“There is no way Donald Trump is winning the election.”

1. How To Bet On American Elections
2. How To Bet On Election 2020
3. Election Betting Odds 2016
4. How To Bet On Election Result
5. How To Bet Money On Elections
6. How To Bet On Us Elections

How many times did you say that or hear someone say that in 2016? Surely no one in their right mind thought that Hillary Clinton could lose the Presidential Election to this guy, right? Well, there were a lot of people who truly thought this underdog could win, and if they were smart, they would have searched out a place to make a wager on that exact outcome.

Did you know that there is a significant amount of money being wagered around the world on politics? Throughout twenty years in the online gambling business, this area of betting has gone from a few sites willing to take action on anything to sites having full sections focused on political betting. On this page, we are going to lay out all the types of political bets you can make, as well as show you the best sites for finding the political bet you are looking for.

The most basic wager that you can make on the presidential election is a straight bet on which candidate will win. This is as simple as it gets. Bet on Biden or Trump directly, and you’ll win if you’re right when all is said and done. But you can go beyond that to try one of the more exotic bets on the presidential election. Prop betting, as we mentioned, is not dependent on the outcome of an election. As a matter of fact, there doesn’t even need to be an election to make a prop bet on a political figure. Let’s use the US as an example. Here are some prop bets you could find or may have found in the past about American politics.

Where Is the Best Place to Make a Political Bet?

There are a couple things to look for when it comes to political betting online. First off, you want to visit several sites to find the best odds on what it is that you are looking to make a bet on. We have compiled a list of some of our recommended sites for political betting above.

One factor to take into consideration is the location of the site offering the odds. It is more likely that a site based in the UK will have a better handle on British politics, and as a result may have more options when it comes to betting on the outcomes of elections in that country.

Another potential decision-making concept for political gamblers is what types of elections a site offers odds upon. If you relate this to traditional sports betting, you can find some sites that allow you to bet on minor league or division sports as opposed to the major leagues. For the purposes of political betting, this could mean finding a site that is taking action on the results of a Mayoral election as well as one of more national exposure like Prime Minister. These smaller-scale elections may provide better opportunities to find more generous odds for players.

Why Are People Betting on Politics?

The easy answer to this is that people will bet on anything if given a chance and the right odds. It is hard to say when betting on elections began, but it is likely that it goes back a few hundred years along with most sports gambling. Making a bet on the outcome of a political campaign is no different than making a bet on a boxing match, really. If you break it down, there are two opponents (sometimes more than two, depending on the election) who are trying to win a title. There are favorites and underdogs, and with that come odds of a candidate securing the win.

These days, with all the craziness going on in the world, especially in the United States, more people are turning to gambling on the future outcomes of political campaigns as a way of dealing with the emotions around the events themselves. As you will see a little further down, many online gambling sites are capitalizing on this trend by offering a wide array of bets on the political moves of countries around the world.

What Types of Bets Can Be Made on Politics?

This is where we have seen the most changes in the political betting landscape over the last few years. Online gambling sites are dedicating more time and effort to the sport of politics, and this means that there has been a significant increase in the number of betting options for the public. Let’s look at a few of the most popular types.

1. Straight Bets

These are the standard bets on which candidate or party will win an election. In some cases, you will be able to bet on a political party winning the next election even if they haven’t chosen a leader yet. For the majority of straight bets, however, you will find odds on each of the election participants, and you will make your selection on who you think will win. If that candidate wins, you get paid!

These types of bets are similar to moneyline bets in sports. You pick a winner and based on their handicapped odds, and you are paid based on the line the site puts up. Again, as some sites may pay more attention to this than others, doing your research is important as you may find significant swings in the odds from site to site. Finding value in these political bets is what can make them a profitable venture.

2. Spread Bets

How To Bet On American Elections

These types of political bets are not focused on which candidate or party will win the election, but by what margin. This is similar in nature to spread betting on sports. While you know the Golden State Warriors are going to beat the Brooklyn Nets, in an NBA game when you are spread betting you will have to bet that they are going to win by at least certain number of points.

To convert that to betting on elections, let’s look at the 2016 US presidential election. You might have found the following bets available:

• Clinton -2,000,000 in the general election
• Trump +1,900,000 in the general election
• How many electoral votes will Clinton beat Trump by?
• How many electoral votes will Trump win by?
• How many seats will the Democrats win by?

