A race to the finish? See where Trump's election odds stand after weekend tumble
(This story was updated to add new information.)
We're just a day away from Election Day, and polls, experts and pundits continue to tell us the 2024 presidential race appears exceedingly close between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
That hadn't been the message offshore betting markets have been sending in recent weeks – until this weekend.
As of Monday at 8 a.m. EST, Trump's probability of winning stood at 58% on Polymarket, a crypto trading platform. That's also about win probability on two major U.K. betting platforms, Sporting Index and Betfair Exchange. On Kalshi, the largest regulated U.S. exchange, Trump's probability of winning fell from more than 65% on Tuesday to as low as 49% on Saturday night. The probability rebounded Monday morning to 55%.
How betting markets have shifted in October
The odds on Polymarket had Trump's and Harris' win probabilities tied at 49% on Oct. 3. 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.
Unable to view our graphics? Click here to see them.
The initial rise in Trump's odds of winning corresponded this month to a slight increase in his polling in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. But some have questioned the quick, significant jump in his probability of winning. They have suggested a deep-pocketed player or players could be tampering with the betting markets. Polymarket officials have said they are investigating those claims.
Earlier in the week, the gap between Trump's and Harris' odds of winning was as wide as the Biden-Trump gap in the 2020 election. They've since narrowed significantly while battleground-state polling has held steady. Biden's lead in polling in 2020 was nearly three times as large as it is between Trump and Harris.
How polling and gambling odds compare in 2020 and 2024 elections
States where polling shows the race is still a toss-up
Real Clear Politics aggregates polls and show trends in their results. It still considers eight battleground states with 103 electoral votes toss-ups because polling results remain within the margin of error. Offshore bettors have pushed up the probability of Trump winning all but two of those states. Of the eight states, though, recent polls put the gap in five of them between Harris and Trump at 2 points or less.
Bettors push Trump's probability of winning higher than in previous elections
Trump's probability of winning is now several percentage points below the high 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 a 2004 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the clear betting favorite in the month before the election has lost only twice, in 1916 and 1948. The betting markets also failed to predict Trump's win in 2016.