• by Ed DeNicola , June 17, 2025

The 2024 presidential elections seem like a lifetime ago, but it has only been about six months. If a new presidential election were held today, the candidates might very well be different based on recent odds data from BetOnline.

BetOnline shared odds for 125 potential presidential candidates with MediaPost last week providing some interesting clues as to how the U.S. political environment has changed.

If you’re wondering how it is that odds can forecast what will happen in the future, the answer to that question is found in the theory of the “wisdom of crowds”.

The theory basically states that if you combine the predicted outcomes from crowds of people, they’ll often provide a reasonably accurate forecasted outcome. Betting and prediction markets are two means by which researchers can collect peoples’ predictions.

In this case, the odds makers are using the incoming bets to derive their odds.

As became very apparent in the last presidential election, we also know that betting and prediction markets are not always accurate. However, academic research shows that they are often right and taken in context can be a useful indicator.

The people who you might have presumed to have the best chances of winning the next presidential election based on who ran last year look a little different from an odds perspective. For instance, J.D. Vance tops the list and Kamala Harris comes up sixth after Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Josh Shapiro.

It was fascinating to me that Donald Trump comes up second after J.D. Vance. That means that many of the people who are betting think he’ll be successful at changing the rules to allow for a third term.

Newsom seems to have gained ground due to serendipitous events. You would think that all the problems he’s having in California due to immigration protests as that states governor and the criticism he’s been receiving from Donald Trump would have hurt his chances. And yet, online betting data shows a different story.

Newsom’s odds for being elected president in 2028 have gone from 14 to 1 (6.7%) on June 5th to 7 to 1 (12.5%) on June 12th. That’s an 86% increase.

You might think, well a 12.5% chance of winning isn’t very high. That’s true; however, it’s really the rank that I find interesting. It puts him at the top of the democratic ticket.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Josh Shapiro are both at 14 to 1 (7%) and Kamala Harris is at 18 to 1 (5%).

Tim Walz barely cracked the top 20 on the list, democrats and republicans included, at 19 with 40 to 1 (2.4%) odds.

In the prediction world, it’s important to note that even a year out is a long time. We still have about three-and-a-half more years to go before the next presidential election, so this information is indicative at best.

In fact, the 2028 presidential elections are so far out that it’s difficult to find any prediction markets offering markets on that election. The same was the case for the mid-term elections which are only a year-and-a-half out.

I did find one market for the mid-terms offered by Kalshi. As of last week, the market for “Which party will win the house next year?” was reporting a 77% chance that the Democratic Party will win versus a 23% chance for the Republicans.

This could spell trouble for the Republican Party as their complete dominance of all three executive branches could weaken rather quickly.

As mentioned, this information is in no way conclusive. On the other hand, it does provide some insight into how the U.S. political landscape has changed in a very short amount of time.