Making a live line on presidential elections hasn't been legal in Nevada sports books in the past, so there's never been betting on the elections. The law was changed between the 2008 elections and today, and now it's technically legal for sports books to put up a line on Obama/Romney, as well as the outcomes of other political races. But being able to and actually doing it are two different things. In order to put up a line, a sports book would have to get specific clearance from Gaming Control and no book has taken that step. It could be a matter of not expecting to get enough action to make it worth the effort, or perhaps there are other "political" reasons. Regardless, the bottom line is that this year again there will be no real-money betting on the election in Nevada sports books (William Hill has put out an "entertainment line").
It's a different story in foreign jurisdictions and offshore, where there's been betting on U.S. elections for years. If you have access to those books, you can bet. Except for rare cases, you can bet only on the national result, as not enough of the non-U.S. customers have knowledge of, or interest in, something as specific as the Nevada outcome.
We've followed the line at the offshore book Pinnacle Sports in the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter since last year. In October 2011, the Republicans were slight favorites to win the White House, even though they didn't yet have a clear-cut candidate (although Mitt Romney was the favorite even then on a separate betting line). Before the end of 2011, however, the Democrats had swung to the favorite position and they never relinquished it.
The line hovered around -120 for the Democrats and -110 on the Republicans for the early part of 2012 (note that the proposition is always stated as "Democrats/Republicans," even after Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were the nominees), then began to climb steadily the Democrats' way. There's almost always a "bounce" in the direction of either party directly following its convention, but it didn't happen for the Republicans this year and the line moved even higher in the Dems' favor. The highest we saw it was -425 for the Democrats, which means you have to bet $425 to win $100.
Following Romney's performance in the debates, the Republicans closed the gap, and with one week to go the current line at Pinnacle is Democrats -263 and Republicans +233. You can point to all the polls you want, but we've always felt the most telling one is the betting line, where there's cold hard cash on the line. Hence, Obama appears to be a solid favorite, though not decisively so. We'll post the line on election eve at LasVegasAdvisor.com.
