Presidential odds change: What polls say the punters

On By Littum

We’re just five days 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 is not the message the offshore betting markets have been sending in recent weeks.

From Thursday at 11 EDT, Trump’s probability of winning was 63% or higher on Polymarket, a crypto trading platform, and two major UK betting platforms, Sporting Index and Betfair Exchange. From Thursday morning, Betfair’s temperature gauge pointed to a “likely” victory for Trump.

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How the betting markets have changed in October

The odds on Polymarket had Trump and Harris tied at 49% on October 3rd. Since then, Trump’s odds of defeating Harris jumped to their widest margin on Wednesday since July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

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The first increase in Trump’s odds of winning this month corresponded to a small increase in his polls in battleground states like Pennsylvania. But some have questioned quick, significant jump in his probability of winning. They have suggested that players with deep pockets could be manipulating the betting markets. Polymarket officials have said they are investigate these claims.

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

How voting and gambling odds compare in the 2020 and 2024 elections

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Election predictions remain at Kamala Harris’ winner prediction

Allan Lichtman, noted election forecaster, has successfully predicted nine out of the last 10 presidential elections.

States where polls show the race is still a toss-up

Very clear policy aggregates polls and shows trends in their results. It still considers eight states in the 103-election battleground because poll results remain within the margin of error. Offshore bettors have increased the odds of Trump winning all but two of these states. Of the eight states, however, the latest polls put the gap in five of them between Harris and Trump at 1 point or less.

Bettors are pushing Trump’s probability of winning higher than in previous elections

Trump’s probability of winning is now just a few percentage points below the peak the campaign hit on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. On July 16, his probability of defeating Biden was more than 70% on Polymarket and Betfair Exchange.

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