What having a controversial figure in the White House does to the betting

Above is a screenshot of the Betfair market on who will be next president. We’ve talked about the odds on this for well over a year but what is striking this afternoon is how close the total matched is to £50m. That we should get to that sort of total with more than 3 months to go until November 2nd is quite extraordinary and this will almost certainly be the biggest political betting event of all time.

Just compare it with PB’s first White House race seven months after the site was launched in 2004. Then the total amount matched on Betfair was £30m+ and we thought that that was a lot of money.

What makes this battle really interesting to punters is that the incumbent, Mr. Trump has barely been out of the news since he was inaugurated on January 20 2017. His first term has seen one controversy after another and the headlines have come thick and fast. The big question is can he be beaten on November 2nd and now there’s speculation that he might try to remain there even if he loses.

The US constitution imposes a two term limit and the general rule is the incumbents seeking re-election generally do it. The polls this time, however, have been pointing to a clear Biden victory and the national and key swing state polls have been bad news for Trump. But there’s a long time to go.

On top of the main WH2020 next president market there’s a huge range of betting possibilities and expect more of them once Biden and Trump are confirmed as nominees next month.

There are many other outlets for betting as well as Betfair but we don’t get the same detailed data.

Mike Smithson