Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency
- Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency
- Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency In 2020
- Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency 2020
- Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency
- Trump’s odds of becoming president equated to +4,000. A great payout, to be sure, with a $100 bet returning a potential $4,000, but also indicative of Trump’s still huge – or YUGE – long.
- We’re just over two weeks into President Joe Biden’s first term in office at the White House, which means the clock is now ticking on 2024 U.S. Presidential election odds. Even though Biden won the 2020 U.S. Presidential election with Kamala Harris as his running mate, it’s Harris who is the favorite to be the POTUS in 2024.
The latest 2024 presidential election odds show Vice President Kamala Harris as the front-runner over President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at most European sportsbooks. For instance, Harris is +350 to win in 2024 at Bet365, with Biden at +400 and Trump at +600.
The thinking is that Biden may opt to let Harris take the reigns in the next Presidential election cycle, due to the fact that Biden will be 81-years-old three years from now.
The first deciding events are the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which usually take place in February. Although the winners of these party-specific races aren’t necessarily shoe-ins for their party’s nominations, the results of these events can impact the odds greatly.
By the time Iowans and New Hampshirites gather to make their decisions, bettors in the United Kingdom and around Europe should have a good idea of who is in the running for the nominations of both parties. Despite all the historic precedent of renominating an incumbent, that isn’t a foregone conclusion for the Democrats in 2024.
Donald Trump is the betting favorite to win the 2020 US Presidential Election for the first time since September 2nd. Updated odds (per Bovada): Donald Trump -130 Joe Biden EVEN — Odds Shark (@OddsShark) November 4, 2020. Trump is now odds on to win in the betting markets. The pollsters could be wrong again.
Here’s a look at the current US Presidential Election odds at two UK books:
Presidential election odds 2024
| Candidate | Bet365 | Betway |
|---|---|---|
| Kamala Harris | +350 | +400 |
| Joe Biden | +400 | +400 |
| Donald Trump | +600 | +800 |
| Mike Pence | +1400 | +1600 |
| Nikki Haley | +1400 | +2000 |
| Ivanka Trump | +2500 | +3300 |
| AOC | +2500 | +3300 |
| Dwayne Johnson | +2800 | +5000 |
| Ted Cruz | +3300 | +3300 |
| Michelle Obama | +3300 | +3300 |
| Tucker Carlson | +3300 | +3300 |
| Pete Buttigieg | +4000 | +2800 |
| Liz Cheney | +5000 | OTB |
Given the recent historic turnout in Black communities in major cities around the country, Harris makes sense as the front-runner right now. It’s reasonable to assume the leaders in those communities could fire that machine back up in 2024 to get behind her.
The Democrats may want to maximize that momentum by nominating Harris instead of pushing for a second term for Biden. If they do so, that would be a first. So far in US history, no major party has ever opted not to renominate an incumbent when he’s been eligible for reelection.
That’s partially because ousting an incumbent president has proven very difficult in US history. Prior to 2020, it hadn’t happened in nearly 30 years. Here’s the full list of one-term presidents and their tenures in office:
- Donald Trump, 2017-2021
- George H.W. Bush, 1989-1993
- Jimmy Carter, 1977-1981
- Gerald Ford, 1974-77
- Herbert Hoover, 1929-33
- William Howard Taft, 1909-13
- Benjamin Harrison, 1889-93
- Martin Van Buren, 1837-41
- John Quincy Adams, 1825-29
- John Adams, 1797-1801
If the Democrats do nominate Harris in 2024, it will be historic for other reasons, however. No major party has ever nominated an African-American woman for president, for example.
Harris’ nomination could come in the same year as a historic nomination by the other party. The possible scenario has only played out one other time in US history.
Can Donald Trump run again in 2024?
The short answer is yes.
Only Grover Cleveland has served two non-consecutive terms as president in US history, serving his first from 1885-1889 and his second from 1893-1897. Despite the fact that Trump just got the second-most votes for a presidential candidate in US history, there is one big reason why he may have an uphill climb to secure a third nomination from the Republican Party.
In June of 2024, Trump will turn 78 years old. That would make him the oldest major-party presidential candidate in US history, setting him up to be pushing 83 when his potential second term would end.
