yikes
Bump. Anyone betting the election on Polymarket?
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I’m just a cheap talking observer who is unwilling to bet on Polymarket, but I’d be most interested in betting yes Kamala to win the popular vote (.61 right now) and no on Republicans to sweep (.52).
If I understand Bovada’s lines correctly (I probably don’t), the equivalent numbers are:
- (-250 on Kamala winning popular vote, which I guess means 71.4% chance)
- Even on GOP sweep
Interesting that the odds are so different on the popular vote, but not the sweep.
I bought some Kamala at 39. Will probably add more.
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This is interesting: Based on Bovada’s lines, the most likely outcome–regardless of which side wins–is an Electoral College difference of 65-104.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. I keep forgetting that 2020 and 2016 actually look like blowouts based on electoral votes, despite being razor thin.
Has anybody ever done betting on IBKR(interactive brokers)? PI sucks now and I don’t really do crypto/offshore sites anymore, but this looks kinda interesting
Yeah Polymarket is a bit too exuberant about Trump as per usual. I was going to buy some popular vote, but the recent Trump +3 national pole from Atlas Intel has me mildly spooked. Silver’s prediction is Kamala 73.9% to win it and predicted share at 50.4% vs 48.4%, so it should be value but is not a massive slam dunk. I’m going to wait a bit to make sure the +3 is an outlier and not a harbinger of movement towards Trump. I think that gap between the Polymarket price and Silver’s prediction will stay there, so I don’t feel the need to jump in right this second.
My biggest position so far as I mentioned on the other thread is Trump not to win a solid blue state, the most realistic options being New Mexico or Virginia. I bought at 81c, I would probably put the true chances of this happening at south of 5%. Trump is a known quantity with high unfavorables, I don’t think there’s really room for the race to shift towards him that drastically.
The other thing I’m betting at the moment is No on Trump to win Miami-Dade, which is trading at around 50%. I’ll give the Yes case first: it’s fucking Florida. OK, just kidding. The Yes case is that Obama carried the county by 23.7 points, Clinton by 29.4 points, and Biden by only 7.4 points. Also, the final RCP average in Florida in 2020 was +0.9 to Biden and instead Trump carried it by 3.3. This time around, the RCP average in Florida is Trump +7.8. So we had massive rightward movement in Florida and Miami-Dade last time, Trump is outperforming his RCP average last time by 8.7 points, Biden only carried it by 7.4 last time, therefore Trump wins! Right?
I am skeptical for a number of reasons:
POLLING: There have been some polls in Miami-Dade county. One GOP-commissioned one had the race even, but others had Kamala up by 14 points and 10 points. I’m sure these polls are terrible and have error bars the size of Everest, but I am still skeptical that a race that the GOP is going to win ever polls at +14 for the other side. OTOH, numbers like +14 and +10 D are extremely plausible given the history of the district.
RIGHTWARD DRIFT: So firstly, I think part of the explanation for Trump’s much improved RCP average is polling improvement. Pollsters would not have been expecting the rightward lurch last time and probably had bad assumptions, which they will have updated now. So I think the movement is more like 4 or 5 points than 8 or 9. Also, while the population of Florida is growing at about 1.5% year-on-year, the population of Miami-Dade actually shrunk slightly from 2020 to 2023. My assumption here is that Florida is importing white Boomers by the truckload, all of whom are going to places other than Miami-Dade. So I think the continuing rightward drift in Florida will be driven this time by areas other than Miami-Dade.
FERTILE TERRITORY: How much of Miami-Dade can realistically be converted to voting Republican? The way I look at it is that this absurd 22-point jump last time means that all the persuadable voters were already peeled off and the GOP is left trying to make inroads into more hostile territory this time. It is not normal for large cities to vote GOP, not even in deep red states, not even in Florida.
I think it is possible Miami-Dade goes red, but I don’t think it’s anything like 50%. Gun to head I think 20% is nearer the mark.
Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
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I wouldnt be surprised if Miami goes red. Nothing has indicated that Cubans in that area are getting less right wing and early voting looks bad to really bad
Do you have a link for the early voting?
https://countyballotfiles.floridados.gov/VoteByMailEarlyVotingReports/PublicStats
Dems only up 25K with 60K unafilliated
Compare it to Broward with the same amount of total votes and its pretty abysmal
Edit: looked at the wrong tab. Reds are up about 5 K in early voting, dems are up 20K in vote by mail with 30K unafiliated.
I dug out the affiliation data from 2020 and it has strengthened my belief that Miami-Dade is staying blue.
No evidence that the GOP are poised to make up a 7.4 point gap. Within the realms of possibility, yes, but I’m betting at even money here.
Edit: The only sign of danger I guess is the heavy skew of early voting towards Rep-affiliated, the absolute numbers are low now but if that distribution continued, it would be trouble. I’m hesitant to extrapolate from those numbers though as the composition of “early early voters” tends to be different from early voters in general. Stuff like retirees with nothing to do.
Anyone that has access to bet Kamala as a dog better be betting the mortgage payment on it
Free money
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Bunch of the crypro NFT crew is in on Kamala popular vote. Think most of us got in around 59-62%.
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This is very easy to do if you really want to. Bovada is an option if polymarket is too much to figure out. She’s +160 on Bovada right now
I wish you guys betting on Kamala the best of luck. Zero chance I’m degen enough to sweat losing my house and democracy on the same night.
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You really think there is a chance that Kamala loses the pop vote?
Feels like there’s some talking past each other.
Kamala is currently a dog to win the electoral count (i.e., be elected President). Bovada has her at +160.
Kamala is currently a favorite to win the popular vote percentage. Bovada has her at -250.
I think the popular vote is a great bet. I can’t imagine anyone (including @TheHip41) thinking that it’s free money to bet on her winning the election.
Kamala +160 is not free money but it’s certainly +EV. Popular vote is even more +EV (if you have access to the lol Polymarket lines). It’s probably +EV at -250 as well, just less so.
I liked popular vote at -150
Not as much at -250, definitely wouldn’t call it free money. I have Kamala popular vote in the 80-90% range with low-medium confidence in that call.
I’m not really seeing how it’s possible that Kamala to win popular vote at 71.4% could be a better bet than Kamala winning EC at 38.4%. You are assigning a huge percentage of the outcome to Trump wins EC while losing popular vote that I haven’t seen in any model and is not backed by national and swing state polling averages.