Online gamblers bet on Claire McCaskill to win : Stltoday

Online gamblers bet on Claire McCaskill to win : Stltoday

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If you're uncomfortable with back-and-forth partisan pollsters, perhaps there's a better place for you to gauge Missouri's U.S. Senate race: the gamblers at Intrade.

Intrade is an online trading website where you can bet on the outcome of future events.  And in Missouri's volatile U.S. Senate race, the money is on Claire McCaskill to return to Washington.

As of this writing, the website says McCaskill has a 63.8 percent shot of getting re-elected in November.  (Right now she's selling at $6.38 a share.) That's a huge jump since the start of August, when her chances were a dismal 15 percent.  McCaskill's chances jumped overnight when the Todd Akin "legitimate rape" comment stoked the nation's ire.  So far, she has maintained her market lead.

But for those of you who think Todd Akin may drop out before the Sept. 25 deadline to get off the ballot, the bettors don't share your view.  They say such a thing has a 7.6 percent chance of happening.  (That appears to be easy money. Akin has already said he isn't going anywhere. But I'm sure we'll still see plenty of news reports about the deadline in the coming weeks.)

Various telephone polls have shown a much closer race.