Biden leads in odds to win the White House: Smarkets
Sarbjit Bakhshi, Smarkets Head of Political Markets, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to break down the latest overseas betting odds in the 2020 race to the White House.
Video Transcript
KRISTIN MYERS: Let's dig into the odds to the White House or at least the betting odds. We're joined now by Sarbjit Bakhshi, Smarkets Head of Political Markets. Sarbjit, thank you so much for coming back to speak with me today.
I'm wondering if you can tell us all where we stand now. I saw that President Donald Trump has actually jumped a little bit in the betting market.
SARBJIT BAKHSHI: Yeah, so last time I spoke to you was on Friday. We've had another $3 million traded on our market. So we currently had $18 million to decide who the next president of the US is going to be. And we have Joe Biden at 67%, Donald Trump at 33%.
We've seen a slight increase on Biden from the last time we spoke on Friday by 1%. But it seems, heading into the final stretch, that Biden is 67% to win.
KRISTIN MYERS: All right, so Biden, of course, is forecasted to win. But talk to me about the odds of a delayed election result, according to your betters. I'm seeing that it seems as if nearly 50% are saying that they don't think Donald Trump is going to concede.
SARBJIT BAKHSHI: Yeah, so we have a special market, just in case Donald Trump doesn't win this election, whether he will actually graciously step down, concede the election, and hand over peacefully to Joe Biden. Our market is saying that yes, that he would do that. 58% saying that he will step aside if he loses the election. But interestingly, 46% saying no. So it's good-- it's on the right side of things, but perhaps not as strong as you would like to see in this kind of market.
KRISTIN MYERS: So I know that you gave us some of the odds of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. However, I know that you guys are also looking at the Electoral College and the path to victory. Can you break down that for us?
SARBJIT BAKHSHI: Sure. So obviously, we have state-level maps, state-level markets where people can trade who's going to win. And then we aggregate that together to an Electoral College map. Currently, we're looking at 312 Electoral College votes for Democrats versus 226 for the Republicans. So it's a comfortable Democrat victory.
But breaking that down even further into the key states, you have things like Florida, which we've talked about before is essential for Donald Trump. And we're showing a 58% chance that the Republicans will take Florida. So that's good news for Donald Trump.
But then shifting across to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is a state that Joe Biden needs to take. So where does that stand? And that's looking at 68% for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania. And that's part of that whole Rust Belt. If they all go to Biden, Florida does not become-- is not important anymore to Biden's victory.
But even moving across slightly to North Carolina, that's at 51%-51%. That is a crazy toss-up. No one knows which way that's going to go. Plenty of drama left in this election. I can tell you that.
KRISTIN MYERS: Plenty of drama. But is there plenty of money left in the market right now, Sarbjit? I know you had-- you had a very lofty gamble there. You said that the betting market was going to double by today, just over the weekend. I know you mentioned some $3 million. But how much more do you think is going to be pouring into this betting market?
SARBJIT BAKHSHI: Well, this market has been changing all the time. You know, when I was looking up the data to give to you, I was just trying to keep them still in some way. But they just kept moving, and they kept moving. So enormous sums of money are going on.
Like I said on Friday, we have twice as many people trading on Trump to win than Joe Biden. But the people who are betting on Joe Biden are matching that dollar for dollar, and in fact, are betting twice as much on a Biden victory than Trump. So these crazy dynamics are just pushing this market further and further.
And you'd expect, if one side was unbalanced, the other side we'd see a big shift. But what's happening is for every dollar that Trump supporters are putting onto our market, Biden supporters are willing to put up $2. It's crazy. It's crazy. I think we are very much heading towards double the amount that we got on Friday by the end of tonight.
