Former President Trump has surged ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in at least one betting market after receiving a surprise boost as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) continues in Chicago.
Trump, who was surpassed by Harris in the prediction markets a week ago, has regained his position as the frontrunner on PolyMarket, where traders on Wednesday gave him a 52% chance of winning the 2024 presidential election.
Harris' odds dropped to 47%. Last week, the site had Harris beating Trump, 51% to 46%.
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Trump also saw a boost in his odds on BetUS on Wednesday, though the former president was still barely trailing Harris on the platform as of early afternoon with an implied probability of 52.38% to 54.55%, and Trump was gaining ground. Harris continues, as she has for weeks, to lead Trump on PredictIt, though her odds fell one point Wednesday to 55%, while Trump sat at 48% on the site.
BetUS director of public relations Tim Williams told FOX Business the market move Wednesday occurred as a fresh wave of betting action came in on Trump.
"My pure speculation might be that the betting public believes that having to revise down payroll growth by 818,000 jobs — that’s 818,000 fewer jobs than reported earlier — could hurt Harris," Williams said.
He suggested the increasing betting volume on Trump could also be a result of the chatter that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is considering endorsing or joining forces with Trump.
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Rutgers University statistics professor Harry Crane, an expert on prediction markets, told FOX Business that Trump's surge on PolyMarket in recent days is "pretty significant movement," especially because there is nothing definitive that he could point to suggesting the reason behind the rise besides the speculation that RFK might drop out and endorse Trump.
"I'm not aware of anything new that's happened on Trump's front in the past week that would warrant him coming back in any kind of drastic fashion," Crane said.
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Acknowledging that he was commenting anecdotally, the professor said, "I think that the most obvious things that I see is that Harris has released some economic proposals, and she's answered a few questions more than before. And maybe those haven't been so great for her."
