“There is no way Donald Trump is winning the election.”

1. How Can I Bet On Politics
2. Political Betting Website
3. Where To Bet On Politics
4. London Betting Odds Us President

How many times did you say that or hear someone say that in 2016? Surely no one in their right mind thought that Hillary Clinton could lose the Presidential Election to this guy, right? Well, there were a lot of people who truly thought this underdog could win, and if they were smart, they would have searched out a place to make a wager on that exact outcome.

Did you know that there is a significant amount of money being wagered around the world on politics? Throughout twenty years in the online gambling business, this area of betting has gone from a few sites willing to take action on anything to sites having full sections focused on political betting. On this page, we are going to lay out all the types of political bets you can make, as well as show you the best sites for finding the political bet you are looking for.

Biden's bet, more than others in modern politics and economics, is full of questions. Can the federal money push economic growth above 6% for the first time since Reagan in 1984? Political Betting is the fastest segment of the gaming industry, fueled by elections in The United States and around the world. During the elections of 2016, for example online gaming houses lit up with wagers for and against not only Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but not only can you participate in wagers on who will win upcoming elections, you can also bet real money on whether a. There are parallels with betting politics and sports just as there are connections all throughout the gaming world. As one becomes more informed and experienced however, noticing key differences becomes much easier. In political betting, less focus is placed on past results and more emphasis based on a candidate’s realistic chances.

Where Is the Best Place to Make a Political Bet?

There are a couple things to look for when it comes to political betting online. First off, you want to visit several sites to find the best odds on what it is that you are looking to make a bet on. We have compiled a list of some of our recommended sites for political betting above.

One factor to take into consideration is the location of the site offering the odds. It is more likely that a site based in the UK will have a better handle on British politics, and as a result may have more options when it comes to betting on the outcomes of elections in that country.

Another potential decision-making concept for political gamblers is what types of elections a site offers odds upon. If you relate this to traditional sports betting, you can find some sites that allow you to bet on minor league or division sports as opposed to the major leagues. For the purposes of political betting, this could mean finding a site that is taking action on the results of a Mayoral election as well as one of more national exposure like Prime Minister. These smaller-scale elections may provide better opportunities to find more generous odds for players.

Why Are People Betting on Politics?

The easy answer to this is that people will bet on anything if given a chance and the right odds. It is hard to say when betting on elections began, but it is likely that it goes back a few hundred years along with most sports gambling. Making a bet on the outcome of a political campaign is no different than making a bet on a boxing match, really. If you break it down, there are two opponents (sometimes more than two, depending on the election) who are trying to win a title. There are favorites and underdogs, and with that come odds of a candidate securing the win.

These days, with all the craziness going on in the world, especially in the United States, more people are turning to gambling on the future outcomes of political campaigns as a way of dealing with the emotions around the events themselves. As you will see a little further down, many online gambling sites are capitalizing on this trend by offering a wide array of bets on the political moves of countries around the world.

What Types of Bets Can Be Made on Politics?

This is where we have seen the most changes in the political betting landscape over the last few years. Online gambling sites are dedicating more time and effort to the sport of politics, and this means that there has been a significant increase in the number of betting options for the public. Let’s look at a few of the most popular types.

How Can I Bet On Politics

1. Straight Bets

These are the standard bets on which candidate or party will win an election. In some cases, you will be able to bet on a political party winning the next election even if they haven’t chosen a leader yet. For the majority of straight bets, however, you will find odds on each of the election participants, and you will make your selection on who you think will win. If that candidate wins, you get paid!

These types of bets are similar to moneyline bets in sports. You pick a winner and based on their handicapped odds, and you are paid based on the line the site puts up. Again, as some sites may pay more attention to this than others, doing your research is important as you may find significant swings in the odds from site to site. Finding value in these political bets is what can make them a profitable venture.

2. Spread Bets

These types of political bets are not focused on which candidate or party will win the election, but by what margin. This is similar in nature to spread betting on sports. While you know the Golden State Warriors are going to beat the Brooklyn Nets, in an NBA game when you are spread betting you will have to bet that they are going to win by at least certain number of points.

