Former President Donald Trump nudged ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris as the bookmakers' favorite to win the presidential election, as bets in his favor surged Tuesday after independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign signaled he might be preparing to drop out of the race and back Trump.
Former President Donald Trump is once again the bookies favorite to win the presidential election in ... [+]
The crypto-based betting platform Polymarket witnessed the biggest swing in favor of Trump, with bettors predicting he now has a 52% chance of winning compared to Harris’ 47%.
This is a big shift from Monday, when bookmakers on the crypto platform pegged both candidates' chances nearly even, with Harris holding a slight lead.
Amid reports of Kennedy’s potential exit, Polymarket bettors now believe Trump and Harris now have nearly even odds of winning the critical swing state of Pennsylvania—a big shift from earlier this week when they gave Harris much better odds than the former president.
However, bookmakers on the New Zealand-based PredictIt continue to predict a Harris victory with strong odds of 56 cents per share (roughly equating to a 56% chance) compared to Trump’s 47 cents per share.
According to the tracker Election Betting Odds, which aggregates data from four separate betting markets, Trump now has a 49.3% chance of winning in November compared to Harris’ 49.1%. This is a big 24-hour swing in Trump’s favor, as the cumulative odds were more than 5.5 points in favor of Harris on Monday. After trailing him for several weeks, Harris had vaulted past Trump for the first time two weeks ago.
Unlike Polymarket, which accepts election bets from various parts of the world, PredictIt only allows participation by U.S. residents above the age of 18. 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.
2.8 points. That is the size of Harris’ lead over Trump in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average.
Harris Vaults Past Trump As The Bookies’ Favorite To Win Presidential Election (Forbes)