Political betting

Has anybody made any money with political betting? What strategies do you have? What kind of models do you use?

I shorted Bernie Sanders early in 2015. He didn't have enough support from minority voters, so I calculated that he could only win the nomination if the US were >75% white. He improved his numbers later in the primaries, but it wasn't enough. I also assumed there would be party fuckery to undermine him, since Bernie was an independent. He was at like 70% no, so I made about $0.30 per share.

I also assumed, sometime in March 2016, that either Trump would win the nomination outright, or the Republican national convention would be brokered/contested/open. Trump was the only candidate who had a realistic path to the majority of delegates, and a lot of the bound Trump delegates were actually Cruz supporters. Those two positions summed to 90-95%, so I made like $0.05 to $0.10 per share.

I made $600 on election night trading forex betting that trump would win

Mostly on British Politics, I got Brexit at 5-1 and made 8000 GBP

My model was to look at the polling companies data (not the headline figures, but the actual tables) and I realised they were over-estimating youth turnout. Once I re-adjusted I figured out Leave would win by a thin margin and got in on it. I wish I bet on the night because odds of 25-1 were flying just after polls closed but I couldn't.

Also betting on bye-elections has been pretty safe so far, not good odds but the winners have been obvious which allowed me to roll up my money a bit.

that last sentence makes no sense, why would you bet without the odds, no matter how obvious the outcome you don't bet if the odds aren't in your favour.

I made money on Trump becoming president, now I'm thinking of betting on Le Pen in the French election. Anyone know anything about French politics to assuage any risk?

Safe bets at like 1/10 allow me to 10% up my money. How is that bad when the result is almost certain? Much better than a 1/1 coinflip where it's impossible to really know which way it goes.

I made $1800 over 2016. This is with an initial start of $150.

All i did was analyse demographics, polls, and my own political insight. Although, econometrics is my major so im pretty good with stats.

Oh I see, so by "not good odds", you meant, "low odds" as opposed to odds that were lower than the implied odds of the actual event outcome. Gotcha.

what does an econometrics major do when he graduates? typical jobs?