Voice referendum betting: Bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse struggling to get ANY bets despite offering $20 odds

Sydney bookies and racing identity Robbie Waterhouse is trying to attract every bet on the Voice, despite now offering extremely long odds of $20.

If Australia voted Yes – and proved the opinion polls wrong – someone betting $1 would win $21.

Mr Waterhouse, who runs bets at Warwick Farm Racecourse in Sydney’s south-west, said outliers were not interested in putting money on the Voice to Parliament referendum succeeding.

“It’s on the mind as far as the players are concerned,” he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘I can tell you, at Warwick Farm, I was $20 Yes and I couldn’t get a customer – if that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does.

“People in the ‘Yes’ case are certainly not prepared to back their opinion – they may feel very strongly that ‘Yes’ should stand, but they won’t put $1 on their own.”

Odds of $20 mean that the Yes case would only have a five percent chance of succeeding.

“They’re not going to get $20 – that’s an extraordinary thing,” Mr Waterhouse said.

Bookmaker and Sydney racing identity Robbie Waterhouse is struggling to attract bets on the Voice, despite now offering extremely long odds of $20 (he’s pictured right, left to right, with his bookie son Tom Waterhouse , Hoda Waterhouse’s daughter-in-law and coach Gai Waterhouse’s wife Kalin)

Major betting companies have also avoided taking bets on the Indigenous Voice proposal.

But BlueBet, one of the few taking money, on Thursday offered odds of $6 for the Yes side to win, and just $1.09 if the No case prevails, as widely expected.

That means someone betting $1 would get $7 – or the $1 a gambler puts in plus $6 back if Australia voted Yes.

Mr Waterhouse said BlueBet would struggle given he was offering $20 odds.

“How BlueBet will find a customer at $6 is beyond me,” he said.

BlueBet odds would rate Voice’s chance of success as a 17 percent chance, making defeat an 83 percent probability.

Just three weeks ago, BlueBet was offering odds of $4.75 on the Yes side and $1.15 on the No side.

Mr Waterhouse, whose father and grandfather were bookies, pointed out that Donald Trump’s odds never rose above $5 – weeks after the November 2016 US presidential election, when he was considered highly unlikely to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton .

By Election Day, Mr Trump’s odds had been cut to $3.50 – implying a 29 per cent chance of victory, compared to 5 weeks earlier which suggested a 20 per cent chance of winning.

I remember it perfectly. It was never longer than about $5 — some people were happy to support Donald Trump,” he said.

“I know someone who had $2 million on Donald Trump two or three weeks before the election.

“There were a lot of Trump supporters, no Yes supporters.”

The race identity said the Yes campaign was badly hampered when TV journalist Ray Martin described the No campaign as “dinosaurs and heads” – comparing it to Mrs Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment to describe supporters Mr. Trump’s Republicans.

“It was a Hillary Clinton moment,” Mr Waterhouse said.

“Saying to vote No is an irrational thing if you don’t know it is absurd.

Odds of $20 mean that the Yes case would only have a five percent chance of succeeding. BlueBet is offering odds of $6 – suggesting a 17 per cent chance of winning (pictured is Premier Anthony Albanese at Uluru with Northern Territory Premier Natasha Fyles)

“If someone says, sign this check, you don’t know how much is written on the check, you wouldn’t dream of signing it, would you?”

Mr Waterhouse also predicted that no state would end up backing the Voice, which would be a repeat of the 1999 referendum when only the Australian Capital Territory voted Yes.

“I don’t think they will have a state,” he said.

The vote will need to win not only the popular vote but also a majority vote in four of six states – with the territories excluded from that count.

Tasmania was the only state where the Yes issue came out on top in the Resolve and Roy Morgan polls held in September and October.

Only eight of the 44 referendum questions have succeeded since 1906, with the last held in 1977.

Donald Trump’s odds never rose above $5 – weeks after the November 2016 US presidential election, when he was considered highly unlikely to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton (they are pictured in October 2016 during a Missouri town hall debate)

The 1999 republic referendum got just 45 percent support, and UK polling firm Focaldata predicts Saturday’s Voice would get just 39 percent support, based on a poll of 4,500 Australians.

A Labor government has not succeeded in changing the Constitution since 1946 to give the Commonwealth the power to provide social security instead of the states.

In 2016, Mr. Trump narrowly won the electoral college but not the popular vote, winning swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that normally don’t vote Republican after vowing to undo free trade deals.