Political Betting–2016 Presidential Betting Odds Saturday Update
Apparently I opined that the 2016 Presidential race had fallen into ‘stasis’ a bit too soon. Following the latest revelations about Hillary Clinton’s duplicity in her ongoing email saga there’s new life in the Donald Trump campaign. Trump is seeing some positive gains in the polls and the betting odds at sportsbooks across the world have been moving since the news broke.
In our Friday report, the lines had started to move which prompted us to move our consensus ‘SportBettingExperts.com Line’ on the 2016 Presidential election. Hillary Clinton had been a -525 favorite on Thursday night but after the maelstrom of activity on Friday we moved her to -350. As money continues to be bet on Donald Trump and as the polls are showing some movement we’re going to change the price again:
NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 10/30/16:
Hillary Clinton:-300
Donald Trump: +225
Other: +3000
More movement on Clinton and Trump as well as the ‘Other’ as third party candidates continue to take money. In Europe, the major sports books have the election priced at either -300, -333 or -350. There’s a couple of outliers but clearly the most common price point is somewhere between -300 and -350.
And what about the polls? We’ll look at some of the races in individual states and post some revised odds on Sunday afternoon. As of 12:01 AM Sunday morning the RealClearPolitics poll average has Hillary Clinton’s lead at +4.6% in a head to head race against Trump. In the four way poll average (which includes Jill Stein and Gary Johnson) Clinton’s lead is at +3.8%.
The race is obviously getting tighter and could become even more so as Hillary Clinton remains ‘on the defensive’ which is her biggest vulnerability. So how is this all impacting betting patterns? Right now the European books are seeing 46% of bets on Trump, 37% on Clinton and 17% on other candidates. The money that is showing for third party candidates continues to surprise. I can understand that there’s some more viable scenarios for them to win now but I would have thought that their prices would stay around 10%.
Looking at the odds for ‘Party to win the Presidency’ the price on the Democrats is still -350 to -400. They’re also taking most of the bets. 55% of all bets are on the Democrats to win the White House with 40% of bets on the Republicans to win. 5% is being bet on ‘Other’ or at some books specific party affiliations (Independent, Libertarian, etc). Another thing that is happening is that books are taking the ‘Party to win the Presidency’ bet down altogether. At one point, it was nearly as common as the Trump v. Clinton v. Other prop bet but now it looks like some sportsbooks don’t want to deal with the uncertainty. Less than 1/2 of the number of books that have the ‘Person to win’ bet up also have the ‘Party to Win’ bet.
There’s a lot still to sort out and any number of external events that could still influence the election outcome. For now, here’s a few more prop bets related to the Presidential race as well as the race in two very contentious states–Florida and Utah.
US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SPECIALS
Will Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton concede the Presidential election by 12:01 AM on Wednesday, November 9?
Yes: -115
No: +105
Who will win the Presidential popular vote in the state of Florida?
Donald Trump: +150
Hillary Clinton: -190
Who will win the Presidential popular vote in the state of Utah?
Evan McMullin: -110
Donald Trump: +110
Hillary Clinton: +700
Other: +6600