(American Wire) According to the betting markets, Vice President Kamala Harris is in deep, deep trouble heading into the 2024 presidential election.
ElectionBettingOdds.com, a site that averages betting odds across multiple markets, had former President Donald Trump leading with 60.3 percent of bets and Harris losing with a paltry 39.1 percent of bets as of the morning of Oct. 22nd.
RealClearPolitics, another site that tracks betting averages (and polling averages), meanwhile had Trump up 60.1 percent and Harris down 38.7 percent.
One especially popular betting platform is called Polymarket:
Trump up to nearly 2-to-1 odds on polymarket.
Keep it up.
If we lose this election, we will lose this country permanently. pic.twitter.com/thUQhULc8S
— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) October 17, 2024
These numbers vastly differ from the polls, particularly the national polls, which continue to show Harris ahead by a few percentage points. But which one should you believe?
Maxim Lott, the guy who runs ElectionBettingOdds.com, personally thinks you should believe the betting sites, not the polls.
“These are really accurate,” he told Fox News. “They’re more accurate than just trying to look at polls or especially more accurate than listening to pundits bloviating. [The bettors] look at all sorts of historical data; they look at trends. I find the percent more useful than the polls.”
“Last cycle we had more than a billion dollars traded. That’s still [not] that much if you compare it to … the stock market or something, but it’s enough that we have a reliable indicator, and that’s what [is] important to us as users who just want to know what’s going to happen,” he added.
Fair enough.
He continued by noting that since folks risk their own money when betting, the market boasts the ability to “discipline people” who get it wrong.
“If you’re not very smart, or very biased, you’re going to lose your money pretty quickly, and then maybe you won’t bet again next election,” he said.
NEW: Donald Trump’s odds to win the election jump 2 points on political betting platform Polymarket after he picked up a shift at McDonalds.
Genius.
Trump now leads Harris by 24% and is also surging in every swing state on Polymarket. Here is where he stands:
Arizona:
Trump:… pic.twitter.com/4HzYrxQpfE
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 21, 2024
