Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has widened a significant lead in election betting odds in recent weeks, giving Americans a new way to try to frame what will happen on Election Day.
“More than $2 billion has already been bet on the election,” Maxim Lott, who runs ElectionBettingOdds.com, told FOX News Digital.
The comment comes after the Lotto website uses data from five different betting sites to display average bets and shows that as of Monday, Trump had a 58.5% chance of winning the presidential election. It was served in the middle of nowhere.
The Lott website isn’t the only one tracking betting odds, with popular sites such as RealClearPolitics, which has long become known for tracking voting averages, also joining the fray.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a campaign rally at Findlay Toyota Arena in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on October 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Like ElectionBettingOdds.com, RealClearPolitics’ betting average shows Trump as a 59% favorite to win the election as of Monday.
Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election have increased dramatically in recent weeks, and as of October 4, his Democratic challenger, Vice President Harris, is the betting favorite at RealClearPolitics. But Trump took the lead the next day and hasn’t looked back since. It eventually rose to the nearly 20 percentage point advantage enjoyed by the former president on Monday.
For Lott, looking at the average vote gives a clearer picture of what the most likely outcome of an election will be than tabulating polls.
“These are really accurate, more accurate than just trying to look at polls, and especially more accurate than listening to the experts ranting,” Lott said.
“(Betters) look at all kinds of historical data and look at trends,” he added. “I think percentages are more useful than polls.”
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Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris addresses the media at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on October 17, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Lott, who previously served as an executive producer of programs on the Fox Business Network, believes that by risking their own money and betting on the outcome, a market is created with the ability to “punish people” for making poor decisions. He also pointed out that
“If you’re not very smart or if you’re very biased, you’re going to lose money pretty quickly, and then you’re probably not going to bet in the next election again,” Lott said.
Lott said that while election betting is new compared to better-known gambling pastimes such as sports betting and casino games, the market has given election supporters a glimpse of what the most likely outcome will be. He said the situation is strong enough to do so.
“In the last cycle, more than $1 billion was traded. It’s still not that much compared to, say, the stock market, but it’s enough to have a reliable indicator, and that’s what’s important to us.” “As a user who just wants to know if it’s going to happen,” Lott said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on October 19, 2024 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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Trump’s lead, Lott said, likely reflects the end of the “honeymoon period” that Harris enjoyed after she was elevated to the Democratic nomination and before President Biden lowered his bid for re-election. He pointed out that Trump’s chances of winning had increased to about 70%. After the election, he returned to the top.
“Things have kind of returned to the mean. It’s been a tough cycle for Democrats with things like inflation and immigration, so for probably a few months, people were like, ‘Oh, Harris, this is interesting, this is new, this is refreshing. ” And then it kind of sinks in, “This is the same Biden administration that we didn’t like,” Lott said.
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