Prediction markets have been gaining attention recently as an alternative to polls to forecast the outcome of an election.
According to the prediction market PredictIt, online bettors on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election now seem to feel a Trump victory is more likely.
In the countdown to the 2024 American presidential election, the polls indicate that it’s still a neck-and-neck race.
With two weeks to go, The New York Times said Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump were essentially tied in the battleground states, while national polling averages had Harris leading Trump by only 1%.
The FiveThirtyEight website also had Harris ahead of Trump by less than 2% as of Oct. 24, while an average of polls tracked by RealClearPolitics put Harris ahead by about .02%.
But bettors are telling a different story.
In the past couple of weeks, people who are staking money on the outcome of the election in so-called “prediction markets” are indicating that the momentum is swinging toward Trump.
One market, the New Zealand-based PredictIt, showed that traders betting on the outcome of the election were pricing Trump’s odds at winning at close to 60% in the third week of October.
And the Virtual Tout, an analysis of prediction markets by Northwestern University academic Tom Miller, said the momentum has shifted from early October from a Harris win to a Trump victory, indicating on Oct. 23 that Trump would take 324 electoral votes, well over the needed 270 needed to win.
RealClearPolling.com has a list of some of the places where people can make bets on the presidential race.
