Betting markets: Trump’s odds of winning a key state just jumped

Offshore bettors continue to drive up the probability that former President Donald Trump will win the 2024 presidential election because they predict he has a better chance of winning battleground states such as Pennsylvania.
As of Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET, Trump’s probability of winning hit 60% on Polymarket, a crypto trading platform, for the first time since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Betfair Exchange, the biggest U.K. peer-to-peer betting platform, predicted on its temperature gauge Wednesday morning that Trump would likely win. Presidential election betting can’t be done legally in the U.S.
National polling aggregated by Real Clear Politics still shows a much less emphatic picture: Vice President Kamala Harris has led by nearly 2 percentage points since Harris and Trump debated on Sept. 10, but Harris has narrowly trailed in battleground-state polling throughout October.
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So are bettors seeing something that pollsters aren’t? Polymarket warned Tuesday in its weekly “Oracle” newsletter that big differences in betting markets aren’t the same as wide margins in polling:
“While Trump’s lead is the largest it has been since the summer, it’s important not to overstate its significance. A 55-45 prediction market edge is not nearly as strong as a five-point polling lead,” the newsletter said. “Small moves in the polls are magnified into large swings in the odds.”
It’s little surprise that Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, the most among the Real Clear Politics toss-up states, has been visited often by both campaigns. So when bettors see Pennsylvania polls leaning toward Trump, they have dramatically driven up his odds of winning the state.
“Pennsylvania is the tipping-point state,” Bernard Yaros, Oxford Economics’ lead U.S. economist, said Thursday. The independent economic advisory firm sees narrow paths to victory for either candidate, and each path runs through Pennsylvania.
“It’s an extremely, extremely tight race,” Yaros said. “We’re talking about here margins of just tens of thousands of votes.”
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In one scenario, Oxford Economics looked at each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and estimated how many votes each would add to Trump’s or Harris’ vote margins. In a state of about 13 million people, the advisory firm predicts an oddly specific 19,101 votes could tip Pennsylvania and the election to Trump.
Real Clear Politics’ analysis shows 104 electoral votes in nine states remain toss-ups. But if the election were based on current polling in those states, Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance would easily surpass the necessary 270 electoral college votes.
Not surprisingly, those toss-up states are where offshore bettors on Polymarket are also putting their money on Trump. Still, the probability of Trump winning any of the closest races remains under 60%.
Though betting on Trump and Harris has diverged significantly in recent days, it is far from where Trump stood on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. On July 16, his odds of winning were more than 70% on Polymarket and Betfair Exchange.
As of Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET, Trump held a more than a 20-percentage-point edge over Harris on Polymarket. Betfair Exchange’s market had a 17-point gap. The gap between the candidates remains the narrowest of Trump’s three runs, according to Betfair’s historical data. On Oct. 16, 2020, bettors gave Biden a 65% chance of winning.
The betting favorite has lost only twice since 1866, according to the Conversation, a nonprofit news organization. Markets failed to predict Trump’s 2016 win. The only other time: 1948, when Democrat Harry Truman beat 8-to-1 odds to defeat Republican Thomas Dewey.
Contributing: James Powel