The 1st round of the 2022 elections, held last Sunday, September 2, was marked by a strong dispute between Bolsonaro (PL) and Lula (PT) for the post of president. As none of the candidates reached more than 50% of the votes, the 2nd round campaign between the two politicians began, and with that, the bookmakers have already started to publish the odds of those who have the most chance of being victorious.
VEJA recently published an article that details the odds published by bookmakers, which indicate a possible victory for the PT candidate.
Check out the news about the elections in the bookmakers in full below
In these elections, several online bookmakers registered abroad allow people to bet amounts of money believing in the victory of a certain candidate in the Brazilian presidential elections and, if they are right, have financial returns on the amount bet. Considering that what is at stake is the money of these companies, their calculation of the return on bets is complex and takes into account several factors that minimize their losses.
A survey carried out by VEJA with six bookmakers with the help of Professor Fábio Machado, head of the Statistics department at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics at USP, with data made available on the websites this Wednesday, 5th, at 11 am, shows a percentage approximate chance for each candidate. It shows that, on average, they see Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a 69.3% chance of winning the second round against 30.6% for Jair Bolsonaro.
The houses use a calculation for betting that they call odds, which in practice is nothing more than the multiple that will affect the amount bet in the event of a hit. At Bet 365, for example, for every 1 real bet on the victory of the candidate Lula, the gambler earns 1.33 real if he wins the elections and 3.25 real in the case of a bet and Bolsonaro wins. The lower the amount paid for the bet, it means that the house believes that that event is more likely to happen.
“The mathematics of bookmakers also involves interpretations, it is something that is halfway between mathematics and guesswork, but they involve their money and that is why they make a great effort to have values close to reality. The gamblers’ logic is different from what the citizens’ passion indicates”, says Machado.
Calculation
The houses do not detail how their odds are calculated, so for VEJA’s survey, an approximate projection was made based on the numbers available on each site. “Statistics works with probabilities in a value from 0 to 1. The candidate’s chance of winning is the inverse of the odds and that’s why I made the number ‘one’ divided by the ‘odd’ value. In the first example, the sum between the two candidates was 1.059. In many cases, this surplus of 0.059 is called Juice, that is, how much the house earns to place the bet”, says Machado. “To arrive at the percentage, I took the house gain and made a rule of three to see the result of each candidate in relation to