Sportsbooks More Accurate Than Polls in Predicting US Presidential Election Winner

Traditional electoral science is under threat of being outsmarted by sportsbooks, who have, once again, proven to be the savvier and more perspicacious analysts of the US Presidential Election in 2024.

Established and respected pollsters such as Nate Silver, The New York Times, and FiveThirtyEight, not to mention The Economist, all gave the election a 50-50 chance of winning, not to mention The Economist’s bold claim that Harris would win with 56% probability.

BetOnline Outsmarts Traditional Pollsters with Spot-on Prediction

All of this was upset as soon as the first results started coming in. Although Trump, who was a solid favorite in sportsbooks at -162, and specifically at BetOnline Sportsbook, an offshore operator, briefly dropped to -145 favorite at 4 pm on Tuesday, the President-Elect quickly rallied to -225 with the next update at 5 pm.

By 6 pm it was almost certain that Donald Trump would be reelected for a second term in the White House with his odds rising to -320.

What was immediately clear at the time was that traditional pollsters have been wide of the mark, failing to accurately predict the election race, and possibly feeding unreliable data back to both political camps to some extent.

To the pollsters’ credit, Trump always seemed to have a slight edge, even though his debate with Kamala Harris, the Vice President and Democratic nominee, seemed to undermine his advantage. Regardless, Trump managed to return to the top of polls in October and retained his lead.

Prediction market Kalshi has long had Trump as the most likely winner, along with Polymarket, which saw Trump as the most preferred choice among its bettors. Speaking of traditional sportsbooks, BetMGM’s Ontario operations had Trump listed at -2,500 odds to win the White House at 8 pm on Tuesday, showing that the race was over.

Trump Surprises Everyone By Winning Popular Vote and Electoral College

As to BetOnline, the company’s political expert, Paul Krishnamurty, spoke with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and confirmed that sportsbooks had indeed had the statistical advantage, having called the election more accurately and predicting if not a landslide for Trump, then at least a more confident win for the President-Elect.

Krishnamurty acknowledged that traditional polls seemed to still suggest VP Harris would win when the sportsbooks flipped their odds, and many onlookers wondered why. Yet, Trump’s win was even more impressive, because he had won the popular vote – not just the electoral college, making him a rare exception.

Krishnamurty said that he was similarly surprised to see Trump secure both the electoral college and the popular vote, giving him a clear mandate to govern over the next four years. In the meantime, traditional pollsters may continue to give ground to professional oddsmakers who seem to be calling the races more accurately than ever before.