Presidential Election 2024 Betting

Betting on the Next US President

It will be a few years before we see how the 2024 race will shake out, who will declare their candidacies and if there will be an incumbent running. The US election is the most hotly anticipated political event in the world, and in 2020 it was believed to be the most bet on event in history.

Being President of the United States bears huge responsibility not just domestically but abroad. The U.S. remains the “leader of the free world” and is looked upon by the West as the leader in global affairs.

In 2020, the coronavirus was the stand-out issue. Back at the start of 2020, Trump was stronger in the polls and betting odds to secure a second term despite extremely low favorability numbers. But the Covid-19 epidemic triggered a plunge for the sitting president, who has since turned his ire to Black Lives Matter protesters, the World Health Organization and China. Trump was in combative mood as the race hit its apex and refused to concede in the days after Joe Biden was declared the victor, citing unsubstantiated and disproved claims of “voter fraud.”

Predicting a Winner

American pollsters often accurately predict who will win the US election – and indeed the political betting odds usually follow the same trend and reflect the mood of the nation. Yet 2016 became the year where polling companies and bookmakers had to think again about political elections.

Trump’s victory over Clinton was a shock but perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, earlier that year the UK voted to leave the European Union in one of the most politically-controversial results in history.

Betting on the US election while the incumbent is running for a second term is often more straightforward than when it’s two new faces battling for the White House. That’s because there are few one-term presidents in the modern era and the markets reflect this confidence in the current office-holder. Indeed, Trump was the favorite to win the 2020 election before coronavirus struck — largely because the US economy was thriving.

Pollsters also came under fire in 2020 as many polls showed a more comfortable victory than Biden ultimately enjoyed. Indeed, polls were off a few points, but it did call all but two swing states correctly with Georgia (won by Biden) and North Carolina (won by Trump) the only misses.

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Playing the Odds

Watching the Trump and Biden campaigns produced plenty of interesting talking points. Yet for bettors it also provided an insight into how the political betting markets might play out over the course of the election.

Many bettors like to play the odds in order to maximize their potential profits. This method of engaging in arbitrage requires betting on political outcomes at high odds, and then laying the same market once those odds have come in.

We saw this happen during the 2020 US Election, with Biden originally an outsider to get the Democratic nomination. Bettors who backed the former VP to win the election early no doubt were rewarded as he was at one point +1000 just to get the Democratic nomination.

When he became the heavy favorite, shrew bettors may have put some money down on attractive Trump odds in order to cover themselves.

Spotting Trends for US Presidential Election Betting

Predicting who will win the US election is a minefield of polling numbers, betting odds, breaking news and sheer luck. And Trump’s win in 2016 was even more remarkable than Harry Truman beating Thomas Dewey in 1948, or Franklin D. Roosevelt winning all but two states in 1936.

Heading into every election we see the same, tired gimmicks that come around every four years. A chimpanzee in a Milwaukee zoo will choose between a red and a blue food bowl to “predict” the winner or a man in Oregon may boast about finding a potato chip with a weird likeness to one of the candidates.

There are some weird trends that appear to capture the imagination of the country. School kids voting for president boast a +80% chance of getting it right every year. Vigo County in Indiana correctly voted to within five percentage points of the national election result in every poll from 1960 until Trump’s shock win in 2016.

These light-hearted trends and many others are all part of the fun of predicting the election. Whether or not they make for a good basis for political bets is for you to decide.