- On the website PredictIt, people can place bets - with real US dollars - on big political events.
- Users on the site place "yes" or "no" bets on popular political predictions, like President Trump's impeachment trial.
- People are betting that there's a 10% chance the Senate will convict him in the upcoming impeachment trial, and an 84% chance that Trump completes his first term.
- The site also has bets on how certain senators, like Republican Mitt Romney or Democrat Joe Manchin, will vote in the trial.
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On the popular betting site PredictIt, people can place bets in US dollars on predictions for big political events, including the upcoming impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Placing "yes" or "no" votes on political predictions, users forecast the outcomes on anything from how many times they think Trump will tweet this week to their predictions on a possible conviction by the Senate in the impeachment trial.
PredictIt is run by Victoria University in New Zealand for educational purposes, according to its website, which says it uses real money to give users some stake in their bets and improve the research value of the bets - and because "real money is fun too."
Bets on the website that the Senate would convict Trump were trading at $0.10 on Thursday, which translates to users forecasting a 10% chance that the Senate votes to convict.
There's an 83% chance that Trump completes his first term, according to a bet on the site. Another bet says there's a 10% chance the president resigns during his first term.
Other bets speculate about how some wildcard senators - either because of political ideology or electoral vulnerability - could vote in Trump's impeachment trial.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah has a 25% chance of voting to convict the president, according to the site.
Bets that another Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, would vote to convict were trading at $0.24 on Thursday, while Maine Republican Susan Collins was predicted to have a 12% chance of voting against the president. Murkowski and Collins, two Republicans who sometimes split with their party, are often seen as moderates that vote together, as they're both politically vulnerable in their upcoming reelections for their Senate seats.
Another politically vulnerable senator who is serving as a juror in the impeachment trial, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, is likely to buck his party and vote to acquit the president, people on the site predicted. Bets that he would vote to acquit Trump were at $0.65 on Thursday, translating to a 65% chance the senator would vote against removing the president from office.
While the site is not a scientific calculation of the way Trump's impeachment trial could go down, it's a unique insight into popular opinion and speculation about how the Senate could vote and how these wildcard senators could shake things up.