American Presidential Election Day: The Winner 2012 Will Be? Do the Odds Tell Us?

On this Election Day, U.S. Presidential Election betting odds at OddsChecker make the incumbent President Barack Obama the prohibitive favorite to win the election, as President Obama goes off at ca. 1/6 odds to win, while challenger Mitt Romney goes off at ca. 4 to 1 odds to win.

You can calculate what that means at Conversion and Calculation of Betting Odds. Betting odds of 1/1 would mean even money. 1/10 means essentially that you would have to put up €100 to win €10, i.e. a return of 1 for 10.

In places where betting is legal, for the above Presidential election odds:

• if you were to put up €60 and Obama won at 1/6 odds, you would only win €10 plus the return of your €60 bet
• if you were to put up €60 on Romney, you would win €240 plus the return of your €60 bet.

Of course, betting odds are just that, and they merely calculate percentages based on what is known at the time. No one ever really knows how voters will actually mark their votes in the voting booth, since that is secret.

We will only know after the votes are counted.