Put your money on Nevada!

No, not in some phony-baloney Chamber of Commerce way. I mean, there could be some good wagering to be had on behalf of Nevada were its sports books were to petition for the right (which is theirs, in principle, according to Anthony Curtis) to take wagers on the presidential election. S&G reader Greg Askins, who regularly challenges my preconceptions — a healthy exercise, which I recommend — was passing along some recent polling data.

This caused me to look up the Jedi master of polling, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of number-crunching, Nate Silver. Both his “Now-Cast” and forecast of the Nov. 6 presidential election give the Silver State an almost 6% chance of providing the tipping-point electoral votes. (Long odds compared to Ohio‘s 35% probability but a lot better than New Jersey‘s 0.3%; the Garden State can never catch a break.) If you turn to Silver’s “Return on Investment Index” — oh, I like this one already — he measures the probability that your individual vote will determine who wins the Electoral College. Yes, Ohio is tops again, at 8.3% ROI but Nevada is right behind it at — ka-ching! — 7.8% ROI.** I’ll take those odds! The question, sports books, is why aren’t you?

** — A lot better return that what you’d get on Sheldon Adelson‘s $22 billion Spanish monstrosity.