Just like Americans have prudish and slightly-contradictory laws about gambling online, esports gambling, and gambling in games of skill versus games of chance, Americans also don’t like their own citizens engaging in betting on their own elections. In fact, it’s quite illegal there. But gamblers still flock to election betting, and the ripple effect of these markets are quite intriguing.
But humans like to bet on everything. We like raising the stakes on competition, be it basketball, fantasy football, a fantasy esports league, or $20 on Ralph’s Banana, when it comes to the highest-of-high stakes: who gets to be in charge of America’s foreign policy and arsenal of way-too-many-nukes, naturally, gamblers are going to flock to put their money where their mouth is.
Although, election betting is not as partisan affair as you might imagine. Sure, Americans may be inclined to want to wager their preferred candidate wins, but they’re not the ones doing most of the online betting. And sure, Europeans have their own preferences, but the fascinating fact of election betting is that the odds offered for those seeking to gamble on the big-name election betting websites are an incredibly accurate indicator of how good a candidate’s chances are.
Even major American news channels can’t help themselves but to sometimes talk about politics in terms of these betting odds. Of course, they refer to Predictwise, the intellectual reference for many other election betting websites. While Predictwise itself does not take election bets, it combines analytics and other real money-market indicators (including other betting websites) that they claim gives an even more accurate representation of likelihoods than even modern scientific polls. While this claim is somewhat controversial among economists, political scientists, and statisticians, Predictwise has some major intellectual heft behind it. In their own words:
PredictWise reflects David Rothschild’s academic, peer-reviewed, research into prediction markets, along with polling and online/social media data. The backbone of predictions on this site are market-based, generated from real-money markets that trade contracts on upcoming events. While we have great respect for: polls and online/social media data, the topline predictions reflect data that are more accurate, flexible, and update in real-time.
PredictWise is run wholly by David Rothschild [emphasis mine] an innovative, and stylish economist at Microsoft Research in New York City, but should in no way be construed as representing the views or predictions of Microsoft or any of its entities.
Whether or not Predictwise is up to the rigor of Fivethirtyeight.com, the statistical polling analytics group run by former wunderkind Nate Silver, the man who Moneyballed politics, has a spectacular track record.
However, even they didn’t see Trump coming. But then again, the election betting websites did not see that Dark Horse outlier coming either. Excuse me, did I say Dark Horse? I meant Dumpster Fire.
Perhaps the problem with election betting in the US is because everyone wants to bet on who they want to win, not who they think might win. And perhaps they are just too passionate about it. I mean, you can hardly state your political opinion on social media without having almost every response be an angry disagreement, and not a constructive, intellectual conversation.
So if you can’t resist making money off gambling on the world’s real-life Game of Thrones, there are a few reputable websites you can take your gambling dollar to.
One of the most popular betting sites in the world, Paddypower (as its name implies) is an Irish-based sports betting website that now is one of the top election betting websites in the world too. It was founded in 1988 as a merger between three different Irish bookmakers. With a longer track record than many online betting sites and a blend of old school betting markets and cutting-edge analytics, Paddypower is a reasonable choice for anyone looking to dabble in election betting.
More than just a bookie-style website, Bovada is also an online casino that has more than 120 games in addition to poker, sports-betting, and horseracing. It is quickly growing a reputation for being an election-betting location, particularly for state political races in the U.S.
With an emphasis on UK elections, William Hill still does U.S. politics betting, and has opened up the unusual offer of 10/1 odds that presidential candidate Donald Trump will drop out of the race based on his own temperament, decline in the polls, and him floating the notion that he doesn’t even want to be president.
In many countries, the ballots are now being cast electronically and campaigns are waged through social media. Since Roman times, politics have been compared to sport. It is time for countries of the world to realize that, legal or not, laudable or not, many find political elections to be the most high-stakes e-sport, and thus, we will forever be curious about where the smart money is for a particular candidate. Though it’s illegal in America, even their own pundits can’t help themselves from pointing to betting markets.
Whether the motivation is a protection to betters in a country that has murky laws about online gambling, or merely as an effective means of transferring money, Bitcoin is the standard in online gambling, be it esports, politics betting, or sports betting. Most websites will offer some alternative to Bitcoin, however it often involves transferring your own money (via card or Paypal) into credits that can be redeemed for real money. As this multi-step process often worries people visiting sites with less of a solid record than say Paddypower.com, it may be worth it to bite the bullet and finally get a Bitcoin wallet if you’re serious about wanting to gamble online.
