October 16, 2008

All Bets Off: Obama Declared the Winner


Did you know that they are taking bets over in Europe on who would win the US presidential elections? Obama was a massive 50-1 underdog with Ireland's largest bookmaker, Paddy Power, to be next President back in May of 2005.

The bookie, Paddy Power, watched the final presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain and decided to pay out on Obama becoming the next US President.

A Paddy Power spokesperson said: "We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama, your winnings await you."

This unprecedented move comes almost three weeks ahead of Election Day and sees the bookie paying out in excess of £780,000 to Obama backers. Prior to Paddy Power paying out, Obama was practically unbackable at odds of 1-9 to be the next American President.

Paddy Power continues to offer betting right up to and including Election Day. One of its most popular bets is predicting the winning margin of the successful nominee on November 4th.

Anyone care to make a non-binding guess on what the victory margin in the election between Obama and McCain?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

All - Methinks that Obama will win nationwide vote by 53-47 margin. In terms of the electoral college ... I'm going with Obama to win 305-233.

who's next?

Unknown said...

I'm not a betting woman so I'll just wait and see... I would caution however against those who are already declaring Barack the winner. Celebrating to early always backfires...

Unknown said...

Regina - Point well taken. However, we can still work our butts off over the next 18 days to get him elected ... over the next 8 years to help him govern ... and have some fun in making wild guesses at the results on Nov 4th.

can't we? (smile)