US Diary: A certain section of the American community has taken the idiom, “Put money where your mouth is” to a whole new level. The money thus put by a group of people on the betting platforms like Polymarket aggregates $30 million and they are overwhelmingly offering significantly higher odds for Donald Trump to defeat Kamala Harris in the November 5 race to the White House. It is not a one-off as other bookmakers like DraftKings, Oddschecker and several sporting apps both in the US and Canada are favoring Trump. The Dems may be rattled by this development, but have taken care not to do so visibly, as the pollsters by and large still call it a tight race, with a slight edge to Harris.

While staying on money matters, Tesla and X boss Elon Musk is the most notable single entity putting money where his mouth is by starting his daily donation of $1 million to the Trump team for supporting his online campaign America PAC, supporting the US Constitution, particularly free speech and the right to carry guns. Unless he is not making payments on Sundays, that would be an assured $18 million to Trump, till November 5. He already handed out his first check for $ 1 million this Saturday to the Trump camp.

Why are even discussing betting platforms and odds on offer while discussing US presidential elections? One way to put it would be that the punters have been calling US Prez elections in the past too and mostly getting it right, though they prefer to keep their cut-off point to a day before the polling date. By that yardstick, there are another couple of weeks before the betting platforms are ready to announce their final position in the Trump v Harris race.

If we were to take a peek at the past 12 presidential elections, they called it right 10 times. The first aberration was the 35th President, Jimmy Carter when they called it in favor of Republican candidate Gerald Ford. The only other wrong call came in 2016 when they backed Democrat Hillary Clinton against the 45th President Donald Trump. The one time punters got it famously wrong was in 1960 as they backed Republican Richard Nixon against President John F Kennedy.

Given that the bookmakers have been largely calling it right, there are a couple of pertinent points to be pondered here. One is whether the odds that favored Harris till recently, will continue their present trend of giving Trump the edge over the next two weeks. And the second, of course, if they would call it right, come November 5. A natural corollary to this state of affairs is the extent to which the sporting sentiment can and will influence the undecided voters, especially those in the swing states.

But, irrespective of how these voters formulate their plans to cast the ballot, the pollsters have already carved out the voting blocs into demographically identifiable communities, of which there are broadly about half a dozen such groups in the US. The first and perhaps the foremost is the white American male. Sticking to the gender, there are also the black males and the Latino males. Within the larger male population, the youngsters have been carved out as a distinct block, with a further division into college-educated professionals and those who bypassed college. Then, of course, there is the white female population as well as their black and Latino counterparts. Finally, there is the Asian immigrant population, comprising mostly Chinese and Indian.

Now, the pollsters have started notifying voting preferences of each of these blocs, with riders as to how they have begun making up their minds one way or the other. Curiously, there has been no change in the voting preference ascribed to the older white American voters who they believe are by and large solidly behind Trump. The flip side, of course, is that such a scenario would give rise to almost all election rallies for Kamala Harris being marked by sparse attendance of older white men, which is not quite spot on, even in the swing states.

The flip side argument that is being circulated is that white women are fed up with Trump, what with his stand on abortion and gender-specific issues, not to mention his recent gaffe on the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s vitality, though he desisted from getting into more length about, given the presence of sophisticated women at the Pennsylvania rally this weekend. Sure, the cringe factor is often a part and parcel of the Trump bandwagon but many white women are heavily invested in the Gospel according to Trump, for multiple reasons, many of which have a Christian bearing.

The black men, who it is presumed would necessarily vote for Harris, are arguably considering not doing so, under advisement of her gender, pretty much the same as where the Latino men are at. The young Americans, depending on whether they’ve been to college or not, are poles apart in their thinking of whether to vote for Trump or Harris, they say. Be that as it may, more pertinent should be the question of why they should be bothered to vote at all, given the level of participation they feel as a player that matters in the US economy. One cannot exactly blame them for feeling apathetic to things like electing the next President of the United States, even as they are constantly reminded how poorly they are faring compared to their parents or the earlier generation.

They are seriously not concerned about who the next President would be, simply because their time is more consumed by paying off their student loans - those who did go to college - and those who did not and therefore earning much less wages, shuffling rent payments and vehicle loans. All the while, they are weighed down under the monthlies on social security, health and pension plans, even as they are sacrificing their earnings better spent taking care of their immediate financial needs. No wonder many of these youngsters have no plans to become parents themselves.

It does not matter what your nationality of origin is, or the color of your skin, the story is no different for young Americans. It is a country where the rules are made more with its older generation in focus than the younger one. They stare this great generational discrimination in the face and wonder why the youngsters don’t go out and vote for the next POTUS. There is a level to which voting patterns can be simplified as per demographic categories, even in America!

In the meantime, Donald and Kamala keep taking the art of belittling each other to greater heights, with both questioning the other’s mental faculties and the level of their concern for the true welfare of the nation. The name-calling and slander keep getting shriller, and the dignity of the political battle becomes a great casualty. The political pundits keep wondering how a war with Iran, riding on the shoulders of Israel, would impact the electoral prospects of either candidate and how close to the election such an offensive could be planned. It is as if things were not complex enough in the great land already.

- Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist and author; views expressed are his own.