Former President Donald Trump just notched the biggest lead yet over Vice President Kamala Harris in a key election metric that many are using to determine the eventual winner.
One week after the former president gained a fresh lead over Harris, new bets are propelling him to new heights among those forecasting victories in several critical swing states on November 5th.
Notably, in Arizona, analysts predict a Trump win by a substantial 68-32% margin; in Georgia, he holds a similar 64-36% lead; and in North Carolina—a state embroiled in a growing FEMA disaster relief controversy—Trump currently leads Harris 63-37%.
Compounding the challenges for Harris is the belief among bettors that the “blue wall” will not hold in Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump is projected to win in those states by narrower margins of 54-46% and 52-48%, respectively.
However, in the must-win state of Pennsylvania, Trump holds a 10-point lead over Harris, with a forecast of 55-45% among those placing bets. The only state still leaning in favor of Harris is Nevada, albeit narrowly, as she holds a 51-49% lead among bettors. Yet even there, recent polling indicates that Trump is ahead by as much as 5%.
Overall, nearly 66 percent of bettors are now forecasting a Trump victory in November, marking the largest lead he has maintained since Harris launched her campaign in August. At the peak of his lead over President Joe Biden, nearly three in four bettors believed his victory was inevitable.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are becoming more than a little agitated at Harris and Democrats for the highly dangerous rhetoric they are using to describe Trump, such as comparing him to Hitler and falsely labeling him a “fascist.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a rare joint statement less than two weeks before the November 5th presidential election, calling on Harris to tone it down.
“This summer, after the first attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in more than a century, President Biden insisted that ‘we can’t allow this violence to be normalized.’ In September, after President Trump escaped yet another close call, Vice President Harris acknowledged that ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,’” the Republican legislative leaders wrote together, Fox News reported.
“These words have proven hollow. In the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus. Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over. The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility,” they added, according to Fox.
Johnson and McConnell said that by calling Trump a “fascist,” Democrats were inviting another would-be assassin to take a shot at Trump before Election Day. “Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” they wrote.
“We have both been briefed on the ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump by adversaries to the United States, and we call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats,” the two GOP leaders added.