As you can see, this would allow you to bet on a candidate without having them win the actual election, similarly to an underdog covering the spread. With straight bets, your choice would have to win the election outright. This gives you a different way of betting on the outcome, which appeals more to someone who isn’t entirely sure who the victor will be.

3. Prop Bets

Prop bets have become more and more popular in the sports betting world over the last decade. Rather than requiring an outcome of an event to take place, prop bets allow someone to make a wager on other aspects. This can be applied to the world of politics as well, especially when it comes to some of the leading political countries around the world.

Prop betting, as we mentioned, is not dependent on the outcome of an election. As a matter of fact, there doesn’t even need to be an election to make a prop bet on a political figure. Let’s use the US as an example. Here are some prop bets you could find or may have found in the past about American politics:

• What will be the official weight of the President announced as after his physical?
• How many days will Donald Trump be President?
• What will the age of the Democratic Candidate for President in 2020 be?
• How many times will Trump say a particular word in a State of the Union speech?
• Will the President be impeached?

All of these types of prop bets would come with two options (for example, for the weight bet it could be Under 240.5 and Over 240.5) and in most cases, the odds are the same for either side of the bet (-110). Prop bets are more for entertainment purposes than anything, and what could need entertainment added to it more than politics these days, right?!

Can You Be a “Sharp” Political Bettor?

Of course you can! As we mentioned, one of the easiest ways to give yourself an advantage when it comes to political betting is to shop around. You will most likely find slightly different odds on a particular bet from book to book. As there won’t be the same type of volume of bets on elections as on sporting events, the lines have to move so sites can protect themselves.

Another thing to look for is the betting limit on any individual political wager. If you are sure of an outcome, then you want to find a site that has high limits for these types of bets. In most cases, you will find smaller limits for political bets than traditional sports wagers, as the sites don’t have a team of political experts on staff. A sharp bettor will find the highest limit to go along with the best price before putting any money down.

Now, when it comes to being a sharp bettor from an information standpoint, well, that’s a different concept altogether. There are thousands of journalists that would likely consider themselves to be “experts” on the topic of politics, but how many of them would have picked a Trump victory in the 2016 US presidential election?

We would say that being an insider definitely helps – maybe you know a Senator or someone who works in a Mayor’s office. That type of inside information can definitely make a difference when it comes to finding the diamonds in the rough. In that way, it is very similar to horse racing, as many times someone working in the stables will come across the inside scoop on a particular horse.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the appetite for gambling on politics has grown over the years. These days, you can find any number of sites offering odds on all kinds of elections across the globe. However, to make political gambling a profitable venture, you should be doing your research not just on the candidates and campaigns, but on the sites offering these bets. A little bit of time spent searching out the best odds can make the difference in how much you can win when you are ready to make your bet, and isn’t that what it is all about?

The United States is the oldest democracy on earth. In fact, the US is the only country in the world that has had an active democracy for at least 200 years. Having the ability to choose your leaders is a core tenet of democracy, which is why the US has some sort of election every single year.

Nowadays, the best online betting sites in the industry take bets on the US presidential election. Most experts believe the 2020 presidential election will set all sorts of new records for political betting all over the world. The following US presidential election betting sites have you covered when it comes to wagering on the 2020 US election.

George Washington won a second term in 1792 after being elected as the country’s first president in 1789. A presidential election has taken place every four years, without exception, since Washington’s second victory in 1792.

Betting on politics certainly hasn’t been around for quite as long, but betting interest has exploded over the past handful of years. You can attribute the advent of the internet and the US Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to strike down the federal ban on sports betting to the surge in gambling interest among Americans.

However, US politics betting has grown in popularity since Donald Trump’s unforeseen triumph in the 2016 presidential election over the heavily-favored Hillary Clinton. Political betting markets have existed in the United Kingdom for years, but offshore providers are now giving Americans the chance to get in on the action, too.

US Presidential Election Basics

When Is the United States Presidential Election?

How To Bet On Election 2020

The American presidential election takes place on the first Tuesday in November every four years. The aforementioned 2016 election, in which Trump toppled Clinton, went down on November 6th of that year. The 2020 edition is scheduled for Tuesday, November 3rd.

Events Leading up to the Election

Before the election actually takes place, the political parties have to select their respective candidates. The United States doesn’t explicitly run with a two-party system, but the vast majority of governmental power is currently shared between two parties. Those would be the Republican and Democratic parties.

