The odds for the 2020 United States presidential election have been updated and released, and it’s business as usual for President Donald J. Trump. His re-election odds continue to have him as a heavy favorite.
Last month, Trump was sitting at +175 as a heavy favorite to win the election. Now with the election just 18 months away, Trump is now placed at +120. The president has been going up in the odds released by US betting sites ever since the end of the Mueller investigation — which there turned out to be no collusion, by the way, leaving the press and the Democratic Party in a state of foolishness.
The president has kept his base of Republican voters extremely loyal to him, claiming a near-historic high 91% approval rating among the party. Those numbers to go along with massive voter enthusiasm and donations has Trump sitting pretty for re-election — and this despite his controversial actions (to some) and the constant attacks from the media. At this point, it looks that Trump is untouchable and nothing will be able to hurt him in the polling.
We’re also starting to see the field get more clear as far as who the favorites and long shots are with who the Democrat will be to challenge Trump. Right now, the top favorite is former vice president Joe Biden and he’s placed at a distant +400 odds.
When Biden announced his bid for the presidency, he would immediately shoot up to the second spot in the odds, the highest that he’s been at since the campaign has gotten underway. The No. 2 position has been previously held by Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris.
Biden enters the Democratic primaries with the Obama coalition, and it’ll be hard for any candidate to break that base from him throughout, especially since Biden used to be the former VP of the 44th president. It’s still early and the debates haven’t gotten underway yet, so there’s plenty of time for a major shift to happen in the polls, but right now, Biden leads “big league” — as a matter of fact, he has a 19 point lead over second-place Bernie Sanders.
Before we get into the odds, I must warn you: Stay away from Beto O’Rourke. Don’t place your money anywhere near him to take the nomination away from Biden, let alone take the presidency away from Trump. After becoming a media darling and originally doing his thing in fundraising, he’s crumbled ever since then. Originally at +600, he’s now fallen all the way down to +2500. This is mainly due to his weird behaviors and weird past, including wanting a cow to ‘wax his ass’ and ‘scrub his balls’ and fantasizing about running over children. Just a strange character.
Originally unsure of whether or not she was going to run for President of the United States, Kamala Harris would eventually decide to run for the Democratic nomination. Though not the favorite right now, Harris does enter the primaries with a bit of momentum, including having the support of multiple celebrities. Ellen DeGeneres has been the biggest one pushing for Harris to be the first female president.
Since that wave, however, Harris has dropped a bit as far as media exposure and voter enthusiasm goes. Fortunately for her, it hasn’t show much in the odds. She’s actually improved from +1300 to +1100. Keep an eye on her as the primaries go along, she may be able to build a coalition based on identity politics — and that certainly seems to be her plan.
A Democrat to keep an eye on as time goes along is entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who came out of the woodwork with a solid wave of momentum. Currently sitting in the odds at +2000, he has increased over time due to an excellent social media campaign and pulling in fans from being on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. And the biggest reason for his success: His “Freedom Dividend” plan, a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) that will see every adult between the ages of 18-64 receive a free $1,000/month — no strings attached. Keep an eye on Yang, especially as a strong long shot pick, but I would go ahead and place that bet before his odds increase if you decide to do so. That may happen as the debates get underway.
Another one who has improved in the odds is Elizabeth Warren. Currently drifting under the radar, she quietly moved up from +3000 to +2000 in the last week. At the end of the day, she’s a brand name, so Warren will definitely have her opportunity to keep improving in the polling. She’ll need to continue to recover from her Native American scandal to do so, however.
RESUME:
*There are many more awards than listed that Trump has won.
President Donald J. Trump continues to come in as the heavy favorite and had even more of a momentum boost just recently being fresh off of a campaign rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania that saw another Republican being added to the House of Representatives. Also, with immigration being one of the biggest issues with his base, expect his odds to improve even more with The Daily Caller reporting that he will invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with illegal immigrants. With constant winning and a booming economy, it’s Trump’s presidency to lose.
