If we want to assess which presidential candidates would be best or least bad for the gaming industry, it’s tempting to just make a laundry list of each politician’s statements and/or votes on gaming issues, check their financial backers and where they stand, and then rank it all with some kind of algorithm. Or just guess. Google the issue and you’ll find a plethora of articles on each candidate and where they stand on the gambling industry.

But such one-dimensional analysis, while somewhat helpful, doesn’t go deep enough in determining who would be the best candidate for the gambling industry as a whole. For example, you could have one candidate who is, say, against a federal ban on online gambling. While that’s obviously a plus for the industry, if the same candidate wants to jack up corporate and capital gains and VAT taxes on everything that moves so he can pay to repave a bunch of roads and bridges that don’t need repaving just so he can look like he’s “doing something” and “stimulating the economy,” then that would not be good.

Or if a candidate once even owned a bunch of casinos himself and really knows the industry well and definitely would not support a federal ban, that candidate could still be really bad for the gaming industry if he, say, wants to ignite trade and tariff wars with countries he accuses of “stealing American jobs” by selling stuff to American consumers.

No matter how you look at it this election, there really are no clearly good candidates for the gambling industry. There might be least bad and worst, but that’s it. In any case, let’s take the three front-running Republicans and the two Democrats and maybe come out with an answer of who would be the least bad, comparatively.