If you're an American, unless you have experience making sports bets on the Internet, there's a good chance you haven't heard of Betfair. It is one of the largest betting sites in the world but does not accept U.S. customers.

Betfair is different from a sports book in that the house takes no risk on winners or losers. Betfair is a betting exchange where people who want to bet one side of an event are matched up with people who want to bet the other side. The house charges a small commission for this service but just makes its money on the exchange fee. As a result, lines can often be tighter than in a sports book, where the house normally needs to include a larger vig to compensate for its potential risk of loss.

I'm not here to tout Betfair, however, but to demonstrate how you can use their site to follow our current presidential election.

Betfair posts a number of betting events on the presidential race. These odds change frequently. Looking at them can give a strong indication -- in my opinion more accurate than our mainstream media's opinions -- as to what our political future looks like.

The most hotly contested race currently, of course, is the Democratic candidate-selection process. Here is a screen capture of the relevant section of Betfair's betting screen for this event:

You can view the enitre odds listing here: Betfair Democratic Candidate Odds

To convert from the odds listed to a percentage that's easier for most of us (like me) to understand, you want to divide 100 by the number in the far-most right column for each candidate. For example, for Barack Obama, you'd divide 100 by 1.33 to get 75.18797. Let's call it 75% to make it easy.

Here are the odds for the three candidates pictured:

Obama = 100/1.33 = 75%

Clinton = 100/4.1 = 24%

Gore = 100/90 = 1%

The odds are also how much your bet will pay based on how much you wager. For example, a bet of $100 on Obama will return a total of $133 if he is the nominee (your original $100 plus $33 profit) while a $100 bet on Clinton will return $410 (your $100 plus $310 profit).

There are a few things to be aware of.

For one, the Al Gore bet is a sucker bet. He's not running, hasn't expressed any interest in running and you have to wonder how he is even on the list. Someone out there in cyberspace offered the bet at 90-for-1 odds. If you're interested in betting on it then that person will be happy to take your money. What should the odds on Al Gore be? I have no idea. 500 to 1? 1,000 to 1? People can offer anything if someone else is willing to bite.

Secondly, the betting line is going to be more accurate on contests that are bet more frequently, as are Obama and Clinton as opposed to Gore. The currency values below the betting odds are how much someone else is willing to bet against you. These are not terribly significant for our purpose of determining the current odds of election. They would be very important if you'd want to place a bet.

Thirdly, there will be some "leakage" in the odds because of the commission and because others are always trying to offer less than fair value. This "leakage" effect should be negligible for our purposes, however.

A couple more to look at:

You can view the entire Republican odds page here: Betfair Republican Odds

Using our formula we get:

McCain = 100/1.06 = 94%

Huckabee = 100/120 = less than 1%

Romney = 100/85 = 1.2%

Again, the Romney and Huckabee bets are likely sucker bets and not worth serious consideration for our purposes. McCain, although seemingly a lock means that your $100 bet will only return $106 and you have to wait until the Republican convention for it to be official.

Most people would not want to tie up their money for so long for so little return, and there always is a small chance of a scandal, illness or other event that may affect his potential nomination. Sports bettors like to call these large-outlay-and small-ROI bets "bridge jumpers" because you either win a little or lose a ton and those rare (but large) losses can be difficult to take.

You can view this entire page here: Presidential Party to Win Odds

In this case, we're not talking about particular candidates but only which party will win the White House in November. The odds expressed here are:

Democrats = 100/1.54 = 65%

Republicans = 100/2.82 = 35%

This bet is irrespective of whether Obama or Clinton (or Gore or whomever) wins the Democratic nomination. It also doesn't matter whether McCain or another person is the Republican nominee. It simply is party vs. party and, in the opinion of the bettors on Betfair, the Democrats are about 2-to-1 favorites to win the White House. (I personally feel that the odds on this will tighten and approach 50/50 as we get closer to the November election.)

Betfair also has charts and graphs which show the betting line's changes over time so that you can view how events like Super Tuesday and last week's primaries in Ohio and Texas affected the odds.

Other sites which list odds are Matchbook.com, CNNPolitics.com, Intrade.com, the Iowa Election Markets and others. If you know any other ones, please make a comment to this blog listing it.

In general, the sites where you can bet real money against someone else (a betting exchange) will be more accurate because people are risking something of value on their opinion. Also, sites like CNN can have a skewed viewership. I happen to think that CNN attracts more of an Obama audience than a Clinton audience and that can affect the numbers. When people put their money on the line, they can't afford to let their personal emotions or opinions affect their offers.

Hope this helps and gives you another way to follow our political race(s).

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