Will Donald Trump sweep the five key “swing” states that can put him back in the White House? The political betting sites aren’t in his favor.
There’s a disturbance in the polling force. As we go to press, most of the surveys out there have the 2024 U.S. presidential election as a virtual dead heat – except at The Economist, where their new forecast model has Donald Trump and the Republican Party winning two times out of three.
It all depends on what shade of purple they’re seeing. Despite the 2020 election coming down to a handful of votes in several important “swing” states, Joe Biden and the Democrats managed to win 306 electoral college seats to Trump’s 232. Now the pollsters at The Economist have Trump winning 300-238, presumably by sweeping those swing states.
Is this real life? If so, Bovada (find out more with our Bovada Review) has Trump priced at a very tasty +300 to win all five of the following:
- Arizona
- Georgia
- Michigan
- Nevada
- Wisconsin
Our politics betting experts here at the ranch have seen Biden as the “value pick” for the 2024 election. Let’s re-assess that assessment, given the curveball The Economist just threw at us.
What Is The Economist?
The Economist is a weekly newspaper/magazine based in London, founded in 1843 by Scottish economist/politician James Wilson in an attempt to get the United Kingdom to overturn the import tariffs set out in the Corn Laws (“Corn” meaning cereal grains of all kinds).
These tariffs were a very big deal. They kept food prices high at a time when millions of people across the U.K. were starving, especially in Ireland and Scotland. Rich people, including the ruling Conservative Party, loved the Corn Laws; the working class, not so much.
In 1846, Conservative PM Sir Robert Peel (an Adam Smith devotee with leanings towards free trade) bowed to pressure and repealed the Corn Laws, banding together with the Whig Party to overcome the resistance of his Tory colleagues. Peel resigned as PM, and his followers eventually merged with the Whigs and others to form the Liberal Party, which battled the Conservatives tooth-and-nail for the next 50-plus years before the Labour Party took over on the left.
Meanwhile, The Economist broadened its coverage to include current news and business events from across the globe, while to this day retaining the same editorial stance advocating economic liberalism. They’re generally for free trade, as well as LGBTQ+ rights, the legalization of drugs, and gun control.
Is The Economist Biased Towards Trump?
Heck no. Last November, they called the former president “the biggest danger to the world” in 2024. And earlier this month, they said that America’s billionaires should “resist the urge” to support Trump in the upcoming election.
It is possible, however, that The Economist’s forecast model is biased towards Trump.
Built in concert with scholars at Columbia University (which CBS News ranked as the seventh most liberal college in America back in 2020), this model combines polling with historical data and other numbers, then cranks out thousands of simulated elections – almost like a poker solver – to see which outcomes are most likely.
In this case, they’ve got Trump winning those key swing states by the following vote percentage margins:
- Arizona: +4 (2 in 3 chance)
- Georgia: +4 (3 in 4)
- Michigan: +1 (3 in 5)
- Nevada: +3 (2 in 3)
- Wisconsin: +2 (3 in 5)
So here’s where things get tricky.
Trump may be ahead in all five states according to this model, but his chances of sweeping, given those numbers in parentheses, are 12%. That implied probability works out to +733 in American odds.
Very interesting. Even with their model giving Trump a much greater chance of winning the election than the 51% he’s getting at FiveThirtyEight, The Economist is also projecting Trump as highly unlikely to sweep these swing states – enough to make the other side of this Electoral College Parlay the right call at –450.
And we haven’t even touched on how many swing votes Trump might lose because of his felony conviction. Or how the Democrats have out-performed the polls by about four percentage points in special elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022.
Bet accordingly.
