BETTING trends for a Yes vote on September 18 are hurtling downwards and will soon be approaching 'evens' if the current drift continues, a leading Scots computing scientist has claimed.
At present levels of betting, Professor Bill Buchanan, of Edinburgh Napier University, said the odds on a Yes victory in the Referendum were the same as those for a Ross County victory against Celtic at the league champions' home stadium in Glasgow.
He said: "The No vote, at one point, on 11 August was 1.1, which is 1/10, and which is the kind of betting that you would get for Glasgow Celtic versus Linlithgow Rose." Professor Buchanan, who leads the Centre for Distributed Computing and Security at the university, has analysed data looking back at the daily odds for a Yes vote from 23 bookmakers over the last five months. A "sector of economy that will often win in the end", he said the betting industry "gave some insights on what is actually happening on the ground".
Bookies, he said, generally monitor a wide range of communication channels, along with polls, and give an up-to-day analysis of the vote. His analysis found the odds of the major bookmakers were fairly consistent with each other for most of the time but in the past week or so there had been a larger difference between them. He said: "So, on 31 August, we are at 5-1 on for No and around 3-1 against for Yes.
"In terms of Scottish football, for bookmaker odds, this is now Celtic v Ross County at Celtic Park, with the teams playing until there is a result. As we get closer to the end, there are many analysts focusing on understanding the way things are moving."
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