Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has opened up a substantial lead in election betting odds in recent weeks, providing Americans with a new chance to predict what will happen on Election Day.
“More than two billion dollars have already been bet on the election,” Maxim Lott, owner of ElectionBettingOdds.com, told AWN Digital.
The statements come as Lott’s website, which takes data from five different betting sites to calculate a betting average, gives Trump with a 58.5% chance of winning the presidential election as of Monday.
Lott’s website isn’t the only one keeping track of betting odds; famous sites like RealClearPolitics, which has become well-known for tracking polling averages over the years, have also joined in.
Like ElectionBettingOdds.com, the RealClearPolitics betting average shows Trump as the favorite, with a 59% chance of winning the election as of Monday.
Trump’s prospects of winning the election have grown considerably in recent weeks, with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Harris, ranking as the betting favorite on RealClearPolitics as recently as October 4. However, Trump took the lead the next day and hasn’t looked back, finally increasing his lead to nearly 20 percentage points on Monday.
Lott believes that looking at betting averages provides a much clearer picture of the most likely election outcome than piecing together polls.
“These are really accurate, they’re more accurate than just trying to look at polls or especially more accurate than listening to pundits bloviating,” Lott told reporters.
“[The bettors] look at all sorts of historical data, they look at trends,” he informed us. “I find the percent more useful than the polls.”
Lott, who formerly worked as a program executive producer for the Fox Business Network, also stated that people risk their own money to wager on an outcome, resulting in a market that may “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,” Lott told the crowd.
While betting on elections is newer than other well-known gambling diversions like sports betting and casino gaming, Lott believes the market has grown strong enough to provide election watchers with an indication of what the most likely outcome will be.
“Last cycle, we exchanged more than a billion dollars. Lott emphasized the need of having a reliable signal for people who want to know what’s going to happen, even if it’s not as significant as the stock market.
Regarding Trump’s lead, Lott believes it reflects the end of Harris’ “honeymoon period” after being elevated as the Democrat nominee, noting that Trump had risen to around 70% likely to win the election before President Biden dropped his bid for re-election and has since reclaimed the lead.
“Things have kind of reverted back to the mean where – it is a tough cycle for Democrats with things like inflation and immigration, and so maybe for a couple months people were like, ‘Oh, Harris, this is interesting, this is new, this is refreshing,’ and then it’s kind of sinking in: ‘This is the same administration we didn’t like with Biden,” says Lott.
