Why Bettors Take a Flier on Trump

Polls are one way of predicting which candidate is leading in a campaign. They’ve been pretty accurate in U.S. presidential elections, though in Europe they’ve often been misleading in recent years and in my country, Russia, they are all but useless.

Gambling is another indicator of public sentiment. You can’t place a legal bet on candidates in the U.S., but you can in parts of Europe, and there people have put their money on Donald Trump, ignoring his weakness in the polls. At William Hill, the U.K.’s largest bookmaker, 70 percent of the money is riding on Hillary Clinton -- but 65 percent of the individual bets are on Trump. In recent days, the money balance appears to have been shifting, too. On Monday, William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe told me, 79.6 percent of the money bet on the U.S. election was for Trump, with 55.2 percent of individual bettors going in his favor.