Joe Biden’s Chances of Winning 2024 Election Surge

Betting odds suggest Joe Biden’s chances of winning the presidential election are increasing.

According to Polymarket, an online prediction platform where users can place yes or no bets on world events, there is a 44 percent chance that the incumbent president will win the election, against presumed Republican nominee challenger Donald Trump, who has a 47 percent chance of coming out on top.

This marks an 11 percent swing from 25 February when the platform said there was a 54 percent chance Trump would win and a 33 percent chance that Biden would prevail.

Newsweek contacted Biden’s campaign and a representative for Trump by email to comment on this story.

Biden has had a series of positive polls. According to Wednesday survey from Morning Consult, he is leading with 44 percent of the vote share over Trump’s 42 percent.

Compared to January polling from Morning Consult, this poll shows a net seven-point swing towards Biden.

However, some commentators have said that overall, the race is too close to call, given the election is months away and some polls have put Trump in the lead.

A Trafalgar Group poll of 1,092 likely voters between March 29 and 31, for instance, forecast Trump to gain 43 percent of the vote share and Biden to win 40 percent.

Speaking to Newsweek, Mark Shanahan, an associate professor in politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K. said monitoring where betting money was going was a useful indicator of voting intention.

He said: “It’s always worth taking note of the bookmakers and where the betting money’s going as the election race hots up. This is a close race with two flawed leading candidates and it’s not surprising to see the gap between the candidates narrowing into margin of error territory.”

But he added that Biden would need to work on his communications regarding the success of his economic policies to secure the vote. “Most elections are won on the economy, and the US economy is doing well relative to the rest of the world,” he said.

“But Biden still can’t convince voters that his policies are the reason for this. There’s a nostalgia for Trump’s tax cuts, even if they really didn’t deliver much for average citizens. Biden still has to make his economic case far more forcefully, and also show the deficiencies in the Trump manifesto on other key issues such as abortion and healthcare.

“At the moment, Biden is polling negatively on his perceived lack of leadership in the Gaza war, while Trump remains mired in his legal travails,” he added. “It’s likely the November winner will be the candidate facing the least-worst issues in the minds of voters by the time November rolls around.”