Donald Trump has started to rally in the betting markets after a surprise poll sent his election odds plummeting.
A Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night sent shockwaves through markets after it showed Trump losing the red state of Iowa to Kamala Harris.
It triggered an avalanche of bets on Harris winning the US election, with Trump’s odds plummeting across a variety of betting and prediction markets, including Kalshi, Polymarket and Predictit.
Harris even overtook Trump as the White House favorite in Kalshi.
However, on Sunday the markets appeared to be correcting slightly and Trump rose again.
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, US, on November 3, 2024.
After Kamala Harris closed the gap, Trump began to distance himself from Kalshi again.
On Sunday afternoon, Trump was again the favorite in Kalshi with a 52 percent chance of victory, compared to Harris with 48 percent.
Harris’ lead in Predictit had shrunk from eight points, in the wake of the Iowa poll, to just four points.
Polymarket showed Trump with an eight-point lead after it had narrowed to six.
The Real Clear Politics betting average showed Trump with a nine-point lead.
The former president had been rising for some time on various betting platforms, but the money started flowing to Harris earlier this week.
Vice President Kamala Harris wins in the betting markets
Then on Saturday, the Des Monies Register poll showed Harris leading Trump 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the traditionally conservative state.
Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll, has earned a reputation as “Iowa poll queen” and the “best pollster in politics” over decades conducting Des Moines Register polls.
Iowa hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Barack Obama in 2012, and Harris’ campaign dismissed it as an easy GOP victory this time around.
Live election betting at a digital screen kiosk on a New York City street
Before the Iowa poll came out, Trump was already falling in the betting markets.
Between October 29 and November 1, his odds at bookmakers Bet365 and Paddy Power fell from 66.7 per cent to 63.6 per cent.
In the Real Clear Politics betting market average earlier this week, Trump had led Harris by as much as 60.6 percent to 38.1 percent.
Polls put the election on a knife-edge and essentially tied, but for weeks betting markets have consistently given Trump a clear lead.
They began to fall on October 27 after a comedian at Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden made a derogatory joke about Puerto Rico, sparking widespread backlash.
Kalshi, which is the first legal online election prediction betting platform in the United States, has already accepted $92 million in bets for the 2024 race.
Kamala Harris was far behind in the betting markets
A bettor makes his decision on the elections.
This week, Tarek Mansour, its chief executive, said bettors are a more accurate indication of the outcome than polls because they have “skin in the game.”
He told DailyMail.com: ‘We should definitely trust the (betting) markets.
‘Prediction markets are places where people have money at stake. People don’t lie with their money.
In 2016 the polls indicated that Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Trump, but they were wrong.
In the past, betting markets have proven successful in predicting the outcome of elections.
However, like the polls, they were not a good indicator in 2016.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shake hands after the presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, on September 26, 2016.
the betting markets were wrong in 1948, when President Harry S. Truman won; Here, he gleefully displays a premature first edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune from his train in St. Louis, Missouri, after his defeat of Thomas E. Dewey.
As early as 1924, the Wall Street Journal wrote: “Betting odds are generally considered the best indicator of likely results in presidential campaigns.”
At the time, betting houses sent people to candidates’ speeches and based their odds on how the public responded, according to the newspaper.
In 15 presidential elections between 1884 and 1940, there was only one upset because the bookmakers were wrong, according to a study by economists Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf.
However, in 1948 the betting markets, like the polls, went spectacularly wrong when they gave President Harry Truman only about a one in ten chance of winning.
