The odds on Trump resigning just shifted, and not in his favor
The odds aren't looking good for President Trump.
One word has been on everyone's lips this tumultuous week and for once it's not "impeachment" but rather "resignation" -- and the possibility of Trump throwing in the towel is actually quite likely, if bookmakers' odds are to be believed.
SEE ALSO:What are the odds Twitter suspends Trump for ginning up the idea of nuclear war?Tony Schwartz, ghost writer for The Art of the Deal and born-again Trump critic, was among those uttering the R-word Wednesday, when he tweeted a prediction. "Trump's presidency is effectively over," he wrote. "Would be amazed if he survives till the end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner."
He was not alone. David Letterman said on The Howard Stern Show Wednesday that "it's time to go... It was an experiment. We put an outsider in the office. Well, it hasn’t worked. Just resign." And Former Vice President Al Gore had similar thoughts on Trump's time in office. During an interview released Thursday from LADbible, Gore gave this simple advice to Trump: "resign."
But how likely is a Trump resignation? Pretty likely, according to the bookies.
“We make it 6/4 that Trump will resign, so a chance of roughly 40%,” Paddy Power’s Head of Trump Betting Joe Lee initially said on Thursday. However, that was cut to evens, which means it's a 50/50 chance, by Friday as Trump's insane week continued. When he was inaugurated, the odds of Trump resigning before the end of his first term would have been 7/1, Price said. What a difference nine insane months makes.
Credit: bovada/screengrabLadbrokes is also setting the chances that Trump will leave office either through impeachment or resignation before the end of his first term at 50/50.
Gambling site Bovada, meanwhile, has wagers on Trump's likelihood of resigning before his first term, before the end of this year, 2018, 2019, or into a second term. The biggest payout is for a Trump resignation by the end of 2017.
Bovada, however, hasn't seen an increase on bets of whether Trump will resign during his first term.
"With everything going on in the world we expected to see an increase in bets on whether Trump would resign during his first term, but that has not been the case," Bovada SportsBook Manager Kevin Bradley said in an email. He said 15 percent of all bets on the possibility were placed at the beginning of August. Those odds are falling everyday, meaning he's favored to resign.
According to Bradley, Bovada opened the prop bet in May with odds of +135 that Trump would resign. Since then, it fell to +130 in June, and is now at -110.
Of course, if Trump decides not to resign, there's the possibility of impeachment.
Paddy Power's spokesperson said the price of Trump's impeachment has been most interesting. It started out at 10/1 last November but is now "odds-on at 4/6 with odds of 2/1 that he's impeached this year."
To translate that from gamble-speak, "odds-on" means that something is favored to happen, in other words the bookies think he'll be impeached at some point, and you get a pretty small return of 2/1 (i.e. they also think it's likely) if you wager that he'll be impeached in 2017.
Eek.
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Additional reporting by Sasha Lekach.