By a similar measure, Trump also had more people vote for his opponent than any other incumbent in US history. That’s another reason why the GOP may look elsewhere in 2024.
UK books currently favor Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Ivanka Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2024. Either Haley or Ivanka Trump would be the first female presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party. Ivanka Trump would also be the first daughter of a president to receive such a nomination.
Election betting explained
Often times, books will refer to markets on these contests as “futures.” That’s because they will settle the bets months or years into the future.
The lines on this event are called moneylines or straight bets. That means you’re simply picking a winner of the contest, with the margin of victory and other elements irrelevant for these purposes.
Using the 2020 presidential election as an example, UK books liked Trump as a strong contender. They started him out at +100 or “even money” then moved him to -150 throughout the cycle. His odds rounded out at +150.
That means if you put $100 down at first opportunity, you would have doubled your money exactly had he won. When his odds moved to -150, you would have had to wager $150 to make $100 in profit. At +150, you’d get a $150 payout on a wager of $100.
What to monitor: polling data
Polling data is fluid and changes over the course of an election period. In the early stages like now (May 2019), candidates with the most name recognition tend to poll the strongest. That’s why on the Democratic side former VP Joe Biden and 2016 candidate Bernie Sanders were early polling front-runners.
As lower tier candidates who have difficulty fund-raising drop out of the race, and TV debates start crystallizing (or galvanizing) voter opinion, the numbers begin to consolidate around one-to-two front-runners heading into the primaries.
For simplicity purposes, monitor two well-respected polling aggregators:
- Real Clear Politics: Consolidates and links to the most respected polls.
- FiveThirtyEight Polls: Does the same but presents the information in a different way.
Top 2024 US Presidential Contenders
Democrats
In US history, no major party has ever failed to renominate an incumbent for reelection when he’s been eligible for another term. UK books feel that the Democrats will break that tradition in 2024, however, nominating Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris instead. Other frontrunners at these books include NY Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Republicans
While Donald Trump is the frontrunner at UK books right now, current Vice President Mike Pence is the next top contender. After that, the field contains former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
2024 Presidential betting tips
In terms of presidential elections, the candidates who most represent the opposite end of the spectrum ideologically often fare the best. For example, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were about as different as could be.
That’s usually following a two-term president, however. As 2024 will come at the tail end of Joe Biden’s first term and he may run for reelection as the incumbent, that typical wisdom may prove unreliable.
Watch candidates’ fundraising and polling as the cycle nears. That will be an indicator into which candidates to back at the books.
Can you bet in the US?
So far, no states have allowed sportsbooks within their borders to take action on the results of any US elections. If that changes to any degree, TheLines will keep you updated on the progress of that movement.
FiveThirtyEight has issued its final presidential forecast. There hasn’t been a lot of change over the past 24 or 48 hours, as most of the late polling either came in close to our previous polling averages, or came from — frankly — fairly random pollsters that don’t get a lot of weight in our forecast.
Of course, you can click over to the forecast right now if you’d like to see what it says — I’m sure most of you have already done that. But in these accompanying write-ups, I like to provide some context. When I wrote about our final presidential forecast in 2012, for example, I was trying to explain why a race that everyone assumed was close actually reflected a fairly decisive advantage for Barack Obama. When I wrote about our final forecast in 2016, conversely, it was pretty much the opposite. I was trying to explain that, although Hillary Clinton was favored, what most of the media was portraying as a sure thing was a highly competitive contest between her and Donald Trump.
This year … I’m not really sure what I’m trying to convince you of. If you think that polling is irrevocably broken because of 2016 — well, that’s not really correct. On the other hand, if it weren’t for 2016, people might look at Joe Biden’s large lead in national polls — the largest of any candidate on the eve of the election since Bill Clinton in 1996 — and conclude that Trump was certain to be a one-term president. If you do think that, please read my story from earlier this week about how Trump can win and why a 10 percent chance needs to be taken seriously.
Nonetheless, Biden’s standing is considerably stronger than Clinton’s at the end of the 2016 race. His lead is larger than Clinton’s in every battleground state, and more than double her lead nationally. Our model forecasts Biden to win the popular vote by 8 percentage points,This is similar but not identical to our final national polling average, which closed at a Biden lead of 8.4 percentage points. However, our forecast of the popular vote is mostly based on state-level polling.
