Oddsmakers Still Give Donald Trump A 12 Percent Chance To Win Nevada, A State Already Called For Joe Biden
Joe Biden may have been declared the winner in Nevada, but oddsmakers still believe that Donald Trump still has a roughly one-in-eight chance of emerging victorious in the state.
As pundit and polling analyst Nate Silver pointed out on Twitter, the betting market is still giving the president what appears to be outsized odds both in individual states and overall, even after major news networks have projected Biden to win and enter the White House next year. He posted a screenshot of an oddsmaker that was giving the Republican candidate a 12 percent chance of winning in Nevada, where the Democratic candidate was leading by close to three points and more than 35,000 votes overall as vote counting continued on Wednesday evening.
It's actually kind of alarming how delusional prediction markets are. They give Trump a 12% chance of winning Nevada, a state that has been called for Biden and where he has a fairly large lead, and where there is no coup possibility since it's run by Democrats. pic.twitter.com/syiUiMOBUe
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 11, 2020
Silver called the odds being offered for Trump “delusional,” saying it would be easy money for anyone willing to bet on Biden.
“There is literally free money sitting there but the market doesn’t quite trust reality-based information sources enough to pick it up,” he wrote in a follow-up tweet. “It is disturbing.”
Some sites offered similar odds for Trump to win the entire election. The popular election betting outlet PredictIt, which garnered so much attention that the site crashed throughout election night, was giving the president a roughly 18 percent chance of winning — allowing people to pay 18 cents for a share that would pay off $1 if he were to win. As some commented to Silver, the websites take a percentage of each payout and withdrawal fees, making the long-odds bets seem not quite as appealing as they may have first appeared.
Trump has not yet conceded the race despite projections that he would lose. He has pushed ahead with legal challenges in a number of states. Experts said these have little hope of having any significant impact, and to date, they have not had an effect on any vote counts. However, the moves have helped him earn some public favor among his supporters.
A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showed that 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the election was free and fair — nearly double from polls taken before the election. As The Inquisitr reported, some members of Trump’s family have been pushing him to accept the outcome of the race and concede, though the president has not yet given any public indication that he plans to do so. On Wednesday afternoon and evening, he continued to share unfounded claims of election fraud and posted videos claiming to show improper handling of ballots.