To convert that to betting on elections, let’s look at the 2016 US presidential election. You might have found the following bets available:

• Clinton -2,000,000 in the general election
• Trump +1,900,000 in the general election
• How many electoral votes will Clinton beat Trump by?
• How many electoral votes will Trump win by?
• How many seats will the Democrats win by?

As you can see, this would allow you to bet on a candidate without having them win the actual election, similarly to an underdog covering the spread. With straight bets, your choice would have to win the election outright. This gives you a different way of betting on the outcome, which appeals more to someone who isn’t entirely sure who the victor will be.

3. Prop Bets

Prop bets have become more and more popular in the sports betting world over the last decade. Rather than requiring an outcome of an event to take place, prop bets allow someone to make a wager on other aspects. This can be applied to the world of politics as well, especially when it comes to some of the leading political countries around the world.

Prop betting, as we mentioned, is not dependent on the outcome of an election. As a matter of fact, there doesn’t even need to be an election to make a prop bet on a political figure. Let’s use the US as an example. Here are some prop bets you could find or may have found in the past about American politics:

• What will be the official weight of the President announced as after his physical?
• How many days will Donald Trump be President?
• What will the age of the Democratic Candidate for President in 2020 be?
• How many times will Trump say a particular word in a State of the Union speech?
• Will the President be impeached?

All of these types of prop bets would come with two options (for example, for the weight bet it could be Under 240.5 and Over 240.5) and in most cases, the odds are the same for either side of the bet (-110). Prop bets are more for entertainment purposes than anything, and what could need entertainment added to it more than politics these days, right?!

Can You Be a “Sharp” Political Bettor?

Of course you can! As we mentioned, one of the easiest ways to give yourself an advantage when it comes to political betting is to shop around. You will most likely find slightly different odds on a particular bet from book to book. As there won’t be the same type of volume of bets on elections as on sporting events, the lines have to move so sites can protect themselves.

Another thing to look for is the betting limit on any individual political wager. If you are sure of an outcome, then you want to find a site that has high limits for these types of bets. In most cases, you will find smaller limits for political bets than traditional sports wagers, as the sites don’t have a team of political experts on staff. A sharp bettor will find the highest limit to go along with the best price before putting any money down.

Now, when it comes to being a sharp bettor from an information standpoint, well, that’s a different concept altogether. There are thousands of journalists that would likely consider themselves to be “experts” on the topic of politics, but how many of them would have picked a Trump victory in the 2016 US presidential election?

We would say that being an insider definitely helps – maybe you know a Senator or someone who works in a Mayor’s office. That type of inside information can definitely make a difference when it comes to finding the diamonds in the rough. In that way, it is very similar to horse racing, as many times someone working in the stables will come across the inside scoop on a particular horse.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the appetite for gambling on politics has grown over the years. These days, you can find any number of sites offering odds on all kinds of elections across the globe. However, to make political gambling a profitable venture, you should be doing your research not just on the candidates and campaigns, but on the sites offering these bets. A little bit of time spent searching out the best odds can make the difference in how much you can win when you are ready to make your bet, and isn’t that what it is all about?

Is it fun to gamble on politics? You bet! Pixabay/Jan Vasek

Everybody has a political opinion and a prediction about who will win the 2020 election. But are you willing to “put your money where your mouth is,” as the old adage goes? Well, you can bet on political outcomes, and the industry has only become bigger in recent years. Not only can you gamble on who you think will win the presidential election, but such bets might also give us a clue about who could win, according to political scientists.

Is It Legal to Bet on Political Outcomes?

Gambling in America used to be heavily regulated. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, betting on politics was a growing industry, just like it is in sports. But former NBA star Bill Bradley, who served three terms as a New Jersey senator from 1979 to 1997, led the charge to curtail gambling. Enter PAPSA, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. It was a federal ban on sports gambling that curtailed betting on sports—and politics. The bipartisan effort passed the Democratic-controlled Congress and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, going into effect in January of 1993. Only four states were exempt from this: Oregon, Montana, Delaware and, of course, Nevada, as all four already had some sort of statewide regulated gambling.

