Who will win debate between Trump and Harris? Betting markets show a clear favorite

The stakes will be high in the first presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Harris on Tuesday night, and multiple betting markets have already picked a clear favorite who they believe will be crowned the victor.

As of Tuesday afternoon, traders on Polymarket gave Harris a 75% chance of winning the debate, according to the polls, compared to Trump's odds of 25%. BetUS also favored the Democrat over the Republican ahead of the candidates taking the debate stage, with implied probabilities of 68.75% to 39.22%, respectively.

Yet, while Harris is expected to win the battle according to both prediction platforms, those same markets see Trump winning the war.

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A BetUS spokesperson told FOX Business that despite Harris being favored to win the debate on Tuesday, Trump was favored on the platform to win the election with implied probably of 54.55% to Harris' 52.38% as of the afternoon. The probabilities don’t sum to 100% due to the bookmaker’s margin, the platform noted.

In the hours leading up to the debate, Polymarket traders also favored Trump to win the election, giving him a 52% chance compared to 45% for Harris.

Real Clear Politics' average of six betting markets showed Trump leading Harris with 51.7% odds of winning the election versus 46.7% for Harris. 

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However, the Democrat was slightly favored to take the White House, according to PredictIt, where Harris was given a 53% chance of winning the election while Trump was given a 52% chance.

Rutgers University statistics professor Harry Crane, an expert on prediction markets, told FOX Business that there could be a number of factors at play to explain why Harris is largely favored in the prediction markets to win the debate but expected to lose the election.

He said that Polymarket, for instance, uses the Ipsos/538 opinion poll for gauging the purported winner of the debate, "and these are mostly liberal polls, so those are predominantly going to favor the more liberal candidate."

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Crane also suggested that many people might believe debates typically have a limited impact on the outcome of a race, unless, of course, a debate is completely lopsided, such as the one between Trump and President Biden in June, which prompted the calls for Biden to exit the race.

"There are two questions going on here," he said. "One is, how much do the debates matter? The other is, does the poll about who won the debate actually reflect who won the debate?"