The Presidential Election

This Year's ACR follows the US Presidential Election. As I am writing this on the eve of election day the race for the US Presidency remains too close to call.

The New York Times has worked out that, even one day before previous elections, a simple polling average has differed from the final result by about four percentage points. With the polls being still close, anything could happen.

How does the Presidential Election Work?

Each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, has a certain amount of electoral college votes to award a candidate, based on the number of members of Congress it has. This is roughly in line with each area's population. Except in Maine and Nebraska, the votes are given on a winner-takes-all basis.This system matters, as the popular vote is less important than the electoral college vote.

Clinton's campaign should be buoyed by big Democratic states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, and these populous states could lead her to victory with their large number of electoral college votes.

For example, in 2008, Barack Obama won 53 per cent of the vote – but this led to 68 per cent of the electoral college vote. Such highly populated states played a large role when they backed the current president.

The states to watch

Swing states – states that often switch between Democrat and Republican in different elections – are also important. States like Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia have the power to swing the election. So far, neither Trump nor Clinton has a significant lead in these crucial states.

What are the odds on the American presidential election?

It has long been said of predicting sporting outcomes that the bookies don’t get it far wrong, working out probabilities with complicated mathematics based on the choices of their thousands of paying punters.

After last year’s surprise General Election result in the UK, as well as the Brexit vote, many political followers have lost faith in pollsters and prefer to look at the odds to predict the future.

Hillary Clinton has been odds-on favourite since the end of February, but Trump has steadily caught her up as his Republican rivals dropped out. Last July he was a 25/1 shot while Hillary was already at evens.

The latest odds for the next US president are:

Hillary Clinton: 2/9
Donald Trump: 3/1

What do these odds mean? If you bet $100 on Hillary Clinton to win the race you would win $122. If you bet $100 on Donald Trump you would win $300. Clearly the odds favour Clinton at the time I am writing this. Let's see if the odds makers are right?

More reports from ACR 2016