The odds of Joe Biden dropping out of the US presidential race reached as high as 84% on Friday, according to the predictive betting site Polymarket.
The 81-year-old incumbent president has been quarantined at his Delaware home since Wednesday, after testing positive for Covid-19. Calls for him to make way for another Democrat have grown louder since last Saturday’s attempted assassination of his Republican rival Donald Trump.
“His soul-searching is actually happening, I know that for a fact,” Reuters reported on Friday, citing a source within the Biden campaign. “He’s thinking about this very seriously.”
Polymarket had Biden’s odds of dropping out at 19% ahead of the June 27 debate. They have since spiked to 84%, but leveled out at around 70% as of Friday afternoon.
The betting site also put Trump’s chances of winning the November election at 66%. Vice President Kamala Harris, the most likely Democrat to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, was at only 18%.
Democrats have pushed back the virtual vote to anoint Biden as the nominee, originally planned to take place before the convention. A long train of lawmakers, donors and party power-brokers have been pressuring Biden to suspend his re-election bid in recent weeks.
Former President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all reportedly urged Biden to let someone else face Trump in November – while serving out the remainder of his presidential term.
“It feels like it’s a matter of… when, not if,” one campaign aide told Reuters. “Yes, it’s over. Just a matter of time,” said another. According to NBC, however, Biden has felt “personally hurt” and “betrayed” by the Democrats’ apparent lack of faith in his abilities.
“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, [and] Schumer pushed Biden aside in favor of Hillary [Clinton]; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” the outlet reported citing an anonymous source. Hillary Clinton was given a 90% chance to win in 2016 but lost to Trump.
Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, acknowledged that the president has “seen some slippage in support” since the debate, but insisted that it was just a “small movement” in the polls, and that a “significant national organization” would endorse him next week.
“Joe Biden has said he is running for president of the United States. Our campaign is moving forward,” deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks insisted.
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