Donald Trump's betting odds take a dive just four days ahead of the presidential election
By Nick Allen
Daily Mail
Nov 1, 2024
Donald Trump has hit a hiccup in the betting markets following a surge of wagers on Kamala Harris.
The former president had been soaring on a number of wager platforms but money moved to Harris over the last several days.
With four days until the election the prominent betting website Kalshi had Trump's chances of winning at 53 percent compared to 47 percent for Harris.
On Tuesday, the former president had been at 64 percent and Harris 36 percent on the site.
Vice President Kamala Harris is gaining in betting markets
Meanwhile, on Polymarket, Trump’s odds of winning fell from 67 percent on October 30 to 59 percent on Friday afternoon.
The political prediction site Predictit had Trump with a lead of just two points on Friday.
On October 29 his lead had been 14 points on the site.
Over the same period - October 29 to November 1 - Trump's chances on both bookmakers Bet365 and Paddy Power dropped from 66.7 percent to 63.6 percent.
Kalshi still had Trump with a better chance of winning five of the seven key battleground states - Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
But it gives Harris a better chance in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania is very close with Trump on 52 percent and Harris 48 percent as of Friday lunchtime.
Live election betting on a digital display kiosk on a New York City street
The Real Clear Politics average of betting markets still had Trump leading Harris by 60.6 percent to 38.1 percent.
However, earlier this week, the Republican candidate had been at 63.9 percent.
Polls have the election on a knife-edge, and essentially tied, but for weeks the betting markets have consistently given Trump a clear advantage.
It was unclear what precipitated the shift in the betting markets in recent days.
On October 27 a comedian at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally in New York made a disparaging joke about Puerto Rico, which led to a widespread backlash.
Kalshi, which is America's first legal online election prediction wagering platform, has already taken $92 million in bets on the 2024 race.
Kamala Harris had been well behind on betting markets
A bettor makes their decisoin on the election
This week, Tarek Mansour, its CEO, said bettors are a more accurate indication of the result than the polls because they have 'skin in the game.'
He told DailyMail.com: 'We should definitely trust the [wagering] markets.
'Prediction markets are places where people have money on the line. People don't lie with their money.'
In 2016 the polls indicated Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Trump, but were wrong.
In the past betting markets have proved successful in predicting the outcome of elections.
However, like the polls, they were not a good indicator in 2016.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands after the presidential debate in Hempstead, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2016
As long ago as 1924 the Wall Street Journal wrote: 'Betting odds are generally taken as the best indicator of probable results in presidential campaigns.'
At the time, bookmakers would send people to candidates' speeches and base odds on how the audience responded to them, according to the newspaper.
In 15 presidential elections from 1884 to 1940 there was only one upset when the bookmakers were wrong, according to a study by economists Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf.
However, in 1948 the betting markets, like the polls, got it spectacularly wrong when they only gave President Harry Truman a roughly one in 10 chance of winning.
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