Donald Trump is not only surging in the polls — he’s also gaining favor with those betting on the presidential election.
Odds on the one-time long-shot Republican candidate have dropped to 9-4 with British bookmakers after the most recent revelations in Hillary Clinton’s email saga added another twist to the bizarre race.
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“The closer to the day of election, the more people jump on the betting bandwagon,” said Alexander Kostin, global gambling authority for Better Collective, a Denmark-based firm that creates apps and tools for the online gaming industry.
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“For example, Trump attracted 81% of bets in the U.K. due to Clinton’s emails investigation last week,” he said, citing data compiled by Bonuscodebets.co.uk.
Trump was a long-shot at one time, but thanks to the latest email revelations against Hillary Clinton his odds have dropped all the way to 9-4 to win the presidency.
(Patrick Semansky/AP)The Democrat remains the prohibitive favorite at 4-11, according to bet365.com.
Those odds were good enough for one “punter,” in the parlance of the Brits, to bet more than $600,000 on the former First Lady, according to Time.com.
The largest individual amount bet on Trump is $12,156, according to bookmaker William Hill.
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Kostin expects the sum wagered on the 2016 U.S. election to exceed the amount bet four years ago.
“It’s difficult to give an exact number, but we can see the . . . stakes across the industry are already surpassing the $61 million mark wagered on the 2012 race.”
However, punters on this side of the Pond are shut out from the betting windows. Federal law prohibits online gambling on all sports, including politics. Not even the sportsbooks in Las Vegas, epicenter of a crucial swing state, are allowed to accept bets.
That’s a stark contrast from the days of the Founding Fathers, when gambling on elections was a way for voters to put their money where their mouths were, according to a pair of economics professors.
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“The 1916 election was the high point, with some $165 million (in 2002 dollars) wagered in the organized New York markets,” wrote Profs. Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina in “Historic Presidential Betting Markets,” which was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2004.
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