The political betting markets have become less optimistic about Vice President Kamala Harris’s prospects in November as a result of criticizing her CNN interview on Thursday, during which she struggled to justify her shifting opinions and occasionally called on running mate Tim Walz to speak for her.
According to Breitbart, the constantly shifting odds now indicate Harris losing to the former president, Donald Trump.
The vice president went from being the favorite to win with odds of 10/11 (52.4 percent) on Thursday to tied with Donald Trump on 19/20 (51.3 percent) each on Friday morning, according to the Star Sports betting company.
Over the same period, Trump’s odds of victory in November improved from 21/20 (48.8 percent) before the interview to 20/21 (51.2 percent), according to U.K. based bookmaker Betfair.
In an unscripted interview on Thursday, Harris answered basic questions about her candidacy and suitability to succeed President Joe Biden, giving the national media their first look at her. After more than a month on the campaign trail, reporters have questioned her spokesperson about why she has avoided the media. Thursday’s interview was the result of her weeks-long insistence that she would at last do so. Apparently, horse traders were not impressed.
“Vice President Harris is now tied at 19/20 with Republican candidate Donald Trump, drifting slightly from 10/11 yesterday. The Californian had been 5/6 in recent weeks but she has failed to surge ahead of Trump in the market,” Star Sports betting analyst William Kedjanyi told Newsweek. “GOP supporters will hope Trump can now go on to tip the balance in his favor, before November’s presidential election.”
He continued, “Before Kamala Harris’ sit-down interview with CNN overnight, the Betfair Exchange market had more or less been neck and neck. While the lead in the betting has flip flopped throughout August, momentum is now with Trump and he has become the odds-on favorite again after being backed into 21/20.”
Trump’s supporters have often pointed to the media’s incapacity to gauge his popularity among voters, highlighting his unexpected victory in 2016 and pollsters’ worries that the sector is still having problems identifying MAGA supporters. Gaining 270 electoral votes depends on winning many swing states that Trump won four years ago but barely lost in 2020, such as Georgia and Pennsylvania. In certain cases, even some Democrats have projected that Trump will win their state, such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
“I think if you match up Trump with Harris, and I think that’s what this is really about, and I do believe he’s going to win Pennsylvania. And I do believe it’s going to be close, but whether it’s Biden, whether it was Clinton, or whether it was with Vice President Harris I think it’s going to be very close,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said in a recent interview.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who is by no means a supporter of the former president Donald Trump, thinks that among blue-collar union workers who have turned away from their leftist leadership, he is garnering a sizable “silent majority” of support. “I assure you that Donald Trump is doing better among the average union member – not teachers unions and not the unions for government, but everybody else – trades, people working with their hands. He’s doing better among them than any Republican has done in decades,” Luntz told CNN earlier this month. “This is not gonna be a problem for him. The union leadership is more divided from their membership, and the louder it is the greater the divides are gonna come. And in my focus groups, and this is remarkable to me, the union membership says ‘They don’t speak for me.’”
