Latest 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Odds: Closing Argument – Who Wins the Election?

For a matchup that feels like it has been 4 years in the making, we are just days away from the 2024 U.S. presidential election between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris.

We may not have a winner by Tuesday night, but hopefully by this time next week, we’ll have a good idea of who won the election. This has been billed as one of the closest elections ever, but a significant recent swing in betting odds favors Trump by a margin so wide that Harris would need to pull off the 3rd-biggest upset win since 1872.

As we learned from 2016 and 2020, the final margin in the Electoral College may not be razor-thin margins, but the margin of votes in the swing states that determine who wins can make this one of the closest elections on record.

This 2024 election is also going to take polling to task with many questioning just how accurate it is as there is a known margin of error of anywhere from 3.5 to nearly 10 points in a lot of polls. When the polls are close, those margins of error are huge, so it would be very unlikely for either candidate to sweep all 7 of the swing states in this election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin).

With voter turnout expected to be huge, you just never know who will show up to vote for the 1st time that the polls completely disregarded.

Let’s review the paths to victory, the polling outcomes to watch that could determine the winner, analyze the latest election betting odds at the betting sites, and we’ll finally make our final best value pick for the winner of this election.

Current Election Betting Odds

At the start of October, many oddsmakers were giving Harris and Trump the same -110 odds to win the election. But ever since Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, started campaigning hard for Trump in recent weeks, the odds have gone heavily in Trump’s favor. He’s been well over 60% at Election Betting Odds to win, and the Polymarket betting platform that Musk has pushed has Trump at 65% or higher.

But is it even realistic when this thing has been so close, and the events of October were not significantly good or bad for either candidate to the point where it should have changed this much?

If the reports are accurate of “betting whales” pumping millions of dollars onto Trump to boost his odds, then that’s not necessarily a good indicator of how people will vote on the election. Remember, United States bookmakers do not accept bets on the US election. You have to use offshore books, and the Polymarket site does not accept bets from US residents either.

While people may be betting real money in Trump’s favor for their indication of who will win, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are American voters who actually get a vote to influence the outcome of this race.

But the sportsbooks are taking notice of the recent Trump surge. Here are the latest odds as of Thursday morning:

• On BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review to learn more), Trump is -190 to win the election, an implied chance of 65.5%. Harris is +165.
• On Bovada (visit our Bovada Review to learn more), Trump is -200 to win the election, an implied chance of 66.7%. Harris is +170.
• Since 1872, the largest upset winners in the US presidential election are Harry Truman in 1948 (+1500), Donald Trump in 2016 (+375), and Grover Cleveland in 1884 (+150).
• For reference, Trump was +150 and Joe Biden (the winner) was -175 in 2020.

This is all a shocking twist from 4 weeks ago when they were both -110. But to give you an idea of how close this is, RealClear Polling has data on where things stood just 5 days before the election in 2024, 2020, and 2016. Look at how close things were in Pennsylvania, the No. 1 swing state this year:

• 2016: Clinton was up 3.5 points over Trump with 5 days to go, and she lost Pennsylvania.
• 2020: Biden was up 4.3 points over Trump with 5 days to go, and he won Pennsylvania.
• 2024: Trump is up 0.8 points over Harris in Pennsylvania with 5 days to go.

If Clinton can be up 3.5 points and still lose, Trump’s lead of 0.8 points is well within the margin of error. Saying this thing is too close to call is not a copout. It’s just a more realistic view than buying into the numbers that Musk keeps pushing on X/Twitter. Remember, Musk told Tucker Carlson in early October that if Trump doesn’t win the election, Elon might be going to jail. He’s not an unbiased observer here.

In tracking the 2024 election odds for the last 11-plus months, it just doesn’t feel reasonable that Trump could all of a sudden have this much of an edge to win. It’s going to be close.

The Clearest Path to Victory: Pennsylvania and the Blue Wall

As you are probably aware, Pennsylvania has been deemed the most crucial state and likely tipping point for the winner of the 2024 election. If you win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, chances are good that you’ll win this election.

However, the clearest path to victory for the Democrats is the Blue Wall trio of states in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Losing any of those states would make winning very hard unless they were to win another swing state like Georgia, North Carolina, or Arizona. But they can lose those, lose Nevada, and they can still get to 270 electoral votes for the win if the Blue Wall is upheld.

Remember, the Blue Wall is where these 2016 and 2020 elections were decided. Trump pulled off the huge upset over Hillary Clinton in 2016 thanks to flipping all 3 Blue Wall states red by slim margins of just tens of thousands of votes. In 2020, Joe Biden and Harris were able to win the Blue Wall states back for the Democrats, which is why they won the election.

The Blue Wall states are not a monolith of voters, but they have all voted the same way in each election since 2000. However, Wisconsin is historically the one that is more likely to break away from the others and vote differently.

