Betting on the 2024 U.S. presidential election has already reached a fever pitch. Business is booming on the odds boards at the top politics betting sites – and at the prediction markets. By mid-March, Polymarket had already received close to US$100 million in wagers on the 2024 election. They may have already reached nine figures by the time you read this.
The majority of those bettors are putting their money on Donald Trump to retake the White House. However, it does seem like the tide is turning for the incumbent president, Joe Biden. Polymarket had Trump’s chances of victory at 52% three weeks ago; at press time, Trump is pegged at 47%, while Biden has improved from 37% to 44%.
Is there still some value out there for Biden bettors? Should you invest in Trump at this new price? Or is there a third-party candidate that’s worth taking a flier on? Enquiring minds want to know.
.@Polymarket – Presidential Election Winner
March 7
🟥 Trump 53% (+21)
🟦 Biden 32%
🟨 RFK Jr 2%
April 4
🟥 Trump 47% (+3)
🟦 Biden 44%
🟨 RFK Jr 4%https://t.co/SIUILlU26t pic.twitter.com/NIgnLzg5Hi— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 5, 2024
What’s Going On With Trump?
The former president appears to be losing some steam. At the beginning of March, the polling analysts at FiveThirtyEight had Trump’s “unfavorable” rating at plus-7.8% (51.6% unfavorable, 43.8% favorable). That margin had jumped to plus-10.8% by March 8, and is holding relatively steady at plus-10.3% as we go to press.
There doesn’t seem to be any one single event on the Donald Trump timeline that would cause such a spike. Perhaps it’s related to Nikki Haley’s increasingly anti-Trump rhetoric during the run-up to the Super Tuesday primaries, or the difficulty he’s had coming up with the $454-million bond (since reduced to $175 million) for his civil fraud case in New York.
Why Is Biden Surging?
This one’s even harder to pin down. That raucous State of the Union address seems to have made an impression on the American public, but only a minor one; Biden’s unfavorable rating has improved from plus-15.4% (55.3% unfavorable, 39.9% favorable) on March 7, the day of his SOTU address, to plus-14.4%.
The “Biden Bump” is due at least in part to bettors abandoning potential third-party candidates. Back in mid-March at Polymarket, Gavin Newsom was available at 2% to win the presidency; he’s below 1% now. “Other Democrat Politician” has also slipped from 1% to below 1%.
Then again, there’s clearly still an appetite out there for other betting options besides Trump and Biden, however remote their actual chances of victory may be. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has improved from 3% to 4% at Polymarket over the past three weeks; Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris remain on the board at 2% apiece.
Should I Bet On Trump Or Biden?
If you’re going to throw some cash at this election, the betting value is clearly with the incumbent. Not only are the polls moving in his favor, according to Daily Kos, Biden’s Democratic Party has also outperformed the polls by around four percentage points in the special elections held since June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
If you’re going to put your trust in numbers, you should probably give more weight to these special election results. This is hard data, tracking how people are actually voting rather than how they claim they’re going to vote.
It’s all about the turnout. Biden has generally out-polled Trump among “high-turnout” voters, meaning those who are most likely to show up and pull that lever. Trump’s support, meanwhile, has been consistently higher among “low-turnout” voters.
Ironically enough, Trump appears to be driving that trend himself by peddling falsehoods about voting by mail. Even while GOP operatives encourage supporters to get their votes in early, Trump has equated mail-in ballots with fraud. It’s an own-goal that he cannot afford in what’s shaping up to be another close election.
Is There A Viable Third-Party Candidate?
No.
However poorly both Trump and Biden are performing in the polls, we’re nowhere near the situation we had in 1992, when Ross Perot was able to pull in 19% of the general election vote. Perot’s platform was considered moderate at the time; more than 30 years later, his “third way” populism would be almost entirely left of center.
Kennedy doesn’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum. He’s a former Democrat who has reportedly been in talks with the Libertarian Party to lead their 2024 ticket, but Kennedy is also unabashedly pro-Israel, to the point of calling the Palestinian people “arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world.”
That’s not going to fly with “true” anti-interventionist Libertarians. It’s also not going to win Kennedy the 2024 election; if anything, it may siphon votes away from Trump instead of Biden. Bet accordingly.
