Category Archives: Swalwell 2020

First debate causes shakeup as Harris comes away the big winner at Biden’s expense. Debate and weeks of momentum finally have Warren move ahead of Sanders. Trump continues to cruise near all time highs

The first major shakeup of the odds this elections season came as a result of the first Democratic Debates, with Kamala Harris’ clash with Joe Biden on his history with segregationists having the biggest impact.

Kamala Harris’ odds saw the largest odds increase moving from 13.5X to 7.5X, a nearly 80% jump in odds. The 7.5X is the highest she has been in 14 weeks and was enough to propel her from last week’s 5th place for the Dems to jump over Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg for second place. She clearly has the momentum as evidenced by her raising $2M in the first 24 hours after the debate.

The clash had the opposite impact on the Democratic front runner with his odds dropping from 5.50X to 6.81X, a nearly 20% drop and his lowest in 9 weeks. Biden is still the odds favorite after the debate, but he must reverse momentum or risk losing much of his fundraising support.

The other subplot may be the Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders competition for lead among progressives. For the last 16 weeks, Joe Biden has been either the favorite or in second place for the Dems. For the last 11 weeks, Elizabeth Warren has been improving her odds at the expense of Sanders’ odds. Warren’s performance at the debate finally allowed her to leapfrog Sanders. Her odds jumped from 12.1X to 9.7X, landing her in 3rd place overall for the Dems. Sanders’ odds dropped from 11.7X to 12.8X, his lowest in over 4 months, taking him from 2nd place to 4th place among the Dems.

In the mean time, Donald Trump continued to cruise near all time highs at 2.03X. This is the 3rd straight week at the same level, and is just shy of the all time high of 2.02X achieved at the beginning of June. He has been in a narrow range of 2.02X to 2.04X the last 6 weeks. Although his odds were flat, the top 5 Democrats moved up as a group from 1.98X to 1.88X. The implied probability of the top 5 Dems vs. Trump moved from 50.6% Dems/ 49.4% Trump to 51.9% Dems / 48.1% Trump.

Here is a summary of the 20 Democrats in the debate and how their odds moved:

Here are the current standings for the 44 candidates with better than 200 to 1 odds (Note how 4 of the candidates from the debate are not on this list) :

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Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders reach new highs; Pete Buttigieg has a great week before official announcement; Eric Swalwell enters race with focus on gun control

Donald Trump reached a new high this past week with his odds improving from 2.35X to 2.23X. His previous high was 2.31X in August 2018. Trump’s odds have now improved for seven straight weeks. He was at 2.93X eight weeks ago. It will be interesting to see how the odds react with the reported release of the redacted Mueller report in the coming week.

Bernie Sanders, the current top Democrat in the standings, also reached a new high this week. His odds improved from 7.09X to 6.89X. He’s off to a much better start than in 2016. Here’s a numeric analysis of the difference between the two cycles for Sanders so far.

The hottest candidate remains Pete Buttigieg. Although he has not officially entered the race (will likely announce in South Bend on Sunday), one couldn’t avoid the Midwestern Mayor in the media in the past week. As Vanity Fair put it, he had “one hell of a week”.

Another week brought in another candidate for the Democrats. This week it was CA Rep Eric Swalwell. He has chosen gun control as his focus. The announcement didn’t have a big impact on his odds. He improved from 158.2X to 154.5X, which was enough to move him from 58th place to 50th place.

Here are the full odds:

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