Man Bets $200K On Hillary Clinton As Political Bettors Gear Up For ‘Last 100 Days’
Has America’s race for president become the next Super Bowl with millions of people betting on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Furthermore, can these overseas bets be a way to predict if Hillary Clinton will win in November?
Reports have emerged that a man in Australia is currently betting an estimated $200,000 on Hillary Clinton to win the race against Donald Trump, according to 9 News. Reasons this bettor in Australia might have decided on increasing this wager could stem from loving Hillary Clinton or news that implies Donald Trump is being turned on by his own party.
On August 3, Bipartisan Report and others announced that rumors were surfacing that Donald Trump may bow out of the presidential race against Hillary Clinton and/or will be asked to step down for another Republican candidate.
Naturally, this change of events has sent up an alert to the election odds bettors that use overseas online betting websites to place wagers on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Although gambling on potential presidential candidates such as Hillary Clinton is mostly illegal in America, overseas is another story. For example, in the U.K., there are a few gambling websites that allow individuals to bet on a number of aspects of the presidential race, in addition to whether Hillary Clinton is actually elected.
In Canada, it was recently reported by Globe and Mail on July 19 that the B.C. Lottery has had a “rapid growth in wagers since Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign began to gain momentum.” Currently, the U.S. elections bets involving Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump are the highest earner for novelty bets on the website surpassing bets on the outcome of the Oscars.
These online betting websites covering the U.S. presidential race usually work like those found in the U.K. at BetFair, Ladbrokes, or Paddy Power. Namely, there are bets for the “winner” of the presidential race, another for Republican or Democrat state wins, and then several U.S. elections “specials,” “novelty bets,” or “prop bets.”
Prop bets in the U.K. about the U.S. presidential race for Hillary Clinton could include her winning the presidency but getting impeached. Ladbrokes has several prop bets including “popular vote winner loses Electoral college,” “election winner anyone but Trump or Clinton,” “Trump to be replaced as Republican candidate,” and “Obama still seated as President on February 1, 2017.”
It should also be noted that many election betting websites still have Bernie Sanders as a possible winner as president.
However, NY Post pointed out that there are ways that Americans can use these British, Canadian, and Australian bets on the U.S. presidential elections to predict the outcome, and claimed you can “trust these bookies over pundits.”
Adding to this, Slate says predictions on the elections are usually flawed if there are certain kinds of polls involved.
While using overseas gambling odds to predict the outcome of the presidential election in America may have had good results in the past, CNBC has a warning about this method.
While this relationship may have worked for many years, a representative for the William Hill betting company recently stated that the reason that the gamblers “missed” predicting the outcome of the Brexit vote was because the media forgets that political bettors are “a very small niche” instead of actually representing real voters.
In other words, political betting odds are fun, but they should be regarded as “for entertainment purposes only” instead of being used as a tool for predicting if Bernie Sanders will be the next president of the United States or if Hillary Clinton will have to be impeached because of more Wikileaks reveals.
[Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images]
