Election Day 2023: Odds To Be Next US President One Year Away

It’s Election Day 2023, and a raft of polls on the 2024 Presidential race are out. The race for the White House is heating up. As the primaries approach with Democrats and Republicans closing in on their nominees, there’s already been a lot of ink spilled on who will be the President after the next election. The bets flow worldwide, making this an excellent time to look at the latest sportsbook data. Please navigate to our 2024 Presidential election odds page to see our data graphs on how odds have evolved.

Election Day Odds: Next US President Betting Data

Odds and betting data are provided by DraftKings Sportsbook in Ontario, Canada. Wagering on U.S. Election Day odds is legal north of the border. Below are the 10 candidates who have received the highest percentage of money wagered on them (handle), along with the total percentage of bets placed on each (tickets).

Public Bettors Backs Donald Trump; Should They be?

Trump leads the field by a wide margin on ticket percentage, which is both understandable and completely insane.

It’s understandable because he was, for a long time, underpriced. The market hype around Ron DeSantis never made any sense. So, betting on Trump at more elevated prices was a perfectly plausible strategy.

Now, his odds are starting to get to a fair price. At his current number, his implied odds of becoming President are 33%. While that’s not an unfair price for Trump, it’s no longer a value. With all the talk of Joe Biden’s age, Trump is also the same theoretical risk too at the age of 77. He’s also not particularly fit.

Oh, and he’s been indicted four separate times, lost in 2020, and his Supreme Court nominees overturned Roe.

The reason Trump seems like a value is the polls, including those New York Times/Siena polls out Sunday showing Trump up big in the swing states. The problems with taking those at face value are twofold; they could easily be wrong right now, and 2023 is not 2024. Democrats have overperformed across special elections in 2023 and won statewide races in all six states the NYT polled despite it being a Biden midterm.

That all said, Trump’s going to be the Republican nominee. He’s leading in the early states, he’s leading Nationally, and even if the field consolidates, plenty of voters for DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy would vote for Trump over whichever became the consensus “anti-Trump” candidate.

Is Joe Biden Undervalued?

Interestingly, Biden has only 9% of total bets (tickets) but 20% of the total cash (handle). The reason is that any dollar bet on any other Democrat is, in effect, a donation to the sportsbooks. Plainly, Joe Biden will not be taken out as the Democratic nominee by any amount of Congressmen with Heseltine complexes or annoyed tweets. He wants to be President again, and as sitting President, he will be the Democratic nominee.

Even if he were to decide to step aside, the party would pick Kamala Harris, holder of 2% of tickets. If Biden decided he needed to step aside for whatever reason, the only candidate who could mount a campaign late enough would be the sitting VP.

The Democratic primary electorate, which is substantially more African-American than the country at large and whose calendar starts in South Carolina, would not let the party skip Harris for a white nominee. And, despite the 7% of tickets, certainly not for a white Californian in Gavin Newsom, whose terrible electoral performance in 2022 cost Democrats numerous winnable House seats in California.

Biden will be the Democratic nominee, no matter how many times people try to find a non-existent path to some backroom replacement.

2024 Presidential General Election Outlook

So, given that 55% of tickets are essentially dead already, the question moves to the general election.

Despite the polls saying Biden’s in trouble, there’s every reason to think that Biden can still win. The argument that Biden will win has little to do with doubting the polls, although there’s every reason to wonder if the polls that were wrong in 2016 and 2020 are overcorrecting for the miss.

Trump’s weaknesses as a candidate are still as real as they’ve been this whole time. He still tried to steal the 2020 election. He is still facing four indictments. His SCOTUS nominees still put an end to a national right to choose for women. And the GOP still lost a Senate seat and failed to gain any in an out-party midterm, despite Biden’s approval rating being mired in the low 40s.

Trump’s a live underdog with about a 33% chance. He can win, for sure. However, he is not in any way a favorite. These things are true at the same time.

Biden, on the other hand, is losing all of this value in the market to candidates who won’t make it out of the primary, people who aren’t running, or independents who will be lucky to make it onto enough ballots even to have a theoretical chance to win.

The bettors in Ontario don’t like Biden, as his meager 9% of tickets show. It’s a good thing for those 9% that he’s still in good shape for 2024.

When push comes to shove, there’s every reason to think Joe Biden will get the votes that have powered Democratic victories and overperformances since Trump’s SCOTUS selections took away Roe. They might not love him, but they hate Trump, and that’s likely enough to deliver for Biden backers in Election Day odds.

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