Donald Trump‘s odds of winning the 2020 presidential race has reached an all-time high for the first time on Election Day as the final polls across the country begin to close.
Bookies around the world are placing their bets on whether Trump will secure another four years in office or if he’ll be ousted by Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Up until late Tuesday, Biden had been the frontrunner among betting markets with a 69 per cent chance of winning, according to gambling website Oddschecker.
Betting markets flipped in Trump’s favor late Tuesday night as Biden’s chances of winning the election dipped to 30 per cent
But as votes across the US roll in showing Biden struggling to secure key swing states, the odds flipped in favor of his opponent whose chances of victory reached -333, or a 76.9 per cent.
The figures are a significant jump from Trump’s odds at the start of the day when he gamblers placed him at a 40 per cent chance of re-election.
By 9.45pm however, Biden’s odds took a massive blow, dipping to 48.4 per cent.
As of 11pm EDT, Trump, with 114 electoral votes, now has a 70 per cent chance of taking the election.
‘He hasn’t won yet, but it’s looking like he might,’ Maxim Lott, the co-creator of electionbettingodds.com told Fox News.
Predictions on gambling website ElectionBettingOdds show the odds have flipped in Trump’s favor in the last few hours
Lott however, pointed out that despite the current odds, the true outcome remains largely unpredictable and could still flip back to Biden’s favor.
The predictions are based on betting markets outside the United States, the majority European, as it is illegal for Americans to gamble on politics.
The high-stakes election, which comes in the midst of a tumultuous year spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, is now one of the largest betting event in history with $460million on the line, according to Oddschecker.
Trump and Biden were locked in tight races in battleground states across the country Tuesday night as they concluded an epic campaign that will shape America’s response to the surging pandemic and foundational questions of economic fairness and racial justice.
From coast to coast, races were too early to call in the most fiercely contested states on the map, including Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Both candidate each picked up some predictable victories, with Trump taking states including Kansas and North Dakota and Biden’s haul including Colorado and Virginia, two former battlegrounds that have become Democratic strongholds.
Americans made their choices as the nation faced a confluence of historic crises with each candidate declaring the other fundamentally unfit to navigate the challenges.
Daily life has been upended by the coronavirus, which has killed more than 232,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs.
Supporters fill the street as Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a stop in Philadelphia on Tuesday
Protesters gather in front of the White House during the 2020 presidential election
Millions of voters put aside worries about the virus – and some long lines – to turn out in person, joining 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73 per cent of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Early results in several key battleground states were in flux as election officials processed a historically large number of mail-in votes.
Democrats typically outperform Republicans in mail voting, while the GOP looks to make up ground in Election Day turnout.
That means the early margins between the candidates could be influenced by which type of votes – early or Election Day – were being reported by the states.
Biden entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 Electoral College votes.