Donald Trump’s chances of winning the Presidential election has risen by three percentage point, to 37% on Tuesday morning, but Joe Biden remains the favourite at 63%.
According to betting data, there is a lot of potential for controversy after the election with a 45% chance that Trump will not concede should he lose the election.
Almost 100m votes have already been cast which could take days to count, and the Department of Justice has sent 18 states to control intimidation or suppression against voters.
Sarbjit Bakhshi, Smarkets Head of Political Markets told LondonLovesBusiness, “With just under 100m early votes cast at the time of writing compared to a total vote count of nearly 140 million in 2016, the next president may well have already been decided.
“Although Donald Trump has risen by three percentage points this morning to 37%, Joe Biden (63%) continues to lead our $17.7m election-winner market – and has done since June. FiveThirtyEight’s model also predicts a Biden victory, however it is much more bullish at around 89%.
“We’re seeing this contrast between the betting markets and polling data partially because bettors are taking into account a host of potentially important factors that other models may not, such as polling errors, voter suppression, and issues related to the count. According to our market there is currently a 45% chance Trump doesn’t concede the result even if he loses, and it could be that some of these aforementioned factors bring down Biden’s vote share.
“If the result is subject to legal challenges, the Republicans’ packing of state courts and the pro-conservative Supreme Court could increase Trump’s chance of ensuring the result he is looking for – something the Biden camp will know only too well.”
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