Another New Hampshire Presidential primary predictor; Bookies
Bovada is accepting bets on the New Hampshire Primaries. Tomorrow, the second U.S. state will decide which of their party’s nominees they’d like to send to Washington. New Hampshire voters will choose between two Democrats and a field of Republican candidates. Overall pollsters are still giving Hillary Clinton favorable odds of besting both fields to take the office of President of the United States – but the race is wide open with multiple variables. It’s a gambler’s dream come true with plenty of opportunities.
Sports betting sites will take your action (where it is legal to bet on such things) and the odds are all over the place in a way you would never see in such contests as the Super Bowl or a footie match with reams of stats and plenty of known commodities; in fact it’s a game where a dart throw to pick the winner could pay off handsomely. There is also enough variance in the early field that you could treat the primaries like propositions and hedge your bets once the momentum has gelled later in the primaries.
Are bookies better at predicting elections than the national polls? That question has yes and no answers, and to our knowledge has never been determined by a recognized and scientifically controlled study. But if you followed trusted lines rather than most of the polls in the 2012 presidential race you knew the results well ahead of November 4th – much to the chagrin of the losing side. You could have also taken the data from amalgamated polling, like Huffington Post does, and made a killing betting against the odds as the Romney side was so confident that the lines were skewed horribly in his favor on many books.
New Hampshire offers particularly good variables for a gambling, rather than fact-based bettor. Here you have the Independent voter who can vote as a Republican or Democrat and that adds some chaos to a mix that already holds the free radical game changing Donald Trump. Democrat leaning Indies can choose the republican they are most sure their desired nominee will trounce in the general election and buoy him or her by voting for the other side in the primary, then casting a ballot for their favored party’s nominee in November. The sword cuts both ways – if a Republican (registered as an Independent) thinks any eventual candidate would do better than Sanders or Clinton in November, they can vote for the weaker Democrat Tuesday.
This early in the game the sports betting sites will start to see new blood with day traders taking some of their Wall Street efforts to the books and Daily Fantasy Sports players trying something new with better hopes of winning than they may find against the DFS sharks.
If history is any indicator, Bovada appears to be the crystal ball for November. As of this morning Clinton is even to take the presidency and Rubio is -150 to Trump’s +160. But the odds are all over the place with Paddy Power favoring Trump at 1/6 and Rubio 4/1, while Betfair is ranking Trump, Kasich, Rubio and Cruz.
Bettors who can remove emotion from their politics and are allowed to bet on such things may find a gold mine in Trump’s numbers.