[Ketman]

I find it kind of strange that people here seem to be putting more weight on what the betting odds say than on what the polls say. But remember the punters on Betfair are betting according to who they think will win. The polls are telling us who people want to win, and that's what determines who does win. It's voters, not punters who pick the winner.

Both on this site and on Digital Spy, there are "least favourite" and "most favourite" polls. As it happens, both sites started their latest polls yesterday. So we're looking at quite fresh opinion, taken from (so far) about 600-700 people on each site. As of just now, these are the ratings in vote percentages:

Most Favourite
------------ DSpy------ TIBB
Rachel---- 34.96----- 29.7
Rex-------- 19.48----- 11.9
Lisa--------11.03----- 16.0
Sara------- 9.89------ 12.8
Darnell---- 9.17------ 10.6
Mikey------ 7.88------- 6.3
Mo--------- 4.44------- 5.1
Kat--------- 3.15-------7.6

Least Favourite
-------------DSpy------TIBB
Rex--------34.20------31.5
Mikey------17.56-----14.4
Lisa--------10.53----- 9.4
Darnell----10.23------16.8
Kat--------- 9.16------- 5.4
Mo----------8.85------11.7
Sara--------5.04------- 5.8
Rachel------4.43-------5.0

As you can see, Mikey is quite low down on the Most Favourite polls on both sites - 2nd last on TIBB and 3rd last on DigSpy. And he is 2nd from top on both of the Least Favourite polls. Only Rex is more disliked, it seems. Based on that, one would not think he has much of a chance. By contrast, we find Rachel at the very top of the Most Favourite polls, and the very bottom of the Least Favourite polls. And if that is a true reflection of public opinion, it makes Rachel a clear winner.

So why don't the bookies think so too? Well, search me. I don't know of any sources of information that they have that we do not also have. Public polls on internet sites and newspapers is all they have to go on, just as it's all we can go on. So where did they get such a high opinion of Mikey's chances? Again, search me! It's a mystery. I've never seen such a divergence between the bookies and the polls as we have this year. It will be interesting to see which turns out to be the more reliable.