Las Vegas odds turn sharply to predict a Biden victory in the fall

The smart money is on Joe Biden, apparently.

With the presidential election a little more than four months away, Biden has grown his lead over President Trump into the double-digits in some national polls. The White House’s questionable handling of the coronavirus pandemic—and the subsequent economic collapse that’s followed—has apparently eroded many voters’ confidence in the president, leading to his deteriorating poll numbers.

Vegas has taken notice. Bookmakers have shortened the odds of a Biden victory significantly in recent weeks—a trend that’s continued since the pandemic forced virtually the entire nation to go into lockdown in early March. According to online sportsbook Bovada, Biden’s odds are now sitting at -140, while underdog Trump’s odds have diminished to +120.

In plain English, that means that a $100 bet on Trump would net the bettor $120 in profits should the President win reelection; on the other hand, Biden’s odds mean that a $100 bet on the challenger would return a little more than $71 in profits should he win the White House. Yet another way to look at it is that Biden now has 7/10 odds and a roughly 58% chance of winning the election, while Trump has 6/5 odds and less than a 46% chance.

Those odds are a dramatic reversal of where things stood earlier in this year, before the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into freefall and damaged perhaps the President’s strongest argument for reelection. For context, on March 4—the day after Biden’s impressive Super Tuesday showing made him the presumptive Democratic nominee—Trump’s odds sat at -150, while Biden’s were at +160, according to data compiled by Oddshark.

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