Allison Bailey / AFP
This might be one of the closest races the U.S. presidential election has ever produced. It won’t be the closest – the 1824 election was very special indeed – but there’s a good chance this year’s battle between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be decided by just a handful of electoral seats.
If it weren’t for the Electoral College, this might not be a close race at all. Harris is polling about four percentage points higher than Trump; as we go to press, Bet365 has Harris and the Democratic Party as -500 favorites on their U.S. election odds board to win the popular vote. Trump and the Republican Party are +330 underdogs.
There might be some betting value in the Democrats, despite all that chalk – and with the polls under-representing Trump support in both 2016 and 2020. Trump and the GOP failed to win the popular vote on both occasions, and unless yet another dramatic event happens between now and November 5, the third time isn’t likely to be the charm.
Can I Bet on Politics in the U.S.?
Of course there will be more drama – even if it has to be created out of whole cloth. But no matter which side of this political fence you’re on, you can only bet on U.S. politics if your jurisdiction allows it. That means you’re shut out of betting at regulated online sportsbooks if you live in the States.
Or at least you were until two weeks ago. Back in November 2023, the New York-based predictions market Kalshi sued the Commodities Futures Trading Commission; on September 6, District of Columbia Judge Jia Cobb ruled in Kalshi’s favor, and on September 12, she denied a motion of delay for the CFTC. At that moment, providing politics odds and taking bets became legal again.
Sort of. The CFTC is appealing Cobb’s ruling, and a U.S. federal appeals court accepted their request for an emergency stay, so as soon as Kalshi had posted their new election markets, they were taken back down. Trading remains paused as we go to press.
What Are My Betting Options?
There’s a good chance the Kalshi/CFTC case will be resolved before November 5; in the meantime, on our Presidential Election Odds page, you’ll see a detailed U.S. election betting guide that looks into some of the different ways American bettors can get their money down on Trump vs. Harris 2024.
Throwing my two cents in, for those of you live stateside, your best choice in the regulated sphere might be with academic-based prediction markets such as PredictIt, which is based in Washington D.C. but owned and operated by the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
PredictIt received a “no-action letter” from the CFTC in 2014 that allows them to operate as a non-profit, much like the Iowa Electronic Markets (run by the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business) before them. Each market at PredictIt is limited to 5,000 traders, and the maximum trade allowed is $850, which should be plenty for most bettors.
How Do I Read the Election Odds?
We’ve got all the deets on that as well here. We use the American odds format as a default when we discuss U.S. election betting in this space; when you visit Bet365 (check our Bet365 Review) or other top sportsbooks, you might see decimal odds instead – for example, Harris and the Democrats are 1.20 at press time to win the popular vote, while Trump and the Republicans are 4.33.
You might even be at an online sportsbook where they use fractional odds (Harris 1/5, Trump 33/10) to display their election odds. Your chosen sportsbook(s) should have some kind of toggle in their settings that allows you to switch among the three formats; you can also use an online odds converter to work out equivalent odds and implied probabilities. These are the tools of the election betting trade, so use them well, and bet accordingly.