Financial experts are ‘convinced’ Donald Trump will win the US election, renowned investor says

With about two weeks left until election day, the fight between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris may already be over, experts believe.

Renowned American investor Stanley Druckenmiller has said the stock market is already “convinced” Donald Trump will win the presidential election in a fortnight.

“I must say, in the last 12 days, the market is very convinced Trump is going to win,” Mr Druckenmiller told Bloomberg Television.

“You can see it in the bank stocks, you can see it in crypto. You can even see it in DJT, his social media company.

“So if you put a gun to my head – and, thank God, there’s not one to my head, so this really doesn’t matter – I would have to say Trump is the favourite to win the election now.

“But who knows what these polls even mean? No one even responds to them anymore. But that’s what we’re looking at.”

Stanley Druckenmiller. Picture: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Mr Druckenmiller correctly identified a core problem for US polling companies there: they can only poll people who actually respond to their phone calls, and that is a fading slice of the population. Which makes it hard to get a representative sample of voters.

However, there has been an unmistakeable polling trend in Mr Trump’s favour in the past couple of weeks, partly reversing a good period for his opponent, Kamala Harris, after their televised debate on September 10.

The billionaire investor said the stock market and the price of Bitcoin, both of which have climbed significantly in the past month, are a sign of confidence in a Trump victory.

Mr Druckenmiller said the prospect of a Democratic “sweep”, with Ms Harris winning the White House and her party taking full control of Congress, would have the opposite effect on the markets.

“The maths of taxes, business confidence, lack of animal spirits in the business industry, no change on the regulation front, you would have a rough time for equities,” he said.

Whereas a Republican sweep, which Mr Druckenmiller feels is more likely, would unleash “animal spirits” and “deregulation”.

Former US president Donald Trump. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Vice President Kamala Harris. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Fears ‘blue wall’ is about to crumble

The financier’s prediction comes amid reports that the Harris campaign is worried about the state of the race in multiple key swing states.

The three most important states, for the Democrats, are Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which form the so-called “blue wall”. Claim all three of them, without dropping any states that she is expected to win regardless, and Ms Harris becomes president.

Today NBC News, citing sources inside the campaign, reported there were concerns that Ms Harris may win two of those states but lose the third, most likely Michigan. That would leave her short of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory, and force her to make up ground in at least one other contested state.

“There has been a thought that maybe Michigan or Wisconsin will fall off,” a senior campaign official, who was not named, told the network. Multiple other officials backed up that concern.

A plausible electoral map, which would see the result in Michigan decide the presidency. Picture: 270toWin

Officially, the campaign is expressing confidence, saying it sees no signs of either Wisconsin or Michigan slipping away.

“We absolutely are competing to win Michigan,” spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told NBC.

“We think we will win Michigan.”

But you would expect the campaign to say that. Behind the scenes, things aren’t so rosy.

Another concern is North Carolina, a state which seemed to be within Ms Harris’s grasp a month ago, but is trending back towards Mr Trump.

No Democrat has won the state since Barack Obama in his 2008 landslide. However the combination of its popular Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, and strangely scandal-ridden Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, piqued the party’s hopes that this year might be different.

The current polling average, according to RealClearPolitics, has Mr Trump narrowly ahead in North Carolina, by 0.4 per cent.

It shows him up by the same margin in Wisconsin, by 1.2 per cent in Michigan, and by 0.8 per cent in Pennsylvania.

That’s just one polling average, mind you. Silver Bulletin, the site run by polling guru Nate Silver, weights certain polls’ results differently. It has Ms Harris narrowly ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan, with Pennsylvania tied.

But whichever model you choose, the race is nerve-shreddingly close, and has shifted in Mr Trump’s favour in recent weeks.