Handicapping the 2020 presidential election

The Las Vegas odds have been posted for the 2020 Presidential Election and they’re pretty interesting. I’m sure many if not most of you weren’t even aware that Vegas posts odds on elections but they have for some time. For the Presidential election that occurs every four years, they post their first set of odds in November, two full years before the election and then update them as the election grows closer. By every conceivable measure, the last election was an outlier because of Donald Trump’s election when he began his campaign with very low expectations of success. The upcoming election predicts him to be the favorite and this election shows a plethora of Democratic candidates instead of Republican candidates as they existed in 2016.

As mentioned, Trump is the favorite to win the presidency again according to Bovada, an online gambling site. His current odds to win are 9/4 (2.25 to 1) and that means if you placed a $100 bet on Trump to win, you would be rewarded with $325, the best of any listed candidate. Vice-President Mike Pence also has relatively good odds, at 9/1, seeming to suggest that the oddsmakers believe Trump might not finish his term and that his no. 2 could parlay the opportunity into another term. In fact, Bovada gave the year 2017 2/1 odds as the exit year for the president and they missed that badly.

Outside of Trump, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has the best odds to win in 2020 at 15/2 (7.5 to 1) Most of the top candidates come from the world of traditional politics. But some of the fun in these odds is to seek out the true long-shots from outside the world of politics. (Donald Trump, the brash reality TV star who had 150/1 odds when books started taking bets for the 2016 election is a good example. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook had the best odds of any non-politician, at 33/1.

Here’s a partial list from Bovada:

Amy Klobucher- 33/1

Andrew Cuomo – 33/1

Bernie Sanders – 20/1

Cory Booker – 20/1

Donald Trump – 9/4

Dwayne Johnson – 66-1

Elizabeth Warren – 15/2

Hillary Clinton – 20/1

Jeb Bush – 80/1

Joe Biden – 25/1

John Kasich – 60/1

Julian Castro – 33/1

Kamala Harris – 33/1

Kristin Gillibrand – 40/1

Marco Rubio – 33/1

Mark Cuban – 60/1

Mark Zuckenburg – 33/1

Michael Bloomberg – 33/1

Michelle Obama – 15/1

Mike Pence – 9/1

Mitt Romney – 60/1

Nikki Haley – 40/1

Oprah Winfrey – 55/1

Paul Ryan – 25/1

Sherrod Brown – 40/1

Ted Cruz – 40/1

Tim Kane – 33/1

Trey Gowdy – 50/1

Obviously, some of these are Republicans who aren’t going to run against Trump and others are celebrities which would have no chance. An obvious omission from the list is Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke from Texas who gave Ted Cruz all he wanted before being defeated by him in the Senatorial contest there in 2016.

It’s my belief that the Democratic candidate will NOT be the big names that are being bandied about so far in this election cycle. That would eliminate Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden and Corey Booker and most likely eliminate Amy Klobucher, Kamala Harris, and Kristin Gillibrand. 2016 was the year of the woman in American politics but I don’t see it continuing to be because of their far left leanings.

I think the most likely candidate for the Democratic nomination will be Julian Castro, a Centrist Democrat, former mayor of San Antonio, Texas and a Hispanic.

As we know, male Hispanics and Blacks make up a large percentage of registered voters among Democrats and they tend to be much more conservative than their female counterparts. This country has always been a centrist country and will continue to be, despite the election of Donald Trump in 2016 because it was believed there was no centrist candidate running in 2016.

If the Democrats hope to win, they have to run one in 2020 and I believe Castro will be the one with an outside shot for Beto O’Rourke because of his strong showing in Texas in his race against Ted Cruz.