The presidential race was a virtual dead heat until the predidential debates, when the candidates’ personalities come to the forefront once more.
A British woman who has never gambled in her life placed a £183,200 bet on Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. presidency.
The 44-year old mystery gambler placed a wager of £170,000 at a William Hill bet ship in Northumberland on Thursday.
As if that was not enough, the woman returned the next day to place a second prop bet, this time for £13,200 on Clinton to win.
Clinton’s odds sit at 1/8, so the gambler would win £22,716 if the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Secretary of State defeats Donald Trump on November 8.
Graham Sharpe Gives Details on the Gambler
Though the woman did not give her name, William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe informed the press that the woman considered the wager an investment.
Graham Sharpe said, “The lady arrived at the shop almost before the door had been unlocked telling staff that she is so convinced that Hillary will win she wanted to add to her bet.”
Mr. Sharpe continued, “However, Donald Trump’s odds have drifted out so much that we are beginning to see money for him again and the biggest bet put on him this week was £2,000 in Suffolk.”
US Presidential Election Predictions
The wager comes as most political strategists believe Donald Trump’s chances are in free-fall. Nate Silver’s respected Five-Thirty-Eight blog has Clinton as having a 91% chance of winning the election. Sporting Index, the world’s largest sports spread betting business, believes Clinton will win 327 electoral votes to Trump’s 211 votes.
To win, a candidate must receive 270 of a potential 538 electoral votes. If Clinton won 327-211, it would represent one of the biggest landslide victories in decades.
Trump’s latest plummet in the polls comes amidst a scandal about the real estate developer’s comments about groping women, along with at least 8 women stepping forward to claimed they had been either groped, molested, or harrassed by the GOP’s nominee.
Controversial Campaign
This has been the most controversial, darkest, and vitriolic US presidential election in history. On the one side, Hillary Clinton has faced scandals about the Wikileaks releases of her campaign’s internal emails, the Clinton Foundation’s alleged pay-for-play scheme while she was Secretary of State, and health rumors after a collapse due to pneumonia.
Many considered Donald Trump a Teflon candidate after his many controversial statements over the past year which would have stalled any previous candidacies seemed to have little effect on his chances. Despite a campaign almost designed to court controversy, Trump was in a virtual tie leading into the first debate.
Since then, Trump’s poll numbers have weathered one of the worst collapses in US presidential history. While Independents, millennials, and moderate Republicans seemed less moved by Trump’s attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, and other non-White Americans, his taped claims that he could get away with groping women because he was a celebrity hit home with many women — and many Republicans.
Overcoming a Deficit
In U.S. politics, electoral votes are allotted by state, based on the number of senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress. Each state receives two senators, but the number of members in the House of Representatives is based on population statistics.
Certain states lean heavily Republican, while others lean heavily towards the Democrats. Between 10 and 12 states are more evenly divided between the Democrats and Republicans. These are called battleground states. Of the 11 US states considered to be battleground states in 2016, 10 of them right now are said to be favoring Hillary Clinton. While Donald Trump might defy the odds, those odds appear to be stacked against him.
At the moment, the most optimistic national poll has Donald Trump 4% behind Hillary Clinton, though the Real Clear Politics national average is at 6.7% in favor of Clinton. No candidate has come back from more than a 4% deficit in the last month of a U.S. presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan overcame a 4% deficit, but he did so after he appeared to be calm and reasonable during the first presidential debate, after he was portrayed as a dangerous figure in the months leading up to the debate.
Unlike Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump appeared less stable than the common perceptions in the first debate and its aftermath. Most signs point to Hillary Clinton winning the election, though it should be said that candidates often stage late comebacks in U.S. elections in the past week, as the electorate seems to have a kind of buyer’s remorse. Only in the rarest of cases (1948) has the late-breaking momentum vaulted a president into the White House. Most of the time (1960, 1968, 2012), the underdog’s late surge tends to come up short.
Biggest Wagers on the U.S. Election
The Northumberland wager is the second-largest bet of the US presidential election for UK sportsbooks. Another female gambler placed €550,000 on Hillary Clinton to win at a time the odds were at 4/11.
