As we all know, the odds on the presidential election are incredibly close and continue to slim with only four days until November 3rd. Our VEO analysts fixate on any shift in the line compared to recent political events. Today, we’ll break down the claim that the Biden Trump election is the most bet on in history.
But first, the news.
President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden set their sights on the Midwest battleground states in the election’s final days. Both candidates are holding competing rallies in Wisconsin and Minnesota, nearly crossing each other’s paths on the way. We can only envision a classic West Side Story-esque stand-off between the two.
Joe Biden leads in Wisconsin by a reasonably comfortable 7.7%. Trump hopes to squeeze out as much Republican support as possible in the last days of campaigning, targeting Wisconsin’s rural electorate that historically votes red.
Biden also appears to hold a 12-point lead over Trump in Minnesota. SurveyMonkey conducted two polls, each with an over 5,000-person sample size. The first poll quantified the responses of likely voters and the second poll of registered voters. In both, Biden leads the state with a 54% to 43% favorability.
This comes on the heels of both candidates campaigning in Florida yesterday. There are two reasons why these competing rallies are happening in the final days.
The first is that Biden and Trump are secretly telepathic extraterrestrial invaders, hellbent on rousing unrest throughout the country. Unfortunately, our UPS package, with evidence confirming that the candidates are conspiring reptilian overlords, was lost in the mail (wink wink, Tucker). The second is a strategic counterprogramming effort on behalf of the Trump administration. The competition of rallies attempts to steal viewership, and therefore messaging power, away Biden’s rallies. This was the same mentality behind the dueling town hall meetings on NBC and ABC the two candidates held not long ago.
And according to a CNN article, the rating war has translated to extremely high betting action. With people across the United States and abroad wagering on the Presidential election on their favorite online sportsbooks.
The claim comes from new numbers on bettors from the United Kingdom. In 2016 UK bettors wagered nearly 230 million dollars on the Trump-Clinton race while only betting 130 million dollars on their Brexit vote. This election cycle UK bettors have already wagered over 280 million dollars on the Biden-Trump odds.
This is merely a snapshot of betting from the UK, consider US bettors and other international bettors, and that number is expectedly much larger. It’s impossible to know how much money exactly people are wagering. Still, the high action we see on the sportsbooks leads us to believe that number is very well over 280 million dollars.
Lastly, let’s take a look at the current odds for a shift from yesterday.
Presidential Winner – MyBookie:
- Donald Trump +130
- Joe Biden -170
More people are betting on Donald Trump, significantly driving the action. Trump was down by -110 points yesterday and now only down by -100 points as of this morning. Trump managed to close another ten-point gap in less than 24 hours.
Sources:
CNN
FiveThirtyEight