Tackling the tangle of presidential betting vs. political conscience

It was murder. The only Democrat among my local watering hole’s swarm of born Republicans, I had just spent the last two hours listening my drinking buddies launch a litany of my party’s worst PR catastrophes in my direction. Not only did they hit the obvious ones, the current primary “situation” and the Rev. Wright’s blustering; but they’d also made sure to work in the scandals of yesteryear like White Water, Monica Lewinski and NAFTA. Then Paul, the owner of the place and—despite what I consider his shitbrick political leanings—a good friend, pointed at me with the detached beer pull in his hand and asked the one question I’d been dreading all night.

“Who are you betting on?” he said.

And without missing a beat or even having to think about it, “McCain” slipped from my mouth like a pair of broken teeth….

It’s a sad fact but 100-percent true that if you’re a good partisan—pitching your party a couple grand in donations; making all the stump speeches, debates and conventions; and reading every issue of your subscription of The Nation or The National Review—you probably won’t make a good election bettor. After all, winning money on any prop requires you keep a clear head, and for many Americans, this year’s U.S. presidential race has had more emotional impact than their best friends’ weddings.

Is your conscience costing you, this election?

I had been thinking about this and my night out with the guys when I first pitched this piece to the editors at GP three weeks ago. Of course it’s true, I spieled during a quick lunch-time e-mail, with plenty of yanks backing their favorite candidates right now, there are plenty of chances to make money and not a few lessons to be learned in a how-to section. But the real problem is, even for those who aren’t directly involved in the election process , the question of who will become America’s next president still makes a huge difference—And that kind of content, I reasoned, demands an editorial.

Well, as you can see, the rest of the GP crew bit, and so I started on my way building up the background. Logging hours in chat rooms and constantly monitoring the odds posted by sites like Bodog and William Hill, I found that—much to my own miserable chagrin—Mr. McCain’s odds had actually peaked at 5-4 while, as I watched them, Senators Clinton and Obama’s had sunk to 11-2 and 1-1 respectively. Still the odds did bring up another question for a hopeless dreamer like myself: Did my beloved donkeys’ dismal numbers really portend a November failure, or like playing the dogs and the horses, could the odds just reflect an over-anxious rabble looking to make a quick quid with the offshore books?

To get my answers, I turned to one of the web’s most vocal election-betting gurus, Offshoreinsiders.com head honcho Joe Duffy, who’s been solidly blogging the topic in his personal blog-space, http://www.joeduffy.net/, since the primaries began last year. After a couple hit-and-miss attempts to connect, I finally got him on the phone last Friday, and after some opening banter on our earlier years in Pennsylvania—Joe went to college just 45 minutes from where I grew up—I sank in with my first (and probably most obvious) question: “So who are you backing to win the presidential race?” I asked.

Sadly Joe’s response wasn’t exactly what I had been hoping for.

“Right now,” he explained, “All the books are leaning towards McCain because the feeling is everything bad about him—the fact that he’s a Republican and the alleged affair from the [New York] Times article—is already out in the open…. There’s a real sense with most people at this point that both [Democratic] candidates are not done digging up dirt on each other, and the only thing that has changed my mind [about backing them] is that things are getting nasty.”

So okay, I thought, so that’s bad, but how about the quality of the books’ interpretation? There has to be some flaw here, right?—I let the verbal equivalent of this stream-of-consciousness fly then and waited with baited breath…. But again Joe’s answer hit me like a punch in the face: “The books’ numbers on an election are the most objective,” he said. “The traditional wisdom is Gallop swings right and the Times swings left, while [the books] consider all of them before setting the odds.

“Basically if the odds say one thing and the polls say the opposite, go with the odds because there’s really no reason to doubt them. Normally, the books cap bets at $50 because it’s just for publicity and nobody’s making a lot of money from it.”

Needless to say all this was hellova devastating for yours-truly, and as I listened to Joe and took notes, I found myself compulsively multitasking online, staking another $25 on McCain. It turned my stomach doing it, and yet at the same time, I reasoned, I’m definitely going to need the money if he ends up winning.

But then, the other shoe dropped.

No sooner had I submitted my second wager than Joe pointed out another dimension to election betting. “Basically,” he explained, “Hillary’s 5-4 odds are only a matter of whether or not a Washington insider like her can snatch up the super delegates, while Obama’s got all the intangibles going for him…. And after all, every political expert has thought, ‘The worst publicity is no publicity,’ which is exactly where McCain sits at the moment.

“Also, [the odds] will definitely change after PA,” he continued. “When you handicap a poll it’s a snapshot in time…. I don’t think the odds influence the polls nearly as much as the polls influence the odds. During the last presidential election, the exit polls were going for John Kerry and so the odds shifted a couple times per day.”

And so there I was, in a complete bind. Having bet for and against my party and voted for them, and even contributed to both candidates’ campaign funds, I realized I had become so worried about splitting my world between my conscience and my bottom line that I had essentially flubbed the same rule of gambling I was trying to live up to. My many bets, both with the books and otherwise, had left me no further ahead. In fact, I was in it deeper than a rooky roulette player placing chips on both red and black, not stopping for the moment it takes to figure out that he’s just breaking even.

As Mr. Duffy and I finished out interview then, I thanked him not only for the scads of information he’d provided but also (secretly) for helping me screw my head back on straight. The fact of the matter is, I now understood, this election would be like any democratic election from here to Australia. There would be dips, and there would be doosies; there would be moments when I, personally, would feel like the march of progress had finally reached my front door, and there would be times when I would despair that my country was about to fall back into the Dark Ages. And so, finally—FINALLY—I decided the only thing to do when it comes to election betting is cut my losses, hope for the best and be surprised at nothing. At least that way, I’ll still have a few dollars left to hit the track this spring.

Joe Duffy's 5 Secrets for election-betting success

5. GET ACQUAINTED: According to Joe Duffy, “The more you know about the candidates, the more likely you are to win.” He suggests forgetting the talking heads and going to the most objective site he’s found: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/.

4. DON’T GET ATTACHED: As you can see from writer Phill Provance’s experience, politics is a hard game to keep your heart out of. Joe suggests keeping your nose out of the money game if you can’t keep an objective stance since you’ll more than likely be throwing your money away.

3. DON’T WALK THE PLANK:“Platforms and specific planks can help in other races, but they don’t generally affect the presidential race,” Joe says. Generally as a rule then, bet the guy with the sparkle in his eye, not the guy who could actually make a positive difference.

2. WATCH THE PRESSES: Joes says, “When you’re going to bet, you’re basically going to have to anticipate what will come out in the news.” Obviously unless you’re a top-level political strategist or Washington newspaper’s bureau chief, this will be pretty difficult. Still, being a long-time reader of some of America’s more partisan publications can at least give you perspective on prior scandals that didn’t make the evening news.

1. NEVER GO ALL-IN: The ultimate lesson to be learned according to Joe is that “American voters are fickle.” Hence, wagering your mortgage on them, in the end, is an absolute no-no.

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