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The presidential election odds are changing: What polls say, bettors

The presidential election odds are changing: What polls say, bettors

We’re just five days away from Election Day, and polls, pundits and pundits continue to tell us that the 2024 presidential race looks extremely close between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

That’s not the message the offshore betting markets have been sending in recent weeks.

As of Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT, the odds of Trump winning were 63% or higher on Polymarket, a crypto trading platform, and two major British gambling platforms, Sporting Index and Betfair Exchange. On Thursday morning, Betfair’s temperature gauge pointed to a “likely” victory for Trump.

How the betting markets changed in October

Polymarket odds were that Trump and Harris’ chances of winning on October 3 were tied at 49%. Since then, Trump’s chances of beating Harris on Wednesday rose to their largest margin since July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

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The initial increase in Trump’s odds of winning corresponded this month with a slight increase in his poll numbers in battleground states like Pennsylvania. But some have questioned the rapid, significant jump in his odds of winning. They have suggested that deep-pocketed players could be tampering with the betting markets. Polymarket officials have said they are investigating these claims.

The gap between Trump and Harris’ chances of winning is now as wide as the gap between Biden and Trump in the 2020 election. But the gap in battleground polls is not comparable. Biden’s lead in the polls in 2020 was three times that between Trump and Harris.

How polling and betting odds compare in the 2020 and 2024 elections

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Election forecaster sticks to Kamala Harris’ winning prediction

Allan Lichtman, renowned election forecaster, has successfully predicted nine of the last ten presidential elections.

States where polls show the race is still anyone’s guess

Real Clear Politics collects polls and shows trends in their results. Eight battleground states with 103 electoral votes are still being taken into account as election results remain within the margin of error. Offshore bettors have increased the odds of Trump winning all but two states. Of the eight states, however, recent polls estimate that the gap between Harris and Trump is just one point or less in five of them.

Gamblers are more likely to win Trump than in previous elections

Trump’s odds of winning are now just a few percentage points below the peak the campaign reached on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. As of July 16, his odds of beating Biden were over 70% on Polymarket and Betfair Exchange.

According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the clear betting favorite has lost only twice in the month before the election, in 1916 and 1948. The betting markets also failed to predict Trump’s 2016 victory.