Election Betting Markets Swing Towards Trump Again
[Evan Vucci/AP Photo George Walker IV, Andrew Harnik / The Associated Press
Former President Donald Trump once again moved ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris to become the bookmakers’ favorite to win the presidential election, as bets in his favor went up on Wednesday as polling data showed a tight race between the candidates in key swing states.
Key Facts
The crypto-based betting platform Polymarket saw the biggest jump in Trump’s favor, with bookmakers on the platform giving him a 53% chance of winning compared to Harris’ 46%.
This is a sizeable shift from last week’s numbers when bets favoring a Trump win were only a point higher than Harris’ on Polymarket.
Bookmakers on the British betting site Smarkets predict Trump’s chance of winning in November is 50.5%, compared to 47.5% for Harris.
Harris, however, continues to remain the favorite to win on the betting platform PredictIt, with the sites’ bookmakers giving her odds of 54 cents per share (roughly equating to a 54% chance) compared to Trump’s 49 cents per share.
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News Peg
According to the tracker Election Betting Odds, which aggregates data from four separate betting markets, Trump now has a 49.7% chance of winning in November compared to Harris’ 48.1%. While Harris and Trump’s cumulative odds were almost neck-and-neck on Tuesday, the former president’s odds have risen 0.7 points in the previous 24 hours, while Harris’s odds have dropped by the same amount.
Big Number
3.2 points. That is the size of Harris’ lead over Trump in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average.
Surprising Fact
Unlike the other betting markets, PredictIt only allows participation by U.S. residents who are 18 or older. Earlier this year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed a ban on all election-related betting in the U.S. derivatives market. The agency’s proposal came after being sued by PredictIt for trying to shut down the platform from taking bets on the presidential race—after previously allowing it.
