Thursday, October 16, 2008

Irish punter: McCain and Hillary almost even chance to win on Nov. 4

Once in a while, I like to look at how professional gamblers handicap the race. Not InTrade, but people who've been taking bets on politics for decades. So I slipped over to the Irish punter Ladbrokes.

Ladbrokes is offering odds on John McCain winning the presidency that are far below those of Obama -- and only slightly better than those for Hillary Clinton.

Obama: 4:5 ... 80%
McCain: 12:1 ... 8.33%
Hillary: 16:1 ... 6.25%

McCain's odds are 667% higher than Obama's.
Hillary Clinton's odds are 133% higher that McCain's.

(You can also take flyers for Al Gore at 33:1, Brian Schweitzer at 66:1, or Ron Paul at 100:1).

2 comments:

Gittle said...

Erm, not to be nit-picking (actually, I am), but Ladbrokes is based in London, so I don't think that they are Irish. They have offices in Ireland, and I placed bets with them in Ireland (mostly the Republic), but nope, it's a British (more specifically English) company. However, their poker operations are headquartered in Gibraltar. ;-)

Quriltai said...

Fair enough, and thanks. I saw them all over Ireland, so figured...