SEE ALSO: How to Combat the Sinister Role Deepfakes Will Play in the Election

New Jersey challenged PAPSA in the courts, and it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the law and handed New Jersey, and gamblers, a big victory. Congress could still get involved in the future, states still need to pass laws enabling regulated gambling, and the Federal Wire Act stands in the way of online betting, but placing wagers on politics is back in business.

As Legal Betting Online points out, “The irony of betting on the elections and events associated with those politicians attempting to outlaw gambling is not lost on the American people.”

Believe it or not, such predictive markets answering “yes” or “no” questions about politics—like, “Will Donald Trump be reelected?” or “Will Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard drop out next month?”—were allowed even before PAPSA was dumped, as regulators sort of ignored these measures. Why? “For the valuable insight they provided,” writes Sports Betting Dime. “As traders buy and sell their shares, researchers get a better idea at what the collective mind is thinking about candidates and the events surrounding them. The idea is that people are buying shares based on what they truly believe is going to happen, not just what they want to happen. These markets provide real-time insight into political campaigns, and how different events impact them.”

How Betting on Ballots Works

To find out more about the nuts and bolts of political bets, I spoke to oddsmaker Mike Pierce with online sportsbook TopBet.eu. I went to their site and asked some questions about how to place a wager and what the numbers mean, as I am a novice gambler.

For example, the site lists Donald Trump at -125. Does that mean he’s going to win or lose? “Since Trump is a -125 favorite, you would need to risk $125 to win $100 on him to be president in 2020,” Pierce explained.

TopBet.eu also lists +200 for Elizabeth Warren, but that doesn’t mean they think she’s going to win. “Conversely, if you [look at] Warren, who is +200 to be the next president, a $100 bet on her would win you $200 net profit.”

So how do they determine these odds, who gets a minus (-) sign and who gets a positive (+) sign next to their names?

“At the current moment, we win money if Trump is reelected as president and lose money if Warren is elected U.S. president,” Pierce said. “This is because 37% of cash on the 2020 U.S. presidential future is backing Warren who is a +200 underdog, while 29% of cash on the future is backing the -125 favorite Trump.”

Do Betting Markets Help Predict the Future?

The literature from academia on political betting as a predictor is a lot more supportive than you may think. Given that a good theory can describe, explain and predict, why not an independent assessment via betting?

“Prediction markets apparently originated in 1988, when the first Iowa Electronic Markets predicted the winner of the presidential election,” writes Michael Abramowicz in his article “The Politics of Prediction” published in Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, an MIT Press Journal. “The founds of the Iowa Electronic Markets wanted a vehicle that would better explain the workings of the financial markets, and their approach built on the work of experimental economists who had conducted experiments using simplified financial markets in the laboratory.”

Political Betting Website

But betting on politics goes even further back to the days of post-Civil War politics. In the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Paul W. Rhode and Koleman S. Strumpf found that bets were a pretty good forecast of elections, even before the era of scientific surveys from 1868 to the 1940s. But an analysis of betting on the 2008 Democratic Party primary candidates by Emily West in the Journal of Politics showed a mixed result for determining the connection between belief in success and bets.

I visited RealClearPolitics and saw that while Joe Biden is leading the national polls by a little—ahead in New Hampshire and even Massachusetts (Warren’s state), taking Nevada, winning South Carolina and Texas by a wide margin, losing only Iowa—he’s trailing Warren in betting odds by a 33-point margin. I asked Pierce how that could be.

“We feel that while Biden is the more well-known candidate, it appears Warren is starting to be the more popular candidate,” he explained. “She is starting to receive more money for fundraising compared to Biden. This is a big reason why we think she will be the Democratic nominee for president next year.”

Where To Bet On Politics

I’m not so sure, but it is fascinating that the outcomes of betting could be so different from the polls. We’ll find out next year if using your head and following the surveys is the smart wager, or gambling on your heart and betting on who you want to win could be the best plan.

London Betting Odds Us President

One final note: Before you lay down a single dollar on a bet, do your research and make sure you’re casting your lot with a reputable site that has a good track record of paying off when you win.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia—read his full bio here.