<a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/donald-trump-whats-behind-the-us-presidents-baltimore-attack/" title="Donald Trump: What's behind the US President's Baltimore attack”>Kamala Harris vs. Kamala Harris Donald Trump (Photos: Wikimedia, free & Wikimedia, Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0)
You can bet on almost anything, and the betting providers are usually more correct with their odds and predictions than any TV expert. After all, it’s about money – usually a lot of money. Of course, the presidential election in the USA is a topic for the Sportsbook, as sports betting is called in the USA. Especially when a neck-and-neck race like that between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is predicted. Or is it no longer a close call? At least the users of the Polymarket betting platform seem to know more…
Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump
Perhaps no election in recent decades has been as heated and as groundbreaking as the upcoming US presidential election on November 5th. As deeply as Republicans and Democrats dig into their PR bag of tricks, leaving no stone unturned, as different as their domestic and foreign policy views are, the forecast for the outcome of the election is just as tight.
For a long time, the 78-year-old former President Trump looked like the sure winner against the incumbent 81-year-old President Joe Biden. But with the switch to 60-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate, the election forecasts also turned.
In the forecast public vote, i.e. in the total votes in the USA, there are now (almost) no two opinions – here Kamala Harris is ahead of her Republican opponent. But the presidential election in the USA is carried out by electoral votes, which are nominated by the US states (with a few exceptions) only for the party in the lead in the respective state according to the winner-takes-all principle. Depending on the number of residents, the states have between 3 and 54 electors.
With this not entirely representative but historically proven electoral system, it is not guaranteed that the election proposal with the most votes will win. For example, in 2001, Republican George Walker Bush came into office even though his Democratic opponent Al Gore had received more votes nationwide than George Walker Bush.
Based on the forecasts in the states, the candidates are almost certain of certain states and their electors, while other states will tip the scales. For a successful election, an absolute majority of at least 270 voters is required, which neither of the two is certified as tending, likely or certain.
The states that have not yet been clearly assigned to a location, the so-called “swing states” (with their electors), are Pennsylvania (19), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin ( 10) and Nevada (6). The decision on the presidency will most likely be made in these states in 2024.
Betting odds for the election outcome
The major polling institutes update the Popular Vote poll numbers almost every day, as well as the forecasts for each individual swing state, all come to quite narrow and quite different results, even if the values tend a little more towards the Democrat almost every day. As a rule, they do not make a prediction about the final result, i.e. who will be “President of the United States” in 2025.
A forecast for the swing states in percentage points currently looks like this – here using the example from FiveThirtyEight:
The betting platforms are different, as they of course offer odds on the final result of the “Election 2024”, the results in the swing states and for a number of other events in the context of the presidential election. To the astonishment of many observers, the barometers of the betting platforms have swung sharply in favor of Trump in the last few days. According to media reports, this was due, among other things, to the fact that anonymous bidders placed large bets on Trump and thus pushed down the odds, which on the other hand is of course reflected as a greater chance of winning.
It started with the Polymarket betting platform, which saw Trump clearly ahead in some of the swing states and thus also in the overall result. The more established betting platforms have now also followed this trend. We’ll give you an overview of what the betting odds currently look like on Polymarket (as of October 31st) here.
Betting odds on Polymarket
Swing States
Electors/States
Presidential election
Popular Vote
Trending
What is Polymarket?
Founded in 2020 as a US betting platform, Polymarket has based its betting offering on the Polygon blockchain. The crypto betting platform offers bets on any events in the world. Whether you want to bet on who will become head of state in Guatemala or whether Russia will use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, you can bet on it on Polymarket. The platform can draw on the expertise of the founder of the opinion research institute FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, among others. – Polymarket has been making waves lately with many predictions, be it the withdrawal of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which was predicted by Polymarket with 70% probability. But also that Polymarket was completely wrong in appointing Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate (23% probability).
What happened at Polymarket on October 7th and who is the mystery bidder?
However, the US election in 2024 will overshadow all other operational topics. So far, the equivalent of $2.7 billion has been placed on Polymarket alone. The platform suddenly found itself in the media when on October 5th the betting odds suddenly shifted to “53.3% to 46.1%” in favor of Donal Trump, while the vast majority of other betting platforms saw Harris ahead. On that date, FiveThirtyEight had Kamala Harris ahead at 55% and even Polymarket consultant Nate Silver had the Democratic candidate ahead at 54.7% in his models.
Victory is not enough, it must be absolutely decisive victory https://t.co/Ixe4Hl5tTR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2024
So what had happened? Elon Musk had spoken at Trump’s election rally two days earlier and also promoted Polymarket during this time. When Musk reposted on October 5th on his social media platform A total of $30 million was bet on Trump. As a result, the rate of bets on Trump shot down, and his prognosis for success rose accordingly. – Since there is no betting limit on Polymarket, according to Nate Silver, this swing was “larger than justified.”
Quick money with President Harris?
In the meantime, most betting providers have either received larger bets on Trump, or have readjusted their odds on their own, or both. They now see Trump as a much more likely election winner than Kamala Harris.
Has the election already been decided? – Absolutely not! On the one hand, increased bets from the Trump camp may have influenced the betting market, on the other hand, the last few days before the election offer even more excitement, in which the spin doctors will once again wash their dirty laundry in order to persuade voters at the last moment to make a particular voting decision to deter.
One thing is clear, however: If you believe in Kamala Harris as the 47th President of the USA, you can currently make real money with the Californian at a phenomenal rate if she is successful!
