President-elect Donald Trump arrives onstage to speak in Grand Rapids
The United States president-elect, Donald Trump, has not moved into the Oval Office yet but the odds — literally — are already turning against him.
The tycoon-turned-president won the election US presidential election on November 8, much to the surprise of polls and political analysts, and will be inaugurated on Friday.
Some people despair of the prospect of the tumult a Trump presidency may cause but there is reason to believe he may never make it through his first term — online bets are rolling in that he won’t be US president for all that long. And online betting has often proved better than opinion polls at predicting political outcomes.
One of the largest online betting sites in the world, Paddy Power, is taking bets on everything from whether Trump will be impeached to whether he will paint the entire White House gold.
The odds that Trump will not complete his first term in office are seven to four. In the event that this comes to fruition means that for every four pounds you put down you will get seven back. The odds that Trump will be impeached in his first six months in office are four to one.
Although he was put forward as the Republican Party’s candidate, Trump did not enjoy its full support.
Political analysts have suggested it is very likely that he could be impeached within the first 18 months of his tenure as scandals continue to emerge and he becomes a bigger and bigger liability for the Republicans.
Most recent are allegations that the Russians are blackmailing Trump with the help of alleged evidence of his controversial behaviour, which includes his hiring of prostitutes to urinate on each other.
If taking a bet on Paddy Power, the odds that the footage of the alleged golden shower will surface on the online porn site RedTube are five to one. A split from his wife, Melania, is 16 to one and the odds that Trump will paint the White House gold (the colour of the ostentatious Trump Towers) are at 500 to one. Further bets are rolling in on what he might say at his inauguration speech on Friday. They favour he is will say “make American great again”, “job creation” and “innovation”.
The odds that he will bring up The Apprentice, a reality show in which Trump refuses to relinquish his role as executive producer, are nine to one.
Less favourable odds are that he will mention Meryl Streep at 50 to one. Earlier this month, the actress used the Golden Globes platform — she was receiving a lifetime achievement award — to lambast Trump publicly.
The odds that he might mention Robert Pattinson, the star of the Twilight film franchise, are 66 to one. In 2012, Trump offered Pattinson relationship advice over Twitter, imploring him not to take back his girlfriend and co-actor Kristen Stewart, who, Trump tweeted, “cheated on him like a dog and will do it again … he can do much better”.
The same odds apply to a mention of Rosie O’Donnell.
The comedian recently sparked a feud with Trump when, on Twitter, she called for martial law to be invoked to prevent the inauguration of the president-elect.
Least likely utterances, with odds of 250 to one, are golden shower, Home Alone (referring to the 1992 film Home Alone 2, in which Trump played a cameo role) and Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, which Trump has often attacked on Twitter.
Online bets have proved successful in predicting the outcomes of major political events in the past. So much so that some analysts have begun including online betting odds in their forecasts.
But the online betting markets recently got it horribly wrong for the Brexit vote last year, in which Brits voted in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Historically they were better at predicting US election outcomes than other polls — until Trump won, that is.
Online betting in the US is banned in some states. Various US sites, such as predictit.org, are taking bets on the potential impeachment of Trump.
Online gambling and online gaming is illegal in South Africa, although online sports betting is permitted.