(NEXSTAR) – Despite calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election and make room for a new nominee — say, Vice President Kamala Harris — his campaign insisted as recently as Thursday that Biden is “not wavering” and will be running for a second term.
But you might not want to bet on it, if you’re listening to the oddsmakers.
“Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Joe Biden after testing positive for COVID-19, and as a result, there’s been a fair bit of movement in the markets in favour of fellow Democrat Kamala Harris,” said William Kedjani, an analyst at the U.K.-based Star Sports gambling site.
Over the last several weeks — after the first presidential debate, the attempted assassination of Trump, and Biden announcing his COVID diagnosis — international betting sites have shown that Biden’s odds of winning a second term have slipped.
Now, however, those same oddsmakers are indicating Harris has a better chance.
As of Friday, Star Sports has Biden’s odds of keeping the Democratic nomination at 7-to-2, while Harris’ odds are 8-to-13. And Biden’s chances of winning the 2024 election are now at 12-to-1 on Star Sports, while Harris’ are 7-to-2.
British betting site Bet365 also has Harris having a better chance of winning the 2024 election than Biden, with her odds set at +333 (meaning a wager of $100 on Harris would win $333) and Biden’s at +1100 as of Friday morning. Bovada, an online gambling site based in Costa Rica, had Harris at +360 and Biden at +1800 on Friday, too.
Even still, the sites still indicate Trump has the highest odds of winning the 2024 election over Biden or Harris.
Gambling on politics in the U.S., meanwhile, is outlawed. But the results of these overseas oddsmakers may not come as much of a shock to those following recent polls. A survey conducted by The Economist/YouGov found that 79% of Democrats would support Harris if Biden drops out, and another poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Democrats think she’d be a good president.
For Kamala to even have a chance at the White House, Biden would have to step aside or withdraw — a scenario that Biden has not seriously entertained, at least publicly.
“Joe Biden has made it more than clear: he’s in this race and he’s in it to win it,” said Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director of the Biden 2024 campaign, in a memo obtained by The Hill following the close of the Republican National Convention. “Moreover, he’s the presumptive nominee, there is no plan for an alternative nominee.”