#MABA ...
Make America Bet Again on Presidential Elections
Americans have always loved to bet each other on upcoming events. Before the rise of organized team-sports leagues, betting on politics – especially Presidential elections -- was
the game-in-town, outside the occasional boxing or wrestling match.
A paper on
Historical Presidential Betting Markets (Rhode and Strumpf
, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2004) reviews betting on Presidential elections from 1868 to 1940, back when pencil-and-paper and a telegraph (or newfangled 'telephone') were used to record and relay results, before the rise of instant mass communication and automation. This excerpt captures Americans’ collective enthusiasm in betting on who’s gonna be the next Prez:
The betting quotes filled the demand for accurate odds from a public widely interested in wagering on elections. In this age before mass communication technologies reached into America’s living rooms, election nights were highly social events, comparable to New Year’s Eve or major football games. In large cities, crowds filled restaurants, hotels, and sidewalks in downtown areas where newspapers and brokerage houses would publicize the latest returns and people with sporting inclinations would wager on the outcomes. Even for those who could not afford large stakes, betting in the run-up to elections was a cherished ritual. A widely-held value was that one should be prepared to “back one’s beliefs” either with money or more creative dares.
Betting was so popular -- and political campaigns so efficient, apparently -- that the money wagered on the elections often rivaled the amount of total Presidential-campaign spending, nationwide. With Woodrow Wilson’s reelection in 1916, betting in New York alone was over 2X that of campaign spending (see below).

From a
dog-that-did-not-bark standpoint, it is interesting that in this comprehensive overview, there were NO references to the underlying
integrity of the election being questioned by either Party nor by the bettors. In contrast, with Election 2020, BOTH sides were concerned with election-result integrity:
one side preemptively, the other side
after the fact*.
In your quest for 'facts': Does the constant flood of 24/7 news-chatter cloud your perspective? Relax, it’s all the same story over and over and over, where only the details change (3/2): The rich and powerful becoming more rich and more powerful.
-----------[ WAIT ... THERE'S MORE?!? ]------------
He's orange, rested and ready …
Why America Will Want Trump Back in the White House (3/5), assuming he sidesteps the clumsy “
damnatio memoriae” (4/1; 4-8 years
more here).