National polling may indicate the 2024 presidential election will be extraordinarily close but for Donald Trump’s campaign, they’re asserting they will win by a landslide.
“We’re leading in every swing state.” “We’re leading in the early vote.” “We’re leading in all the polls,” Trump touts during his campaign speeches.
The Republican campaign is looking at and promoting polling numbers that show the former president’s odds of winning are great – though some of the data they cite is not reliable or skewed to favor Trump.
One longtime member of Trump’s inner circle told Axios: “We’ve never had data that looks this good.”
On Truth Social, Trump posted numbers from Polymarket, a financial exchange that allows people (though not Americans) to bet on the outcome of the U.S. election, that show he is leading Harris by more than 25 percentage points.
Trump allies on X have posted similar findings from Polymarket that indicate Trump will surely win the election and Tesla CEO Elon Musk insists the numbers are more accurate than polls.
But the numbers from Polymarket are not necessarily indicative of the election outcome, or even how people will vote. The odds are based on the amount of money individuals place on who they think will win the election. Analysis of the practice has found that just four accounts that bet more than $30 million controlled that.
A number of right-wing influencers and commentators have confidently declared that Trump will win the election, without providing solid evidence to back up the prediction.
Trump now leading Kamala by 3% in betting markets. More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line. https://t.co/WrsqZ2z8pp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2024
One, who posted data with no official link, claimed Trump has a “94.5% chance of winning”. When looking at the numbers from the websites he cited, neither claims that figure.
Another influencer, with more than one million followers, made a list of “15 signs Trump is going to win” which did not include any official polling data.
The former president has even posted informal data on Truth Social that favors him, such as a “cookie poll” from a bakery in Pennslyvania that polled people based on what color cookie sold more.
The sense of confidence in Trump, his allies and his campaign is reminiscent of the 2020 election when the former president asserted there was no possible way he could lose other than the election being “rigged”.
When he did lose, he spread misinformation about voting procedures causing an uprising among his supporters that culminated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
But average polling numbers culminated by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight show an extremely close matchup between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – one that may take days to determine the outcome of.
