2012 Presidential Election Betting Results

Tuesday Night saw the re-election of President Barack Obama as the President of the United States. If you live within the country you are probably glad it is over so you can escape the endless political ads as well as the borderline harassing emails from both major political parties.  As far as betting on the election goes, most major sportsbooks carried lines on the betting action. We have studied the line movement and betting action from Bovada.lv, one of the worlds most popular sportsbooks.

Originally the presidential line was posted at 3/1 odds or (-300 in moneyline terms) in favor of a Barack Obama win.  This would mean that Mitt Romney was roughly a 2 1/2 to 1 underdog or (+260 on the moneyline).  After the first debate, in which a majority of experts claimed was won by Mitt Romney, the line moved down to roughly 2 to 1 Obama as the favorite and Romney at +180 or so.  The line started to crawl upward leading to election day, finally closing at an all time high of -400 for Obama to win. That is 4/1 odds.

The election was much closer than that, however, with Mr. Obama winning just 50% of the electoral votes to Romney’s 49%.