As it stands right now, Joe Biden has an enormous 19-point lead in the polls for the lead of the Democratic nomination. That could change when the debates arrive, but at the current moment, Biden’s campaign is doing really well. He’s even receiving massive support with votes, even in battleground states such as Pennsylvania — and all of this is happening despite the reports about Biden’s links to China and his son’s consistent reports linking him to corruption. Right now, nothing seems to be working against Biden, and Democratic rivals will have a hard time breaking his Obama coalition as a result. It’ll be interesting to see, however, if Biden’s ‘Sleepy Joe’ tactics will get in the way in the debates. He’s had a hard time keeping up with progressive talking points.
Bernie Sanders just doesn’t have that spark and wave of magic like he did in 2016 after being involved with hypocrisy and his wife being involved with bank fraud, and not just that, but he was also exposed to once having a communist flag in his office. Now he wants to attack capitalism, while embracing capitalism himself: He wants to tax stock, bond and derivatives trades, while also radically crashing a Walmart annual shareholder meeting — things that won’t go well in a general election. And nevermind the fact that a new poll also revealed that Bernie Sanders is the least-liked Democrat along with New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Needless to say, Sanders’ stock appears to currently be on a decline.
I appreciate Kamala Harris’ recent push to try and reduce the maternal mortality rate, but she’s got a lot of work to do if she wants to be President of the United States. She’s fifth with just 7% of the vote, 32 points behind leader Joe Biden. She’s playing the game of identity politics to try to boost her numbers, and it appears to be working as she’s appealing to black voters. But even if she did make it past the Democratic primaries, could she beat Trump in a general election? I’m not sure her aggressive push for a ban on gun imports will help — you can’t test the constitution too much and expect to get the majority of American votes in the Electoral College.
Pete Buttigieg has been getting a decent amount of media exposure and even was on a Fox News town hall recently, exposing himself to a lot more independents and conservatives in particular. However, something isn’t clicking between Americans and Buttigieg. In the last set of odds, Buttigieg would actually be ahead of Kamala Harris in the No. 4 position, but he’s dropped to fifth now. Making statements like “men need to stand up for abortion rights,” forcing a part of a country’s citizenry that was founded off of ‘freedom and liberty’, isn’t going to treat you too good in the polls. Buttigieg has a lot of work to do in a lot of different groups as well, it’s not just men. Here’s another example: He only has 1% of the African-American vote. This is why Buttigieg’s star is falling a bit. He’ll get his chance to try and recover in the debates.
After nearly 20 years of business and entrepreneurship, Andrew Yang is now throwing his hat into the political ring for the office of the President of the United States. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a smart guy, and I agree with him about the U.S. government being 24 years behind on technology compared to other countries in the world, but there’s a problem. I’m a little uncertain about his socialist-friendly “Freedom Dividend” plan, a policy that would give every American adult a free $1,000 a month with no questions asked. Not only would that worsen the welfare state and create more dependency, non-productivity, and economic burden, but it would put us in even more debt. His plan of “they would invest the money into their own business” mindset would drastically backfire. I don’t see this going well with the American taxpayer when they vote in a general election.
Uh oh, is Elizabeth Warren riding a wave of momentum that could turn into success in the Democratic primaries? In the last set of odds, Warren was placed with +3000 odds. Since the odds have been updated, she actually improved by 1,000 points to shoot up to +2000. She’s certainly doing her thing in the polls as well — a new 2020 poll showed that ‘very liberal’ Democrats prefer Warren, so she has that base there and it’s continuing to build. But here’s the problem: How is she going to be able to get independent and conservative voters? She’s not showing a way to do it, and she even snubbed Fox News who has a lot of independent voters, not just folks on the political right. She may be improving, but it’s hard for me to see Warren winning in a general election, especially against Trump and his popularity — still a solid long shot pick, however.
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