'>1 more than twice Clinton’s projected margin at the end of 2016.What the election map will look like if there’s a 2016-sized polling error
Indeed, some of the dynamics that allowed Trump to prevail in 2016 wouldn’t seem to exist this year. There are considerably fewer undecided voters in this race — just 4.8 percent of voters say they’re undecided or plan to vote for third-party candidates, as compared to 12.5 percent at the end of 2016. And the polls have been considerably more stable this year than they were four years ago. Finally, unlike the “Comey letter” in the closing days of the campaign four years ago — when then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress that new evidence had turned up pertinent to the investigation into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state — there’s been no major development in the final 10 days to further shake up the race.
Now, there are also some sources of error that weren’t as relevant four years ago. The big surge in early and mail voting — around 100 million people have already voted! — could present challenges to pollsters, for instance. Still, even making what we think are fairly conservative assumptions, our final forecast has Biden with an 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, as compared to a 10 percent chance for Trump. (The remaining 1 percent reflects rounding error, plus the chance of an Electoral College tie.)
But what’s tricky about this race is that — because of Trump’s Electoral College advantage, which he largely carries over from 2016 — it wouldn’t take that big of a polling error in Trump’s favor to make the election interesting. Importantly, interesting isn’t the same thing as a likely Trump win; instead, the probable result of a 2016-style polling error would be a Biden victory but one that took some time to resolve and which could imperil Democrats’ chances of taking over the Senate. On the flip side, it wouldn’t take much of a polling error in Biden’s favor to turn 2020 into a historic landslide against Trump.
So as we did four years ago, let’s run through a few stress checks here. On average in past elections, the final polls have been off by around 3 percentage points. How would the map change if there were a 3-point error in Trump’s direction? And what about a 3-point error in Biden’s direction? Keeping in mind that some states move more than others in accordance with national trends, here’s what our final forecast shows:
| with 3-point national error … | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| State | Final 538 Forecast | IN BIDEN’S FAVOR | IN TRUMP’S FAVOR |
| New Hampshire | +10.6 | +14.5 | +6.7 |
| Minnesota | +9.1 | +12.1 | +6.0 |
| Wisconsin | +8.3 | +11.6 | +5.1 |
| Michigan | +8.0 | +11.2 | +4.9 |
| Nevada | +6.1 | +9.5 | +2.8 |
| Pennsylvania | +4.7 | +7.7 | +1.7 |
| NE-2 | +3.2 | +6.4 | -0.0 |
| Arizona | +2.6 | +5.8 | -0.7 |
| Florida | +2.5 | +5.7 | -0.7 |
| North Carolina | +1.8 | +4.7 | -1.1 |
| ME-2 | +1.6 | +4.8 | -1.6 |
| Georgia | +1.0 | +3.6 | -1.6 |
| Ohio | -0.6 | +2.5 | -3.7 |
| Iowa | -1.5 | +2.0 | -5.0 |
| Texas | -1.5 | +1.7 | -4.7 |
| Montana | -6.4 | -3.3 | -9.5 |
| South Carolina | -7.5 | -4.8 | -10.2 |
| Alaska | -8.5 | -5.3 | -11.7 |
| Missouri | -9.4 | -6.3 | -12.5 |
First, before we get to the Biden-friendly or Trump-friendly scenarios: Suppose this is one of those happy years when there isn’t any systematic error in the polls — that is, Biden wins by about 8 points nationally. In that case, then Biden’s going to win the Electoral College, even if there might be polling misses in individual states. Biden’s easiest path to victory would be to win back three of the so-called “Blue Wall” states that Hillary Clinton lost: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Coupled with the states that Clinton won in 2016, that would get Biden up to 278 electoral votes, more than the 270 required. Pennsylvania is the most tenuous of the “Blue Wall” group, but even if Biden lost it — unlikely if polls are about right overall — he’d have plenty of other options as he’s also narrowly ahead in our final forecast in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia and only narrowly behind Trump in Ohio, Texas and Iowa.
What if there were a 3-point polling error in Biden’s favor? Then he’d be a favorite in all of the aforementioned states. Coupled with the 2nd Congressional Districts in Maine and Nebraska, where he’s also favored, that would result in his winning 413 electoral votes. Other states that are traditionally extremely red could even come into play for Biden too, with Montana being the most likely possibility, followed by South Carolina, Alaska and Missouri. This scenario would also make for an 11-point popular vote margin for Biden, the biggest by any candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984, and the biggest winning margin against an incumbent since Franklin Delano Roosevelt against Herbert Hoover in 1932.