The vast majority of presidents in the modern era have run for a second term in office. Barring an unforeseen event like an untimely death or a resignation, the sitting president will almost always run for a second term. If a president wishes to run for another term, their political party will almost always unite around them. Each of the last three presidents before Trump—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—were successfully re-elected after their first terms.

The nomination process involves states holding primaries or caucuses in order to determine which candidates will be awarded a certain number of delegates. On the Democratic side, candidates vying for the 2020 nomination had to reach a threshold of at least 1,991 delegates in order to clinch the nomination. Former vice president Joe Biden officially hit that benchmark in June. These nominations processes provide excellent betting opportunities for those looking to bet real money on politics.

Each party will hold its convention in the summer leading up to Election Day. That is the event at which party delegates officially congregate to formally nominate their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The conventions are essentially huge rallies designed to drum up support for the candidates ahead of the election in the fall.

Electoral College

While some have said that a simple popular vote should determine the outcome of an election, that isn’t the case when it comes to who wins the presidency. While congressional, gubernatorial, and mayoral elections are determined by popular vote, the presidency uses the Electoral College system, which has been in place since the late 1700s.

Each state has a distinct number of electoral votes, based on the size of that state’s population. For example, California, the nation’s most populous state, will have 55 electoral votes in the 2020 election. The least populous states, including Alaska, Montana, both Dakotas, and Vermont, have just three electoral votes. Washington DC has three as well.

Each state will count its popular vote totals on Election Day. In 48 states, the candidate that receives the majority of the votes will receive all of the state’s electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska are the only exceptions.

There are a total of 538 Electoral College votes, which means one candidate has to accrue at least 270 to clinch the presidential election. In 2016, Trump won 306 electoral votes compared to 227 for Clinton. This is despite the fact that Clinton garnered 65.8 million votes nationwide, while Trump received 62.9 million. Trump managed to eke out a majority in a number of important swing states, including Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which ultimately paved his path to victory via the Electoral College.

In all, five candidates have won the popular vote and lost the election. Clinton joined Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel Tilden (1876), Grover Cleveland (1888), and Al Gore (2000) on that list four years ago.

What Is the Democratic Party?

The modern Democratic Party was founded in the late 1820s, which makes it the world’s oldest active political party. The party initially supported things like limited government and slavery, but it has since embraced a much more progressive, liberal platform. The party essentially changed when Franklin D. Roosevelt formed the New Deal coalition in the late 1930 to early 1940s.

The modern Democratic Party advocates for social and economic equality for United States of America citizens. Support for environmental protection, universal healthcare, more affordable college tuition, LGBT rights, stricter gun law enforcement, and the legalization of marijuana have become mainstream tenets of the Democratic party’s ideology in recent years.

As of the summer of 2020, the Democratic Party holds a majority in the US House of Representatives, though the Republican Party holds the White House and the US Senate. Democrats have won seven of the last 15 presidential elections dating back to John F. Kennedy’s victory in 1960. The most recent Democratic president was Barack Obama, who served from 2008 until 2016.

What Is the Republican Party?

The Republican Party, sometimes referred to as the Grand Old Party (GOP), was founded in 1854. The first iteration of the Republican Party staunchly opposed slavery and operated on a classically liberal platform. Needless to say, the two parties have changed their ideologies considerably over the years.

The Republican Party’s shift to the right started around 1913, and the core base moved to the southern parts of the US, following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The party currently embraces conservatism and advocates for lower taxes, expanded gun rights, restrictions on abortion and immigration, and increased military spending.

There have been 19 Republican presidents in all, including Donald Trump. That is the most presidents to ever come from a single United States political party. As mentioned, Republicans currently control the executive branch as well as the US Senate. Republicans also account for a majority of state governorships, as well as five of the nine sitting justices of the United States Supreme Court.

Election Betting Odds 2016

Types of US Presidential Election Bets

Futures Bets

The most common type of political bet is a futures bet on the eventual outcome. Trump’s win over Clinton in 2016 showed that there is still a potential edge to be found in the US presidential election betting odds, which is a big reason why popularity in political betting has surged in the years since. On Election Day of 2016, some UK oddsmakers had Trump as a +400 underdog to win the presidency.

Presidential betting odds are constantly shifting. The political news cycle has never been more unpredictable than it is today, and certain events can cause the odds to change considerably in a short period of time.

Some sites that offer US presidential election odds had Trump as high as around a -180 favorite to win re-election as recently as March.

Now, the betting sites with odds on the US presidential election updated their odds quite a bit. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has since emerged as a minus-money favorite at betting sites all over the UK. Those that placed a futures bet at Trump when he was at -180 will likely be jumping all over each other to place bets on the new +110 odds.