Here are the current state election odds according to BetOnline for the Blue Wall:

• Michigan: Democrats are -125 and Republicans are -105.
• Pennsylvania: Republicans are -155 and Democrats are +125.
• Wisconsin: Republicans are -140 and Democrats are +110.

That’s already interesting as it’s showing that Michigan is the state most likely to break the ranks from the others and stick with the Democrats again. Pennsylvania being the highest odds for the Republicans is also interesting after the Democrats were able to prevail in the 2022 midterms when Dr. Oz failed to win a Senate seat over Democrat John Fetterman.

But Pennsylvania is the potential deal breaker. Even if Harris lost Pennsylvania and won Georgia, the Republicans would still win 271-267 (unless Harris also won Nevada).

The Blue Wall is where the main focus should be Tuesday, and it’s no surprise both candidates have hammered visiting those states in the final month of the campaign. That’s likely where this thing is getting decided again.

The Polling Data Should Be Fascinating

There are so many polls these days, and a site like FiveThirtyEight tries to make good use of that data in making projections for the election. Their model currently projects Trump winning in 52-of-100 simulations, but that’s still very close to 48-of-100 for Harris.

But not all data is good data, so it will be very interesting to see what comes of the demographics of voters in this election. Just consider some of these stories that we’ve heard and will keep an eye on when the data is released:

• Have Republicans made enough significant gains in Latino voters to offset what is usually a strong minority vote for Democrats?
• Have Democrats lost too many Black voters from 2020 to the Trump side?
• This election is expected to break heavily along gender lines with majority women voting for Harris and majority men voting for Trump, so we’ll see if the female turnout is higher in the first election after abortion rights were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, a move Trump has taken credit for.
• Voters who weren’t old enough to vote in 2020 will be courted by both sides, but will Republicans turn out more of the “Bro voters” who like Joe Rogan podcasts than Democrats will get the Taylor Swift fans after her endorsement of Kamala?
• Does the youth vote that sides with the people of Palestine in that conflict hurt the Democrats after the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of Israel’s war?
• Are non-college educated White voters really on the decline for Trump?
• While many high-profile Republicans have publicly gone against Trump, including his former Vice President Mike Pence and the Cheney family, will a record number of registered Republican voters (maybe the Nikki Haley primary voters) actually vote for a Democrat like Harris instead?

Also, data from Axios suggest that young Gen Z voters are far more likely to lie to pollsters about their vote:

Half of Gen Z voters have lied to people close to them about who they’re voting for, according to the latest Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.

“The new social etiquette is to be like Switzerland: Why do you want that heat?” https://t.co/BsGkeigVlN pic.twitter.com/biAT4JWsRm

— Axios (@axios) October 30, 2024

The volume of these voting blocs who show up (or don’t show up) on Tuesday will be huge in determining the winner.

Final Prediction: Who Wins the 2024 Election?

This is not an endorsement of either candidate. But if you were betting today, I think the better value is on Kamala Harris and the Democrats at +EV. If it does end up being one of the closest elections ever, you want the odds of the underdog.

Imagine if there was a sporting event that the media spent 3 months hyping up as too close and unpredictable to call. In that case, would it be a wise move to back the side with -200 odds over the side with +170 odds? Probably not.

But there are other reasons to think Harris is undervalued here:

• According to CNN’s Harry Enten, polling undervalued Trump and Republicans in 2016 and 2020, but it has never undervalued the same party 3 times in a row since 1972.
• Meanwhile, Harris could be undervalued given her late entry into the race and a 1st-time candidate while Trump is in his 3rd election in a row.
• Democrats have won 7-of-8 popular votes since 1992, they’ve won 5-of-8 elections by the electoral vote, and they suffered 2 of the closest losses ever in 2000 (Florida decided it) and 2016 (Blue Wall states).
• The Democratic candidates running for Senate have significant odds at BetOnline to win their races over Trump-backed challengers in Arizona (-400) and Nevada (-325), so if voter turnout is high, why wouldn’t those same voters largely vote for Harris for President too?
• The Democrats maintaining Nevada (6 EV) and Arizona (11 EV) from 2020 would help offset a potential loss of Georgia (16 EV), which has been a very close state in elections since 2020.
• Abortion rights were a huge voter issue in the 2022 midterms, and this will be the 1st election for president since they were overturned by Republicans – this could bite them badly.
• The Harris campaign has raised $1 billion since late July, giving her a big financial advantage over Trump in this election for things like advertising and voter outreach.

Given the crazy swings this election has taken this year, would it surprise anyone if this was close to even in the odds by Tuesday? There’s still time left for that. But that’s why it’s best to take advantage of the high odds for Harris now if you haven’t already.

The outcome will be historic either way.

Pick: US Presidential Election 2024 Winner – Kamala Harris (+170) at Bovada