Joe Biden now massive 1/5 favourite to win the US election

Joe Biden is now 1/5 favourite to win the US election after a rollercoaster 24 hours for bookies saw odds flipping between Donald Trump and the Democratic candidate as results came in from key battleground states.  

Biden’s odds to win the presidential election hit an all-time high after securing Wisconsin and Michigan and as mail-in ballots continue to be counted in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada. They have now dipped slightly. 

Biden, whose odds dropped to just a 3/1 chance of winning at one point Tuesday night, has shot up to a massive 1/5 as the election result rests on those few states to declare their mail-in ballots. 

Trump’s odds on winning, which were 69 per cent when results showed he had outperformed polls after their closure Tuesday, have plummeted to just 9/2 at around 10am today, according to aggregate site oddschecker.  

Biden went into the election as the favourite among bookies.  

Up until late Tuesday, Biden had been the front runner with a 69 per cent chance of winning.  

As votes began to roll in, however, the odds flipped in favour of Trump with his chances of victory soaring to nearly 77 per cent.  

Those figures were a significant jump from Trump’s odds at the start of Election Day when gamblers placed him at a 40 per cent chance of re-election.

Biden’s odds took a massive blow by about 9.45pm when they dipped to 48 percent as Trump secured several key battleground states including Florida and Texas.  

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 events 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 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.

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.