2024 presidential election betting odds: Trump vs. Harris two weeks out
Offshore betting markets still think former President Donald Trump has a significantly higher probability of winning the 2024 presidential election than Vice President Kamala Harris after reaching two-month highs early last week.
As of Friday at 5 p.m. EDT, Trump's probability of winning ticked down to 64% on Polymarket, a crypto trading platform. The odds are similar to those betting markets gave him when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Betfair Exchange, the biggest U.K. peer-to-peer betting platform, predicted on its temperature gauge Friday afternoon that Trump was on the brink of "likely win."
Bettors in exchanges around the world have widened the gap in recent days between Trump and Harris as some question whether deep-pocketed players might be tampering with the markets, including Polymarket. Polymarket officials have said they are investigating those claims.
Trump's and Harris' probability of winning each state
Trump's probability of winning began rising in the past two weeks as Harris' polling declined in battleground states. Below are the battleground states as defined by Real Clear Politics. The seven states will account for 93 of the 538 electoral votes.
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Probabilities aren't potential margins of victory
Polymarket has underscored in its recent "The Oracle" newsletters that the probability a candidate might win – expressed as percentage – isn't comparable to the percentage of votes a candidate might win in a state.
One way to view the difference is through the odds on NFL games. BetMGM gives the Chicago Bears 56% probability of defeating the Washington Commanders this Sunday. The Commanders have a 49% chance of winning. That's seems like a sizable gap until you consider the Bears are just 1.5-point favorites to win on BetMGM.
Similarly, Trump had a 64.1% chance of winning the presidential race based on bets on Polymarket as of 5 p.m. EDT Friday. But the gap in battleground-state support between Harris and Trump remains largely within each poll's margin of error, according to polling aggregated by Real Clear Politics.
Trump's probability of winning rises with narrow lead in battleground polling
So are bettors seeing something that pollsters aren't finding?
Odds turned up slightly for Trump earlier in the month when Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump's running mate, debated Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Trump's win probability jumped early last week when bettors on Polymarket bid up his probability of winning three battleground states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
How win probabilities and polling have differed between 2020 and 2024
Still, the betting probabilities and polling seem at odds between the past two elections.
In recent days, Trump's probability of winning the 2024 election has approached Biden's in 2020. During that election, though, Biden's battleground polling was often larger than the margin of error in the polls aggregated by Real Clear Politics.
Bettors push Trump's probability of winning higher than in previous elections
Though betting on Trump and Harris has diverged significantly in recent days, it's below where Trump stood on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. On July 16, his odds of winning against Biden were more than 70% on Polymarket and Betfair Exchange.
According to a 2004 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the clear betting favorite in the month before the election has only lost twice in 1916 and 1948. The betting markets also failed to predict Trump's win in 2016.