It’s almost over. Tomorrow is Election Day and millions of Americans will go to the polls to determine who will become the next POTUS. It’s been a long vicious campaign, but on November 9, all the advertising and fear-mongering will wind to a halt and, hopefully, we will have elected a new president. Hillary Clinton is a sizeable favorite, but Donald Trump has closed the lead in most of the polls and has a chance to be elected. Whether or not he does remains to be seen.
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Who Will Become the Next POTUS?
Hillary Clinton -580
Donald Trump +440
NEW CLINTON INVESTIGATION DROPPED
Last Friday, FBI Director James Comey shook up the race when he sent a letter to eight Republican congressmen stating that the bureau had discovered new e-mails that were on Clinton’s private server in a separate investigation. That sent both camps into an uproar as the Trump side saw it as vindication and the Clinton side demanded an explanation as to why this was announced so close to Election Day.
Now the FBI has egg on its face. Following an admonishing from former Attorney General Eric Holder and heavy criticism from many others, Comey announced on Sunday that the FBI had again cleared Clinton of any wrongdoing. Despite reports to the contrary, virtually every e-mail the FBI discovered between Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin was previously known and there was no basis to go any further.
The damage has been done though. We’ll never be able to know just how much of an effect that this had on Clinton’s chances, but the decline in her poll numbers happened concurrently with the announcement and although her lead has stabilized it was not nearly as big as it was beforehand.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MODELS
The most interesting discussion over the last week or so, aside from the FBI investigating Clinton again, has been the wide discrepancy in Clinton’s chances to win the election according to prediction models.
FiveThirtyEight has been considered the gold standard the last two elections but there has been plenty of criticism after the model was way off in predicting the winners of the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2015 Republican nominee. Granted, not many people gave Trump a chance, but Nate Silver’s model was wrong nonetheless.
His model this time around has been a lot more cautious and it gives Trump a better chance to win the election than any of the other major models. The criticism wasn’t much at first, but now that the polls have tightened and his model gives Trump about a one in three chance, many have lobbed critiques his way.
Although it’s easy to criticize, his model is still far better than most out there. The Huffington Post model that gives Clinton a 98 percent chance to win completely dismisses outlier polls and is slow to adjust to changes.
The New York Times’ The Upshot is more bullish on Trump, giving him a 16 percent chance to win, but even that seems a bit low. Clinton is just 2.3 points ahead of Trump nationally and with the sizeable amount of undecided voters, it’s not hard to conceive of a situation where Trump wins a big majority of them and goes on to win the election.
THE PATH TO 270
Trump’s campaign promises to repeal NAFTA and start taxing Chinese goods has made him extremely popular in Rust Belt states like Michigan. This message has struck a chord with voters in the state and he has stopped here multiple times in an effort to turn this state red for the first time since 1988. These stops were once derided as wasteful since he was perceived to have little chance to win the state, but now look prescient.
THE BET
Clinton is considered to have 250-260 electoral votes in the bag and only needs one or two swing states to win the election. Early voting has indicated she will have enough in Nevada and that should mean just one more state for her to be safe. Although Trump has a chance, he has to win pretty much all the swing states and that’s a tough ask. Clinton is the play.
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