Decision Desk’s First Election Forecast Gives Trump a 58 Percent Chance of Winning

By Tom Ozimek

Election reporting service Decision Desk on Wednesday released its first forecast for the 2024 presidential election, putting the odds of a win by former President Donald Trump at 58 percent—despite President Joe Biden enjoying an incumbency advantage and bigger war chest.

In order to win the race for the White House, a candidate must secure 270 of the 538 available Electoral College votes. With less than six months to go until the November presidential election, Decision Desk has released its first forecast, which predicts that President Trump will get 282 electoral votes compared to President Biden’s 256.

This corresponds to a 58 percent chance of a Trump victory, compared to a 42 percent chance for President Biden.

At this stage of the race, Decision Desk has President Trump slated to clinch 235 electoral votes compared to President Biden’s 226, with 77 votes up for grabs.

The forecast currently puts Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as the six toss-up states where the two candidates will vie for the 77 electoral votes.

“Although the fundamentals of the race—including the incumbency advantage, campaign fundraising levels, and many macroeconomic factors—generally favor Biden, both national and swing state polls give Trump a clear edge,” the service wrote in a post on X.

While the Decision Desk model incorporates the latest data and trends, the election reporting service notes that its forecasts are “not certainties but possibilities.”

The Decision Desk model also predicts that Republicans are favored to score a trifecta, with an 80 percent chance of taking the Senate and a 64 percent chance of keeping the House, along with the 58 percent chance of winning the presidency.

Most Expensive Election Cycle In History

While President Biden’s 2024 campaign’s fundraising in April lagged that of President Trump for the first time this election cycle, the Democrat incumbent still maintains an overall cash advantage over his Republican rival.

The former president clinched the Republican nomination in March and can now raise money with the Republican National Committee (RNC). The Trump campaign and the RNC raised $76 million in April, outpacing the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) haul of $51 million.

At this stage, both candidates remain the presumptive nominees. Definitive declarations are expected at the Republican National Convention in July, and at the Democratic Convention in August, at which point the two candidates’ names will be formally placed in nomination.

According to campaign reporting to the Federal Election Commission, the Biden campaign had around $84 million in the bank at the end of April, while the Trump campaign reported having a $49 million war chest.

President Trump won the 2016 presidential election despite being outraised by Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

In the 2020 election cycle, spending on the presidential race exceeded $6 billion, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan research group that tracks money in American politics.

Spending in the 2024 cycle is expected to set new records, with advertising monitoring firm AdImpact projecting that over $10.2 billion will be spent on political ads, or roughly 13 percent higher than four years ago.

Debates in Focus

This year, the two rival presidential campaigns have bypassed the traditional debate process run by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and have arranged their own debate schedule.

The first debate, which will be the earliest televised presidential debate in history, is set to take place on June 27 on CNN in the key battleground state of Georgia.

The second debate is set for Sept. 10 on ABC News, though a location has yet to be decided.

There has been some wrangling between the two campaigns over the debates, with President Trump pushing for more dates as he seeks to oust the incumbent, while the Biden campaign has so far agreed to just the two.

As part of the discussions on holding the debates, the Biden campaign proposed changes that the Trump campaign agreed to. Those changes include an unusually early date for the first debate, limiting the number of debates to just two, and skipping the usual walk-on entry to the debate stage, instead starting with both candidates standing at the podium.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Epoch Times that he believes the debate timing is more likely to benefit President Biden.

“I think the Biden campaign decided they need to take a gamble and have Biden go one-on-one with Trump early in the race, not later in the race,” Mr. Olsen told The Epoch Times, with the idea being that a strong performance by President Biden could build some momentum for his reelection campaign.

Lawrence Wilson contributed to this report.