2024 Presidential Election Odds: Madam President Incoming?
2024 Presidential election odds have been upended many times in the last five weeks. It’s now been that long since Joe Biden failed on the debate stage, and the race for the White House has been completely flipped. From a +1600 underdog at DraftKings Sportsbook in early July, I can make a case Kamala Harris should be the favorite now. But, with the odds back to a near tossup, will Harris or Donald Trump win in November?
Make sure to check TheLines.com’s dedicated Trump vs. Harris odds page to see the latest odds.
How 2024 Presidential Election Odds Have Shifted
| NAME | ODDS | PROBABILITY | CHANGE | ||
 |
Kamala Harris | -139 | 58% | ||
 |
Donald Trump | +122 | 45% | ||
 |
Gavin Newsom | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Joe Biden | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Nikki Haley | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Pete Buttigieg | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Robert Kennedy Jr. | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Ron DeSantis | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Tim Scott | +9900 | 1% | ||
 |
Vivek Ramaswamy | +9900 | 1% | ||
Implied probabilities are calculated using data offered by PredictIt.
Last Updated: 2024-09-18 22:00:01 PDT.
What Happened Since Kamala Harris Moved To Top Of Ticket?
Kamala Harris has gone from an also ran in these odds to co-favorite. There’s no point beating a dead horse, but it’s worth repeating that five weeks ago Harris was neither a candidate for the highest office in the land nor even a consensus candidate in the event Joe Biden failed.
For all the ink spilled about Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or a return of Hillary Clinton, Harris has managed to unify and electrify the Democratic Party in less than two weeks.
Latest National Polling
Kamala’s rapid rise in the betting markets has followed a rapid rise in the polling.
- National polling from the New York Times saw her gain five points from their last Biden/Trump poll.
- The Wall Street Journal’s latest has her up 2 in the full-field polling, which includes Robert Kennedy Jr., amongst others.
- That WSJ poll represents an eight-point improvement on the Biden baseline.
- Mainstreet Research saw a 7% swing to Kamala from their final Biden poll.
- Morning Consult’s seen back-to-back Harris +1 polls after a final Trump +4 against Biden.
- CNN saw Harris halve a six-point deficit.
The national polls have been very good for Harris, putting her from Biden’s down ~4% on average to a statistical tie. What’s been even better for her chances in the 2024 Presidential election odds are the state polls.
Polling in Georgia
One of the reasons Joe Biden had a narrowing path to victory, even before the debate, was his horrific polling with non-white voters. Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada saw consistent and sizable GOP polling leads. Georgia and Arizona especially, two states Biden flipped in 2020, were slipping away from the competitive map. That meant Biden needed to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with no margin for error.
Now? Kamala’s got Georgia on her mind.
The Harris campaign did a big rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, after sending potential VP pick Andy Beshear down to Forsyth County for an event Monday. The polls are responding, with PPP showing Harris winning by 1, Morning Consult showing a tie, and Landmark showing a GOP lead of 1. Emerson, who consistently undersold Democratic margins in 2022, 2023, and this year’s NY-03 special election, has it as a 2-point race.
Before Harris entered the trace, it was Trump +6 on average. Now, Georgia’s competitive.
Other Swing States
Georgia isn’t the only one, either. Morning Consult showed the first poll with Democrats winning Nevada since October of 2023 this week. The Arizona polling hasn’t been as plentiful, but Harris is up in Morning Consult (although down six in Emerson). The reason it matters is that winning these states opens the door to other paths for the Harris campaign.
Georgia and Arizona coming back on the board means that Michigan and Wisconsin are not strictly must-wins in the way that they were.
The fact that Harris has almost immediately reversed a large amount of the drop with minority voters from the last Biden polls has helped immensely. Georgia, especially, where over a third of the electorate is non-white, was suffering from Biden’s inability to appeal to minority voters. Now, there’s a nominee who can do so.
It’s also worth noting that FOX polls of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan showed two tied races and a one-point GOP lead last week, undoing significant damage in the Rust Belt. Susquehanna, an in-state Pennsylvania pollster, had Harris up by four points this week.
State Of The Campaigns
The biggest reason why I’m a Harris optimist isn’t the polls. It’s not the money, though the $200M the campaign has raised since Harris took it over is pretty nice. It’s not even the fact that supporting Harris is cool enough to get Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow and Detroit Lions QB Jared Goff to openly show up in a “White Dudes For Harris” Zoom call, though that is a sign of the times.
What is clear is that Harris’ campaign understands where the bodies of her 2020 campaign are buried.
Harris’ appeal in the 2020 primary campaign was that she was to Biden’s left, but she wasn’t Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. She was trying to thread a needle between the (then-ascendant) progressive left and the Democratic mainstream. That, and the specific issue set of that primary, meant she took unpopular-at-large stances on guns, fracking, police and crime issues, and others. She has already thrown a good amount of those stances into a ditch.
Different Kind Of Kamala?
Politico reported last week that her opposition to fracking is gone. This week, the Times reported Harris is walking back support for Medicare For All and an assault weapons buyback program. And she came out swinging in Atlanta in favor of the failed Senate immigration compromise, which would enact the kinds of fairly draconian immigration policies she ran against in 2020.
Harris’s main liability, according to leaked private polling and focus groups, is that she’s seen as too liberal. In fairness to the average American (not a phrase this Canadian says often!), it’s not an unfair belief, given the 2020 primary. She is shedding those unpopular positions faster than JD Vance staffers can hang up the phone when asked if the couch jokes are true, a good sign that her campaign can make the hard decisions that neither Kamala 2020 or Biden 2024 were really capable of making.
Trump’s campaign also very clearly has no idea what to do with her. Vance told the truth at a private fundraiser last week, that the Trump campaign would have much rather run against Biden. They can’t settle on a message against her.
My Current Opinion ON 2024 Presidential election odds
If the election were tomorrow Trump would probably win. But it’s not. The fundamental case for Democratic optimism has been that swing voters that just elected Democrats in 2020 and 2022 were not going to suddenly fall in love with Trump. If you voted against Blake Masters or Dr. Oz because they supported an insurrection and support punitive abortion restrictions, the case for why you’re suddenly going to vote for Trump has always been lacking.
What I got wrong was thinking Biden could be the guy to make that case. But that doesn’t change the fact that suburban social liberals in left-trending areas like Forsyth or the Philly collar counties are deeply uncomfortable voting for the guy who is responsible for the death of Roe.
Best of luck with 2024 Presidential election odds.
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