Former president Donald Trump’s chances of winning back the White House are now better than they were before he debated President Joe Biden in June, according to a betting site.
As of midday Tuesday, Polymarket gave Trump a 64.1 percent chance of winning while Harris had a 35.9 percent chance of winning.
At 1am ET on June 27, the day of the debate between Biden and Trump, the former president’s chances of winning stood at 60 percent to 34 percent for Biden on the site, Newsweek noted.
Biden struggled to make sense during the debate and appeared to lose his train of thought in the middle of sentences on several occasions. The showdown prompted an effort within the Democratic Party to remove Biden from atop the ticket, and the president finally relented on July 21, when he endorsed Harris. The vice president quickly became the Democratic presumptive nominee.
On October 1, Harris was ahead on the betting site, according to Polymarket, with a 50 percent chance of winning to Trump’s 49 percent. But, she has lost momentum in polling and betting sites in recent weeks.
The betting market also gives Trump better odds of winning the seven battleground states, including, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada.
Biden won six out of seven in 2020, losing North Carolina to Trump, but using the swing states to propel him to victory.
Polymarket states that as of about noon Tuesday, Trump has a 70 percent chance of winning North Carolina, a 62 percent chance of winning Pennsylvania, a 60 percent chance of winning Michigan, a 57 percent chance of winning Wisconsin, a 71 percent chance of winning Georgia, a 74 percent chance of winning Arizona, and a 63 percent chance of winning Nevada.
In FiveThirtyEight’s election simulations, Trump wins 51 times out of 100 to Harris’s 49. This is despite Harris being 1.9 percent ahead in the average of national polls, with neither candidate reaching the 50 percent mark.
“There is a less than 1-in-100 chance of no Electoral College winner,” according to the site.
But because of the Electoral College, Trump could win the election while losing the popular vote, much like he did in 2016.
Harris leads among those who have already cast their ballots following the opening of early voting, but this does not mean that she’s set to win the election. More Democrats tend to vote early compared to Republicans, who usually vote in bigger numbers on Election Day.
