Everyone wants to know who’s going to win the presidency in November, and the answer to that question will vary widely, depending on whom you ask.
For example, regular readers of The Western Journal may recall when Vivek Ramaswamy predicted in December that the establishment would never let either former President Donald Trump or incumbent President Joe Biden win. (Nor was he alone in that belief.)
The Economist gives Trump a 68 percent chance of winning. The Hill predicts Trump to win as well, but only gives him a 56 percent chance. FiveThirtyEight, on the other hand, gives Biden the edge — but only a slight one, 51-to-49. And historian Allan Lichtman, who has predicted nine of the last 10 presidential elections correctly, told Fox News recently that, while he hasn’t yet made an official call for 2024 yet, “a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose to Trump.”
Take all that together, and it’s probably a little too early for anyone to make a confident call about what’s going to happen on Election Day.
Anyone, that is, except the oddsmakers.
According to sports betting website Sports Handle, Trump has a 58.6 percent chance of re-taking the Oval Office, while Biden lags well behind him at 39.1 percent.
Of the third-party candidates currently in the race, only one — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at 3.1 percent — appears on the site’s “US Election Winners Probability Dashboard,” which lists the top 10 favorites.
Kennedy, however, appears in fourth place on the list, behind Trump and Biden, of course — but also behind former first lady Michelle Obama, at 4.5 percent.
Four of the remaining six rounding out the top 10 list are Democrats, presumably the favored choices of those who like to bet the long shots.
Would you be willing to bet that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States?
California Gov. Gavin Newsom beats out Vice President Kamala Harris, 2.8 percent to 2.2 percent, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer edges out former first lady Hillary Clinton, 1 percent to 0.9 percent.
Also on the list are former Trump U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at 1.4 percent and Ramaswamy at 0.7 percent.
The graph allows the user to input start and end dates and choose from a list of potential future presidents to view how their odds of winning the White House — at least according to the formulas used by the site — have changed over time.
In addition to the 10 listed above, users can review the odds for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana Pete Buttigieg, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips — who, to be honest, I had kind of forgotten about.
Apparently, so had most of the oddsmakers, as he never scored more than 1 percent on this graph, which includes data going back to August 2022.
Off course, any such model is only as good as the data on which it’s based, and it’s hard to say much about the quality of that data here, given that all Sports Handle says about it is that it comes “from a diverse array of odds providers, ensuring a comprehensive and balanced perspective on the election forecasts.”
Whatever that “diverse array” might be, the graph is updated every Thursday, according to the site.
Do keep in mind, however, as the site is careful to remind us, that betting on political outcomes is illegal in the U.S.
So even if you prefer the long shots and think that, say, 2024 might turn out to be Hillary’s year after all (Third time’s a charm, right?), I wouldn’t recommend putting any money on it.
