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Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump listens as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton answers a question from the audience during their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., Oct. 9, 2016.© Rick Wilking / Reuters

For some gamblers, the question is not really about who wins the U.S. presidency – it's about when the concession speech will be.

Predicting the time of the loser's speech is just one of many exotic ways to bet on the U.S. election, courtesy of online betting sites located in countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, where bookmaking is legal.

Thrill seekers who are bored by simply wagering on Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump can boost their fun by putting money down on a host of other propositions related to the U.S. elections.

For instance, will the winner of the popular vote lose the election?

Will Mr. Trump form a new political party before the end of the year?

Will FBI director James Comey – who relaunched an investigation into Ms. Clinton's e-mails just days in advance of the election before finally giving her an all-clear this past weekend after millions of voters had already cast early ballots – still be in his job in 2018?

All of those wagers are available at Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker that merged earlier this year with Betfair Group PLC, the U.K.-based gambling giant.

At Bodog, a gambling site registered in Antigua, bettors can place wagers on the percentage of Americans who will turn out to vote, the total number of states that will be won by each party and the percentage of votes each of the leading candidates will attract.

Other sites play things straighter and simply offer bets on which candidate will win.

However, one thing all the betting markets have in common is the belief that Ms. Clinton is the odds-on favourite.

At the site operated by Ladbrokes PLC, the U.K. gambling group, Ms. Clinton was a 1 to 5 bet to win the presidency at midday Tuesday. That implies an 83.3-per-cent chance of a Clinton victory.

At Bodog, the odds suggest an 85.7-per-cent chance of a Clinton presidency, which is the same probability implied by the odds at Paddy Power.

It may be that the widespread assumption of a Clinton victory is behind the interest in so-called prop bets, which are wagers on a proposition other than who wins or loses.

In sports, prop bettors can wager on which team will score first in a soccer game or on who the next permanent manager of the English national soccer team will be.

When it comes to the presidential campaign, bettors at Paddy Power can gamble on propositions such as whether pollster Nate Silver will correctly predict the voting results of all 50 states plus Washington, D.C.

Thanks in part to such exotic wagering, as well as the celebrity power of the candidates, this U.S. election campaign is on track to set records for online wagering on political events.

Betfair said in a press release on Monday that the equivalent of more than £110-million ($182-million), had been traded on its Next President market during this campaign. "It stands a very good chance of breaking the all-time Betfair record of £127-million set by the Brexit market in June," a spokesperson added.

The vast sums at stake imply large profits for the bookmakers – that is, so long as Ms. Clinton wins. Some gambling commentators have speculated that a surprise victory by Mr. Trump could mean heavy losses for bookmakers who a year ago were placing extremely long odds on the Republican's success.

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