2024 Presidential Election Odds: Final Predictions For Kamala Harris Vs. Donald Trump
Presidential election odds will soon have their day. Tomorrow, the battle for the future of America will conclude. Has the value proposition changed with election odds shifting wildly during the last week? Who will win, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? I’ll share my final thoughts throughout this article.
Below are the latest election odds from BetMGM Sportsbook, available only in Ontario.
2024 Presidential Election Odds
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to win the election
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Donald Trump
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Kamala harris
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Madison Square Garbage?
The start of Harris’ betting market momentum was Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, specifically when “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe’s “joke” called Puerto Rico an island of garbage. For reasons beyond understanding, Hinchcliffe’s comments have resonated wildly despite Trump making more racist and should-be-disqualifying statements regularly.
The Harris campaign has claimed that its data shows late-breaking voters splitting for Harris by “double digits” since the MSG rally. Puerto Rican celebrities have endorsed Kamala in the aftermath, and Democrats have seen numerous anecdotal evidence of increased support. With roughly 500,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, this could matter.
However, it’s unclear why this has caused a betting market move. There isn’t definitive evidence that the early-week swing was anything more than voters getting skittish about Trump, down from -225 (69.2% implied probability) as of Wednesday at BetMGM.
Pollsters Herding In The Name Of?
We’ve received a lot of swing state polling in the last 10 days, but how much of it paints a clear picture? Marquette has Harris +2 in Wisconsin, and Marist has Democrats narrowly winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Fox showed a muddled race in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan, with everything essentially a tie. YouGov has bigger leads for Democrats in the Rust Belt, yet it is still a narrow path.
If true, the New York Times and Siena polls would narrowly show a Harris victory, but Democrats are weaker than most polls in the Rust Belt and stronger in the Sun Belt. Who knows if that’s real or noise? It’s what they have.
On average, most of these states are within a point either way. That’s not a particularly robust assessment because most pollsters are herding. Fear of putting out an outlier is impacting the polls we’re observing.
Pollsters have every incentive to overcorrect after the 2016 and 2020 results. With Trump having beaten his polls the last two times, the polling industry’s incentives aren’t just to get the result right but to not underestimate Trump. If the polls underestimate Harris, people will shrug their shoulders and move on. If the polls underestimate Trump again, much of the US polling industry will either cease or be radically diminished.
That isn’t just my opinion. Nate Cohn of the New York Times, who runs the NYT polling with Siena, wrote this on Friday. There’s every reason to think pollsters are herding.
Well, most pollsters are herding.
Selzer Canary In The Coalmine?
One of the great election traditions in America is a bunch of nerds overanalyzing a seemingly random poll of Iowa for a signal of the nation. Ann Selzer’s Iowa poll has been an institution for decades, but it rose to national prominence after seeing Barack Obama’s 2008 Iowa caucus win when nobody else did.
Selzer’s 2016 and 2020 polls indicated that Democrats had significant weakness among white voters compared to other polls. In 2016, her poll showed that the Blue Wall was cracking. In 2020, it showed that the big leads many thought Democrats were on track for weren’t real.
In 2024, Selzer shows Iowa, a state Trump won by 8.2 percentage points last time, voting for Harris by 3 points, 47%-44%. That would be an 11 percentage point swing left since 2020, an election Harris won already. While it’s highly unlikely Harris will win Iowa, it’s interesting as a signal of the national intention. Even if it’s merely directionally correct, Democrats should be happy.
Republican sources responded to that poll by leaking data showing that Trump’s up 5 percentage points in Iowa. Their thinking that the poll would be a positive sign for them is concerning for Trump’s chances.
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2024 Presidential Election Odds: Electoral College Path
Harris should win Michigan. She’s up 4% in YouGov and Quinnipiac, 3% in Marist and Glengariff, and the state’s trends are solid for Democrats. Wisconsin is closing well for Democrats, with early voting in heavily Democratic Milwaukee and Madison putting up strong numbers this weekend. Marist, Marquette, and Times/Siena have Democrats winning there by 2%.
Marquette did so even with an R+5 sample on party identification, a signal that it has built in GOP-friendly assumptions to avoid a repeat of the miss from last time.
In a sense, Pennsylvania is a harder state to peg. Nevertheless, Democrats are leading in most of the good polls. What has happened is the race not to be wrong has led to overcorrection.
We’ve seen TIPP and Franklin & Marshall turn D+4 samples into R+1s. We’ve seen Marist project an only 8% Black electorate (it was 11% in 2020). We’ve seen Fox project a 93% white electorate (up 8 percentage points from 2020). None of those are guaranteed Harris will win the state, but it’s a lot harder to miss low on Trump when you build in all of these favorable assumptions for him.
Sun Belt Sweep For Trump?
Harris should win the election if she sweeps all three Rust Belt states. Georgia is her best state outside of that, as the combination of socially liberal suburbanites and Black voters continues to chug along. The Black vote is only marginally down since 2020, and there’s every reason to believe more Democrats will vote on Election Day in 2024 than during a pandemic in 2020.
Democrats have gotten good polls in Nevada but started early voting poorly. Things are trending on the line we saw in 2022, yet that was a split decision between the Senate and the governorship. Arizona’s fundamentals point to a toss-up or even a lightly blue state, but the polls are bad for Democrats.
Both are ever so slightly red-leaning. Moreover, North Carolina should vote for Trump.
2024 Presidential Election Odds Prospects
Harris is a favorite to win. She has a state lead, adding up to 270 Electoral College votes. There are many reasons to think she will win Georgia as an insurance policy. Arizona and Nevada are by no means gone for Democrats, and if the Puerto Rico comments shift Hispanic voters toward Harris, they could easily go blue.
This is Harris’ election to lose. She might lose, but it’s hers to lose. Best of luck with your picks for election odds!
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