While the election will almost surely come down to Trump or Biden, US political betting sites don’t want to take any chances. Anything can happen in politics, so some candidates that have already ended their campaigns may still be listed with betting odds, just in case something unforeseen arises between now and November. Here is an example of how presidential election futures odds look at US election betting sites.

Moneyline US Presidential Election Bets

Political bets are essentially moneyline bets. If you’re familiar with sports betting, you’re familiar with the moneyline. A moneyline bet is essentially a wager on one outcome vs. another. An example of how a political moneyline wager at United States presidential election betting sites will look is as follows.

How To Bet On Election Result

United States Election Prop Bets

When most Americans think of prop bets, they probably think of the Super Bowl. A prop bet is a wager placed on a random occurrence during a game or an event that isn’t necessarily directly tied to the outcome. Most football betting sites offer odds on a variety of things that have nothing to do with the actual football game for the Super Bowl every year.

Prop bets have since made their way into the world of political betting. The increased popularity of US presidential election prop betting is yet another thing we can attribute to Trump’s shocking win in 2016. The 45th president has had quite the eventful first term. US election betting sites have been happy to keep tabs on the latest happenings and offer bettors the chance to cash in on his antics.

Trump likes to voice his various opinions on Twitter, regardless of how controversial they may be. While a normal person may get booted from the platform for saying some of the things POTUS has said over the years, Twitter has resisted the urge to kick the sitting president out. Some sites have even put odds on Trump’s chances of getting banned from his favorite social media platform.

Other Trump-specific props include whether he’ll be removed from office before the end of his first term, whether he will appoint a new vice president before the 2020 election, or whether he will tweet about NFL players kneeling during the pregame national anthem.

Mistakes to Avoid When Betting on the US Presidential Election

Eliminate Personal Bias Before Political Betting

Fandom is something that can limit a sports bettor’s chances of turning a profit. The same can be said for political betting. Almost everyone has their own political opinions, and many choose to let other people know about them. While that’s all fine and dandy, you’re not likely to become a successful political bettor if you’re going to let your personal feelings stand in the way of making the right bet.

You shouldn’t bail on your personal political beliefs just to bet, of course. Just know that whatever cause you support isn’t necessarily going to be the right bet to place. Betting on your favorite sports team to win every game likely won’t pan out the way you’d like it to.

Don’t Overlook Population Trends

Each of the three most recent presidents winning a second term doesn’t mean that Trump will do the same in 2020. While that’s a trend that doesn’t mean much, this isn’t to say that some trends can’t help you make educated guesses with regard to your presidential election bets. The way state populations are shifting can give you a glimpse into how things may play out in the future.

Big cities with large populations tend to vote Democrat these days, while voters in more rural areas tend to lean Republican. Republicans also tend to attract a majority of white voters, while non-white voters have inched toward the Democratic side.

How To Bet Money On Elections

With the way populations are changing, some believe states like Georgia and Texas that have long track records of voting Republican in presidential elections may swing toward the Democrats. Keeping an eye on trends like these can help you evaluate political betting odds.

US Presidential Election Betting FAQ

Is It Legal to Bet on US Politics Online?

How To Bet On Us Elections

While more and more states are always voting to legalize online betting, it is still illegal for American betting operators to take bets on US politics. However, there is no restriction in place that applies to betting sites that operate overseas or offshore. American political betting has been a big industry in the UK for years, and offshore operators have expanded their political coverage considerably, as well.

While Americans can’t place political bets at land-based sportsbooks in the US, it is not difficult for them to find where to bet on the US presidential election online.

Is It Safe to Bet on the USA Presidential Election Online?

Some US politics betting sites are safer than others. There are some seedy operators out there that don’t have your best interests in mind. Considering you’re risking your own money to bet on the US presidential election online, it’s of the utmost importance that you have the confidence that you’re doing so at a safe site.

All of the political betting sites we recommend check all necessary boxes when it comes to safety and security. Read our rankings of the safest sites on the web for more info about how you can bet online safely.

When Can I Bet on the Presidential Election?

While the presidential election takes place every four years, you don’t have to wait four years between placing bets. As mentioned, the best US political betting sites in the industry are always keeping tabs on the latest developments in the world of politics and updating their betting odds accordingly. While you may have to wait a while for your futures bets to pay out, you can pass the time by taking a shot on certain politics-related prop bets.