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How do the newest polls look? The race is tightening...
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But Betfair Exchange punters are in no mood to underestimate the Trump Bump
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How has the picture changed recently? And what could change things next?
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How do the newest polls look? The race is tightening...
Yesterday, a new national poll of voters showed Harris and Trump within spitting distance of each other once again.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted with at least 4,000 voters across a week, found Kamala Harris at a 46% lead compared to Donald Trump's 43%. This is pretty unchanged from the same poll a week ago, which resulted in Harris at 45% to Trump's 42%.
When polled on specific issues, 70% of voters in the poll said the cost of living was on the wrong track, 60% said the economy was headed in the wrong direction, and 65% said the same of immigration policy.
Asked on which candidate had the better approach, Trump led on both the economy and immigration by more than 10%.
Other polls showed a mixed picture. TIPP had Trump +1 over Harris, USA Today/Suffolk had Harris +1.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post-Schar School poll, another very credible poll conducted in the first half of October, showed a continued challenging picture in key swing states.
Trump was found to be ahead by +3 in Arizona, and the same in North Carolina. The two candidates are in a dead heat in Nevada, while Harris is up +2 in Michigan and Pennsylvania, up +3 in Wisconsin, and up +4 in Georgia.
Yet the picture on the betting markets is grimmer still for Vice President Harris...
The punters have built in a Trump Bump
A week ago, the polls were showing Trump and Harris neck and neck in Swing State polling, as well as the betting markets.
Swing states are battleground states that could vote either party on election day, including states won with small margins in 2020, or states that switched party between 2016 and 2020.
On the 15th October on the Betfair Exchange, Trump was ahead in four of the seven Swing State markets, with Harris ahead in three.
But Trump has turned the tables in the last week, and is now ahead in every single key Swing State for this election. Even in the states he was previously ahead in, his odds have shortened in the last week.
On the Betfair Exchange, three states have switched allegiances from Harris to Trump in the last week.
These are Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. We covered the details of Michigan in our recent Swing State Explainer, and Nevada in our explainer last Sunday.
In Michigan, a week ago Harris had a 56% chance of winning, with Trump lagging at 45%. Yet they have flipped - Trump is now the one at around 54% chance, with Harris at 46%.
In Nevada, which we explained in our recent daily piece is a mystery to many political strategists, Trump has risen from a 45% chance of winning to a 59% chance.
Finally, in Wisconsin, Trump and Harris in the last week have traded places almost exactly. Harris was at 53% likelihood of winning, but now Trump is at the same likelihood. Today, Harris sits where Trump was a week ago - a 47% chance of winning.
How do they compare?
Punters are clearly more bullish on a second Trump Presidency than they are a Harris ascendancy.
This may be because of Trump's stellar history of bouncing back despite his many setbacks. Days before Trump's "Hush Money" trial against Stormy Daniels, his rival at the time Joe Biden briefly overtook him on the Election Winner market on the Betfair Exchange. Yet this lead only lasted 24 hours.
During his New York fraud trial and Supreme Court immunity hearing - a double whammy of legal woes - his chances of winning the Presidency actually increased by 1%.
This bullishness has meant that Trump has solidified an extended lead in the betting markets in recent weeks.
He is currently 8/131.61 to win the Presidency, giving him a 62% chance of winning the election. In comparison, Harris is down at 13/8, only a 38% chance.
His odds are the best of any election he has challenged. At this point in 2020 he was quite distant compared to Joe Biden - and at the same point in 2016 he had as little as 15% chance of winning against Hillary Clinton.
Yet the polls are much tighter. The respected FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Harris at 1.7% ahead of Trump, at 48.1% to Trump's 46.4%.
In swing states Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the two are neck-and-neck at the minute according to the same polling average.
Phenomena such as the "silent Trump voters" has meant in the past that polls undercount his advantage - something that the punters might be less inclined to believe. Given that only around 50,000 votes in swing states made the difference for Biden, they are right to be cautious.