Political Betting–2016 Presidential Election Odds Late Week Update
Things are getting a bit more interesting with the Presidential race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. At the very least, it seems like *something* is going on even if it’s not quite obvious what it is. Last time we looked at the 2016 Presidential Election betting odds we concluded that it was ‘business as usual’. The odds had been in roughly the same place since early October (which was right after the second debate) and the conclusion was that the Presidential election was in ‘stasis’ (that’s a big word I used that means ‘a state of balance or equilibrium’).
What’s interesting is that ‘stasis’ could only be produced by one of two circumstances. Either no one was wagering on either side of the Presidential ticket at this point and thus the lines weren’t moving. Or else there was even action on both sides of the proposition which would keep things in balance…’stasis’ if you will. It turns out that it was the latter according to a number of bookmakers that I spoke with in Europe and elsewhere. This is a bit strange because the message we’ve been getting from the polls is that the election is ‘in the bag’ for Hillary. A couple of European based sports books such as Paddy Power had already paid out on ‘Clinton for Prez’ bets. Yet these books continued to take action on the election and continued to see money for both candidates. As a matter of fact, Paddy Power has moved from Clinton -700 last weekend to Clinton -600 earlier this week to the current price of Clinton -500!
So let’s look at the current Presidential election odds and then we’ll try to make some sense of what is going on:
NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 10/27/16:
Hillary Clinton:-525
Donald Trump: +415
Other: +3750
Our previous update on 10/25/16 looked like this:
Hillary Clinton:-600
Donald Trump: +450
Other: +4500
There’s a couple of things going on. Trump is taking marginally more money than Clinton at this point. The current wagering trends at European sportsbooks are as follows–the name of the candidate is followed by percentage of bets which doesn’t necessarily mean ‘percentage of money bet’:
Donald Trump: 43%
Hillary Clinton: 37%
Other: 20%
The relatively large amount of wagers on ‘other’ is a bit of a surprise. There’s no specific breakdown of candidates since the wager varies from one book to another. Some books have markets on individual candidates while some books have a general ‘other’ category. Due to the somewhat inexplicable resurgence in ‘other’ wagering I’ve moved ‘our’ Presidential Odds price on ‘Other’ to +3750 from +4500.
I’ve also moved the price on Clinton and Trump as indicated. Currently, the consensus price in Europe is -500. There’s a few -600 and -650 prices but the sizable majority of books are at -500. One major book (Ladbrokes) has moved to -450 on Clinton but at this point it’s not clear whether this is indicative of a broader line movement. Prices on Trump have also moved. Earlier this week it was still possible to get Trump at +450 and +500. Now there’s not a major European book offering a price higher than +450 on Trump with the consensus line somewhere between +350 and +400.
There’s a similar bet available on ‘Party to Win the Presidential Election’. The prices are essentially identical to the ‘Clinton v. Trump’ odds but the betting percentages are interesting. Once again, we’re talking percentage of bets and not percentage of money:
Democratic Candidate: 55%
Republican Candidate: 40%
Other: 5%
So the betting patterns are different but the prices are still roughly the same. There’s a couple of explanations for this. One is that books are just moving this price ‘on air’ to keep it in line with the ‘Trump vs. Clinton’ market prices. That might be the most viable explanation. Another explanation, however, is that while the percentages of bets are higher for the Democratic candidate the Republican candidate might be getting a smaller percentage of the total wagers but bigger wagers resulting in the line movement we’ve seen.
The bottom line–despite the insistance of the mainstream media and his political opponents Trump *isn’t* completely out of contention. Tom Bevan is the executive editor and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, a site that we’ve referred to often. Here’s his assessment of the situation:
“To have any chance of getting to 270, he’s got to win Florida and a couple of other states. He’s now closed the gap in our RCP average in Florida to under 2%. Clinton’s lead there is 1.6% points.”
“So we’ve seen this race tighten. Our national average is now under 5 points as well, so he’s not completely out of it.”
In our next update we’ll take a look at several of the possible scenarios that could determine the election. We’ll also have some more election prop bets.