The race to be the next mayor of Kamloops is tough to predict between the three front-runners, but most of the money is on Mike O’Reilly.

That’s where prediction market gamblers have placed their bets, with the two-term councillor favoured to win at more than a 70 per cent likelihood, according to Polymarket.

The controversial gambling platform is far from an exact science, but O’Reilly also has a robust base of support from the local business community and previous local politicians.

Former newspaper editor Christopher Foulds also agreed the smart money is on O’Reilly.

“Not in a landslide, but I don’t think it’ll be as close as others might expect,” he told iNFOnews.ca.

O’Reilly’s two-term experience on council, his work on the regional hospital district board and his backing from the “movers and shakers” in the community likely puts him in the lead, according to the former Kamloops This Week editor.

Former Kamloops Daily News city hall reporter Michele Young shared Foulds’ perspective, but said she had a difficult time gauging Nelly Dever’s support among voters.

“She handles herself really well in forums, but she’s not really saying anything in the forums, and I feel that way with most of (the candidates),” Young said in an interview with iNFOnews.ca.

“If I have to hear ‘I’m listening,’ ‘we need common sense,’ ‘we need transparency,’ all those buzzwords… have become meaningless.”

There are no local surveys ahead of the Oct. 17 election to judge, but Foulds doesn’t expect an anti-incumbent sentiment will overtake both O’Reilly and incumbent mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson. While the mayoral race is a six-way contest, the three other candidates are unlikely to outperform them.

The 2022 election had most expecting Dieter Dudy would overtake Reid Hamer-Jackson, but Young and Foulds agreed a three-way split between Dudy and two former city councillors saw Hamer-Jackson come out with a victory.

“Any split vote would come from Reid (Hamer-Jackson) to Nelly (Dever),” Foulds said. “I think she and Reid are probably courting the same voters more so than Mike (O’Reilly) and Nelly.”

He said O’Reilly and Dever similarly have business backgrounds, but they are opposed on their support for expensive Build Kamloops projects and the city’s finances, with the latter aiming to redirect away from the current funding model and tighten city spending.

As for city councillors, Foulds said he expects Katie Neustaeter to top the polls for the second straight election, with most of the incumbents also returning, despite what appears to be an anti-incumbent sentiment in the public.

Young was cautious in her predictions, noting that despite 14 years of covering local politics, she “never won a single pool in our office bets.”

However, she suggested the anti-incumbent push may not overtake the larger number of voters she expects to turnout after watching four years of chaos at city hall, largely centred around Hamer-Jackson.

“People want something safe after four years of turmoil,” she said.

Advanced voting in Kamloops has closed with 8,032 ballots cast in the past week. That’s almost 3,000 more than advanced voting turnout in 2022.

Municipal election day is Saturday, Oct. 17.