During the Democratic debate, the betting odds for Mike Bloomberg winning the nomination dropped sharply. This was Bloomberg’s first time joining a Democratic debate, which he was able to do after the DNC dropped the requirement that participants meet a certain donation threshold. Bloomberg was quickly attacked by other candidates, and there were quite a few showdowns, including a few with him and Elizabeth Warren. Betting odds don’t necessarily translate to actual results, but they can provide insight into bettors’ current views on political situations.
Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight commented on Bloomberg’s extreme betting odds drop.
Prediction markets are sometimes dumb but don’t remember someone crashing this much over the course of a debate (well, 45 minutes of a debate). t.co/ZI23B7WN1W
Silver wrote: “Prediction markets are sometimes dumb but don’t remember someone crashing this much over the course of a debate (well, 45 minutes of a debate).” At the time, the odds showed Bloomberg with an 8.8% drop on ElectionBettingOdds.
A few minutes later, Heavy noted he was now at a 9.1% drop, showing an 18.7% chance of getting the nomination versus Bernie Sanders’ 46.5% betting odds.
ElectionBettingOdds
Interestingly, the above results also show Trump’s odds rising for winning the Presidency, while Sanders and Bloomberg both dropped overall.
A few minutes later, his odds had dropped even more to 9.6%.
ElectionBettingOdds
The odds here are compiled from Betfair and PredictIt.
Odds Watch has an interesting live tracker for betting odds regarding who will win the general election from Betfair. It’s auto-generated and shows the current percentage chance that specific candidates will win.
OddsWatch also showed a drop for Bloomberg recently, after he recently had a spike in odds earlier this month.
OddsWatch
PredictIt currently shows Bloomberg behind Sanders in the odds of winning the Democratic nomination.
A “yes” share for Sanders is priced at 52 cents and a “yes” share for Bloomberg is priced at 21 cents, having dropped four cents while everyone else’s shares have increased.
That represents a 52 percent chance that Sanders will win, based on bettors’ predictions.
It will be interesting to see what the betting odds say about Bloomberg tomorrow.