European bookmakers have all the more reasons to cheer for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the upcoming November elections.
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, William Hill, and Ladbrokes are now bracing themselves for the possible victory of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has drawn unprecedented interests from bettors, according MarketWatch.
Féilim Mac An Iomaire, a spokesman for Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, pointed out that a Trump victory will be the ‘worst political result’ in history for bookies.
“The weight of money that we’re seeing on Trump has forced us to cut his odds. We’ve never had a presidential candidate so popular amongst bettors, and should he win it will be the worst political result for the bookmaking industry in history,” Mac An lomaire told the business news website.
From a 23 percent winning chance in April, Paddy Power gives Trump a 35 percent chance of moving into the White House while cutting its odds on a Trump win to 15/8. Before the Republican National Convention, the bookie had a 2/1 odds, or 33 percent chance of winning.
“Normally the shorter priced candidate will attract the majority of the large bets, but there’s very little [difference] between him and Hillary in this sense as we’ve been seeing five-figure bets for Trump consistently since the turn of the year,” Mac An Iomaire said.
In William Hill, Trump’s odds of winning the presidential elections has leapfrog from 150/1 when he entered the presidential race to 7/4 during the Republican National Convention. Like its rival bookie, William Hill has shortened the odds on Trumps winning after seeing an increase in bets on the businessman.
According to William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly, high-profile candidates Clinton and Trump have pushed the turnover for bets on the US elections to more than 300 percent times bigger than for the ballot in 2012.
“Trump becoming president would not quite be in the Leicester City league of upsets but in political betting it would certainly ‘trump’ the comparatively short upsets of the EU Referendum outcome and the Tories winning the General Election,” Crilly said in a press statement posted on the oddsmaker’s website.
Over at Ladbrokes, the odds of Trump winning were 7/4 on Wednesday.
This is not the first time that bookies try to predict the outcome of a global political event through the pulse of its bettors. First was the Scottish referendum, in which the bookmakers predicted a “No” vote when polls suggested a “Yes” vote. Bookies also consistently made the Tories the largest political party, contrary to the polls that suggested a Labour victory.
Bookies, however, made a wrong guess when they predicted that the Conservative will not become a majority political party and when they guessed that UK will remain in the European Union.
