The polls refer consistently to the 2024 presidential election as a dead heat. Real Clear Politics’ aggregation of national polls gives Kamala Harris a scant 0.2% lead over Donald Trump. Fivethirtyeight has Trump winning 51 times per 100 simulations. The Economist simulations favor Trump 53% of the time.
All of these analyses are operating within a statistical margin of error. “This election is a coin flip,” says Matan Harel, a Northeastern University assistant professor of mathematics. So why then is Trump listed as a relatively strong 61.7% favorite on the crypto platform Polymarket? The U.K.’s Betfair Exchange predicts a “likely win” for Trump. The answer, says a Northeastern gambling expert, has to do with the economics of sports betting.
