Bookies have upgraded Donald Trump and Michelle Obama’s chances of becoming president

Donald Trump is now the bookies’ favourite to win in 2024 while Michelle Obama has a better chance than Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whose campaign has floundered.

Former US president Barack Obama and wife Michelle Obama embrace during the unveiling of the Obamas' official White House portraits in the East Room of the White House. Picture: AFP.

For the first time in the 2024 presidential election campaign Donald Trump has become the punters’ favourite to win the election, and former first lady Michelle Obama, who hasn’t said anything about running, now has a better shot than Republican hopeful Ron DeSantis, who has been campaigning for five months.

Former president Donald Trump’s chances of being re-elected has soared to 32 per cent, up from 15 per cent at the start of the year, despite his multiple federal and state indictments, according to an average of odds offered by seven national bookies tracked by RealClear Politics.

The abrupt shift in punters’ perceptions of how the campaign will pan out follows a slew of national polls pointing to Mr Trump’s near certainty of winning the GOP nomination, and doubts about the 80 year old Mr Biden’s political longevity among Democrats, following a string of gaffes.

The president has started undergoing balance training with a therapist to reduce his incidence of falling over, wearing tennis shoes more often, and using the ‘short stairs’ on Air Force Once, according to Axios in a report this week.

“Democrats, including some in the administration, are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall — with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election,” the outlet said.

“If you’re a betting person Trump and Biden will be the nominees, but if Biden has a health issue then Michelle would give Democrats a good chance of winning,” said Merrill Matthews, a columnist for The Hill and resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation.

“Michelle might not want to run but if the party calls you and says ‘we need you’ that could change the calculation,” he told The Australian, noting a man Biden’s age in the US had a 31 per cent chance of dying within the next five years according to actuarial tables.

A recent Washington Post poll that gave Trump as much as a 10 percentage point lead over Biden Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

The biggest losers in the early stages of the campaign have been Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis, whose chances of winning have tumbled, respectively, from 41 per cent in May to 30 per cent, and from 16 per cent to 5 per cent, a lower chance than for Mrs Obama, who is now rated as the fourth most likely winner just behind California Governor Gavin Newsom.

A recent Washington Post poll that gave Mr Trump as much as a 10 percentage point lead over Mr Biden nationally sent shockwaves through the Democrat establishment in Washington, coming amid public calls by senior Democrat-aligned journalists for the president to step aside next year to ensure a resurgent Mr Trump is defeated.

The former president was due to speak to striking autoworkers in Detroit on Wednesday evening (Thursday AEST), ignoring, for the second time, the second GOP presidential debate to be held in Simi Valley California around the same prime-time hour.

Republican powerbroker Senator Ted Cruz, who ran for president in 2016, last week said on his podcast that the prospect of a last minute Michelle Obama candidacy posed “a very serious danger” to Republicans.

“In August of 2024 the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama … I think in terms of a solution that unifies Democrats, there ain’t nothing like that,” he added, although suggested Mrs Obama herself was probably not keen on the idea.

Mrs Obama, 59, has remained a highly sought after public speaker since leaving the White House in 2017, reportedly accepting 700,000 euros to speak on Diversity and Inclusion at a conference in Munich earlier this week.

Cristina Antelo, chief executive of Ferox Strategies, a Democrat-aligned consulting firm in Washington, said the betting odds shift “says a lot more about Desantis than it does Michelle Obama”. “I feel confident there is less than zero chance of her running,” she told The Australian.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said an Obama run was still “extremely unlikely” but noted “anything can happen” given the election was over a year away.

Mr Sabato said senior Democrats would be reluctant to try to convince the president not to run again, even if they had doubts privately. “After all he’s going to be in office for another year and a half, so why would they want to eliminate their influence,” he told The Australian.