Will Stephen A. Smith Run for President? Latest Odds From Prediction Markets

It's been an interesting ride for the preeminent hot-take artist and his possible foray into politics, and I'm looking at the latest development in my Stephen A. Smith presidential election odds and prediction.

Smith has been dancing around the possibility of a presidential run for some time now. But his latest comments during an interview with CBS, when the ESPN host said he's strongly considering entering a debate, have renewed energy behind a possible bid for the White House.

🗳️ Stephen A. Smith Presidential election odds

Before diving into the latest development, let's first get a gauge for where Smith sits in the market.

Smith is registering in the U.S. presidential election odds for 2028, and doing so in ways that are mostly unimpressive, but we still shouldn't ignore his lingering presence.

The primary contenders are JD Vance, who's getting a 23% chance in the prediction market, and Democrat Gavin Newsom, the vice president's main challenger at 19%. There's then a steep drop to Marco Rubio's 9% chance, and the 6% Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting.

Smith sits in a vast ocean of would-be candidates at the bottom who are getting 1% or less. It puts him far off the leading contenders like Vance and Newsom, or even Ocasio-Cortez. But curiously, someone who has primarily risen to fame while being a sports-talk pundit is only just below Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and in the same tier is Mark Kelly, an actual former astronaut and Navy pilot.

To give you an idea of where exactly Smith stands, here's the bottom of the market right now, via Kalshi.

U.S. Presidential election odds for 2028: The Bottom tier

🇺🇸 Will Stephen A. Smith run for president?

Smith has made a career out of speaking openly and with conviction about anything on his mind. Often that's been tied to topics in the sports realm, but increasingly over the past year or so he's toyed with the idea of running for office.

His comments have come with mixed messaging at best, though his most recent interview on the matter in mid-February while sitting down with CBS was a departure from that.

His talk with Robert Costa for CBS Sunday Morning led to comments about running that came close to his most concrete yet.

"I will confess to you, I'm giving strong consideration to being on that debate stage for 2027," Smith said, via Costa, referencing the beginning of the Democratic primary debates. "I've got this coming up 2026 to think about it, to study, to know the issues."

There's little doubt Smith would shine on a debate stage, especially early in the process when the Democratic field is expected to be deep. It's anticipated to include seasoned front-runners like Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro at the top, perhaps alongside the likes of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, Whitmer, and AOC.

Most of those latter names are getting at least a 50% chance of running through Kalshi, with Ocasio-Cortez just a smidge below at 49%. Meanwhile, as we see below, Smith is in a tier mostly filled with political outsiders.

Who will run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028? Looking at the last tier

🔮 Stephen A. Smith presidential election prediction

Smith's most recent comments increase the intrigue, but we've seen highly conflicting messages from him before since this dance began.

It's a yo-yo that's come to define the Stephen A. Smith presidential election odds. Last April, Smith said elected officials have approached him about running.

"I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature,” he told ABC News. “I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician."

So what started as dipping a toe in the water now has Smith up to at least his knees, in part seemingly due to encouragement from others who are far more experienced with political campaigning.

Yet even while speaking to Costa, who said the ESPN personality is "moving closer" to running, there were still some echoes of past statements, with Smith saying he doesn't wish to be a politician, via Forbes.

It's easy to shrug it all off as another celebrity voice using his platform to dabble during a time of the cycle between elections. That's what we all did after Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in 2015, when he was getting +10000 betting odds to win the 2016 election.

Trump's rise can be either an outlier or a shining example of a shift toward outsiders, depending on how you view his initial surge. But it doesn't need to be binary when linking back to Smith.

He doesn't have the apparatus arranged yet to run a campaign, and may not hold the desire to build one. But he's well spoken and craves a stage to share ideas, a characteristic that goes beyond sports. His bombastic nature will make him stand out on a debate stage, at minimum leading to early gains during a potential campaign.

And with that, his interest could grow quickly, planting a seed that sprouts fast.

Prediction: Stephen A. Smith will run for president