Running the ponies to the post

Everything has odds to it. A flip of coin, a game of rock paper scissors, hell, even whether a groundhog will see it's shadow or not. And because there are odds, there are gamblers, people who will bet on the odds that some action will occur a certain way.

Gambling, as you know, is big business with millions of dollars involved -- legally or otherwise. So much money, in fact, that there are professional gamblers out there in the world who make their living playing the odds. Some of them are bookies, but some are just flat-out placing bets on anything from dog races, football games, Oscar nominations, and, of course, presidential elections.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

See, here's the thing with elections. We're inundated with polls from every research group known to man. But polls are subjective, and the data involved can be slightly skewed and even just wrong based on how a person being polled is feeling at that particular moment. And there's really no repercussions if the poll is wrong or not. I mean, hell, they have a margin of error percentage attached to them.

Gambling doesn't work like that. There has to be a decision that sticks. Win, lose or draw. So accuracy is of the utmost importance. The gamblers' lives, figuratively and possibly literally, depend it.

Here's some more insight from Keith Thomson of The Huffington Post:

He didn't hesitate. "Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. Bookmakers must make an accurate line or they lose -- period."

For a second opinion I went to Ray Paulick, who was a protégé of notorious oddsmaker "Jimmy The Greek" before becoming a handicapper for the Daily Racing Form. Now he's editor of the thoroughbred industry insiders' must-read Paulick Report. "Gamblers have more experience with cheaters," he said. "They take voter fraud into their metrics. Polls don't. Nor do polls take into account how each state's secretary of state factors in, or systems within a state designed to eliminate voters; Jimmy the Greek called these 'the intangibles.'"

There's also some history involved with wagering on political outcomes to support the theory that gambling lines may be more accurate than polls.

America's long history of wagering on political outcomes, which boomed in the 1880s when betting moved from poolrooms to the Curb Exchange, the predecessor to the American Stock Exchange. Betting on political outcomes often drew huge crowds to Wall Street and exceeded trading in stocks and bonds.

"In presidential races such as 1896, 1900, 1904, 1916, and 1924, the New York Times, Sun, and World provided nearly daily [betting] quotes from early October until Election Day," write Rhode and Strumpf.

The papers' sources were betting firms, which had men present at speeches made by the candidates in order to make "unbiased reports of the psychological reactions of the audiences."

In the fifteen elections between 1884 and 1940, the betting firms were wrong just once, in 1916, when Wilson upset Hughes. And the gamblers might have had a perfect record had the Curb Market stayed open long enough to take into account late-breaking news from the West.

Currently, Betfair has Obama with 1-7 odds, McCain is 7-1. As of Sunday, Barack Obama has a 91% chance of winning the election.

To be fair, most polls are picking Obama as well, so perhaps this isn't the best examples to go by. However, you catch my drift...