite to win the race. They were, however, not at a very short price, which usually indicates that the race is considered over. In fact, the odds were generous enough at 80/100 on the DMK and they stayed there for quite a while, but oscillated a couple of times as the polls neared.
The heavy whispers close to the polls may have convinced the bookies anti-incumbency was at play and can’t blame them either because this was mostly a Chennai-based thing where the anger over the floods was certain to translate into votes against the ruling party.
Conspiracy theories were also floating around that the bookies were creating a false favourite to mislead the punters into choosing to follow the money. Be that as it may, the opposition front stayed the firm favorite to the very end, which means the smart ones were those who went against the tide. All this talk about the betting market takes us away from the coveted office sweepstake. I got an early call from the keeper of the book that being the undefeated champion in four sweepstakes that I could be heading for a win again. My prediction had been 140 seats for AIADMK and 138-139 were numbers flashing constantly as the trends were being revealed on television.
As the numbers changed other contenders came into the contest. Hubris may have had something to do with losing the 100% record. Having declared myself as the “Virat Kohli of office sweepstakes,” I was in for a tumble as the seats shrank a bit for the leader and finally settled at 134, a figure close to the 135 marked by political correspondent G. Jagannath. The mace passes, which is good considering monopolies are bad in any field, including in predictions. After all, soothsayers also know that predictions are essentially 50:50 propositions and you can be right or you can be wrong. The Oracle of Delphi was said to depend on how his sayings were interpreted by those who heard them. So the next time you hear so and so predicted this or that, just remember it is a 50:50 chance which anyone can get right.
