It's starting to look bad for Romney

[Calzone Lord]

You can get $100 on him right now at 2.71-to-1 odds.




Of course, 5-to-2 shots win all the time...but one thing I've noticed in all the election betting I've followed over the years is that once a market starts to break one way it almost always takes at least several days for the candidate it's breaking against to recover.


There are a few rare exceptions. John Kerry was more than a 3-to-1 favorite to defeat George W. Bush for a few hours on election day in 2004. Bush actually opened the day a slight favorite -- but exit polls initially seemed to suggest Kerry was going to win.

Up until last weekend, the market had been steadily breaking Romney's way.

McCain never really had any traction against Obama in the '08 general. His Palin VP pick helped him in polls but didn't do anything for him in terms of offered odds.

He was the strong favorite to win the presidency ever since he defeated Hillary and John Edwards in the '08 South Carolina primary...and at no point has anyone come close to testing his favoritism status. All through his first term he was a clear-cut odds on favorite to win re-election.

One of the biggest election day collapses I remember was Howard Dean after the Iowa caucuses that kicked off the '04 Dem Primary.

Dean was a huge favorite and looked almost inevitable. However, the former leader of the house and Iowa neighbor from Missouri Dick Gephardt was always running neck and neck with him in the Iowa polls.

Gephardt had won Iowa the first time he ran for president in '88 and he and Dean got into what was supposedly a nasty and negative barrage against each other.

The polls were like Dean 30% Gephardt 28% Kerry 18% Edwards 12% with less than a week to go.

John Kerry ended up winning it and Edwards edged Dean for 2nd. It was both the biggest upset (Kerry winning) I've ever seen and the biggest collapse I've ever seen (Dean was supposed to be a complete cinch even if he wasn't able to win Iowa)

I don't know what was worse for the Dean campaign that day, blowing a 12-point lead to John Kerry or the hyper speech he gave that night with his crazy scream.

That primary was also historic because it was the first bid for president from Dennis Kucinich. Not to mention the badly failed bid from Wesley Clark...which was Rick Perry like.