But with a 3-point error in Trump’s direction — more or less what happened in 2016 — the race would become competitive. Biden would probably hold on, but he’d only be the outright favorite in states (and congressional districts) containing 279 electoral votes. In Pennsylvania, the tipping-point state, he’d be projected to win by 1.7 percentage points — not within the recount margin, but a close race.
Such a scenario would not be the end of the world for Biden. The extra cushion that he has relative to Clinton helps a lot; it means that with a 2016-style polling error, he’d narrowly win some states that she narrowly lost. Biden has polled well recently in Michigan and Wisconsin in particular and has big leads there. Still, this would not be the sort of outcome that Democrats were hoping for. For one thing, because Biden would probably be reliant on Pennsylvania in this scenario — a state that is expected to take some time to count its vote — the election might take longer to call. For another, it could yield a fairly bad map as far as Democrats’ Senate hopes go, as Biden would be a narrow underdog in several states with key Senate races, including Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa. So while Biden isn’t a normal-sized polling error away from losing, he is a normal-sized polling error away from having a messy win that might not come with control of Congress.
Still, as much as we’ve tried to strike a note of caution, Democrats have a right to be pleased about where they wound up. Sure, Biden could be in a meaningly safer position with a larger polling lead in Pennsylvania or Arizona, where his numbers have slipped a bit down the stretch run. Nonetheless, if we’d told our Democratic readers six months ago that Biden would be heading into election morning ahead by 8 points nationally, also ahead by 8 points in Wisconsin and Michigan, by 5 points in Pennsylvania, by 2 or 3 points in Florida and Arizona, and even a little bit ahead in Georgia and with a pretty decent chance to win Texas, we think they’d be fairly pleased.
It’s also worth keeping in mind the background conditions in the country today. Trump only barely won the election four years ago, against a highly unpopular opponent in Clinton. In 2016, 18 percent of voters in the national exit poll disliked both Trump and Clinton, and those voters went for Trump by 17 points. If they’d merely split evenly, Clinton would have (narrowly) won the Electoral College. Many of those voters actually like Biden, though, who has much better favorability ratings than either Clinton or Trump.
Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency
Meanwhile, the election comes at a time where a 2:1 majority of voters are dissatisfied with the direction of the country amid a COVID-19 pandemic that his killed 233,000 Americans — and which has gotten worse in recent weeks — along with high (though improving) unemployment, a summer of racial protests, and continuous erosions of democratic norms by Trump and his administration. Trump’s approval rating has been in negative territory through virtually the entirety of his presidency. Trump’s electoral record is hardly unblemished: Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by nearly 9 points in 2018, about the same margin that Trump now trails in national polls, in an election where polls and forecasts were highly accurate.
Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency In 2020
In other words, given everything going on in the country — and Biden’s popularity relative to Clinton — it simply shouldn’t be that hard to imagine a small number of voters switching from Trump to Biden. Indeed, that’s what polls show: There are more Trump-to-Biden voters than Clinton-to-Trump voters. The lion’s share of people who voted for Gary Johnson or another third party candidate four years ago also say they plan to vote for Biden.
Trump might be able to overcome this with a disproportionately high Republican turnout. But while Republican turnout might be very high, Democratic turnout almost certainly will be too, as evidenced by, among other things: Democrats’ equal or higher enthusiasm level in polls; their very high numbers in early and absentee voting, and their greater fundraising prowess throughout the cycle.
Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency 2020
Again, this is not to deny that Trump will turn out his voters, too. Our model projects overall turnout in the race to be a record setting 158 million, with an 80th percentile range between 147 million and 168 million. But if persuadable voters and independents are mostly flipping to the other party, you need your turnout to be high and for the other party’s to be low to have much of a shot, and that latter condition doesn’t appear likely for Trump.
Who Is Favored To Win The Presidency
Still, 10 percent chances happen, there’s never been an election quite like this one and this isn’t a moment that anybody should be taking anything for granted. We hope you’ll follow our coverage for as long as it takes to determine who won.