Betting on Politics: Predictit is NOT Dead

Don’t know about the current numbers, but Polymarket has been so out of wack at points in the past week or so there have been straight up arbitrage opportunities with other outlets. So yes actual free money if you trust these places to pay out.

I know in my heart that Kamala is 100% to win the popular vote and a slight dog to win the election. I’m not sure what other evidence I could possibly provide.

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They’re eating the cats and dogs guy isn’t winning the election.

Except the line is 59% at polymarket and i think that makes it a better bet than straight up Kamala.

I have money on Kamala winning the pop vote but I cant put money on her winning the EC at these prices.

I have a feeling that Kamala might win Michigan, but Trump will win Penn, WI and AZ and probably get 275+. I think abortion, at least in my mind, could garner a lot more votes in blue states and may be what will help prevent Trump from winning the popular vote but who the hell knows.

There’s still a reasonable gap between Trump winning and Kamla losing the vote. Biden won by over 7 million votes and he barely one 3 of the swing states. Trump was still pretty close to winning that election.

In 2020 the 538 polling average was Biden +8.0 and the RCP average was Biden +7.2. The actual result was Biden +4.5. This time around Nate Silver’s prediction is currently Harris +2.1 and the RCP average is Harris +0.6. If we go off Silver’s prediction, a polling miss 60% of the size of the one that happened in 2020 in Trump’s favor again would see Harris lose the popular vote. If you think RCP is more accurate (which I don’t, although it was closer to the mark in 2020) the miss would need to be much smaller.

Kamala is only ahead by +2 nationally according to 538? I think it’s unlikely, but it’s not inconceivable that there’s a huge polling error she loses the popular vote. Maybe lolAmericans are more resistant to electing a woman than we all expect.

Silver is currently assigning this a 26.4% chance. Currently Polymarket popular vote is 61.5c and Silver gives 73.3%, while Polymarket Kamala win is 38.2c and Silver gives 46.9%. So if you take those as gospel, the popular vote overlay is higher but the ROI on betting her to win is a little higher (22.8% vs 19.8%).

I don’t have strong feelings about which is a better bet, but I am not inclined to bet them right now as I don’t expect the market to become more rational on election eve and I would rather wait until I have maximum information. This is especially true of the electoral college bet where the information could change quite drastically. I actually tried to bet the popular vote last night when it dipped under 60c, and I thought I had, but somehow it didn’t go through.

Even on election eve I might not bet the outcome at all, because last time the markets became super irrational in-play but I didn’t want to bet more because my exposure was already high. With how uncertain polling is these days, my edge on election eve is probably not as good as it is once real data starts coming in and I am better at interpreting it than people trying to figure out what is happening by watching cable news or reading MAGA or lib twitter.

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2 points is not a huge polling error, it is probably about average. Of course it could go either direction, so if you call 2 points average and factor this in, you end up with a 1 in 4 chance that she loses the popular vote, which is almost exactly what Silver is predicting.

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Further to the Miami-Dade discussion, I got this data as of Oct 23 from a tweet, the author claims to have used the Internet Archive to get the Miami-Dade data at an equivalent point in 2020. I haven’t been able to verify this since the Wayback Machine is broken right now, but it’s a good idea which I should have thought of.

The vote-by-mail I don’t think is particularly meaningful (because of the pandemic) but the early voting numbers are grim. I’ll keep an eye on this, I certainly won’t be betting any more and may need to unwind my position for a loss if things continue to look bad.

https://flvoicenews.com/florida-ge-live-data/

This has Miami-Dade R+5.6

Actually looking at those numbers Florida is a done deal. I’m surprised it’s only 94c on PI

Well, Robinhood here we go…


At some point the rake makes it not worth it to buy .95+ contracts, plus how much are you really going to make with an $850 max bet.

The first post I saw when revisiting this thread. (No shade)

This is still only 88c somehow.

I’m struggling to make sense of Polymarket. The markets are enormous—over $2.6B traded just on the Presidential race. With that kind of volume, I’d expect efficiency, yet I’m still seeing significant value opportunities. So, either my theory on market efficiency is flawed, or I’m missing something.

Kamala Wins Popular Vote at 58%?!

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Most of the betting markets are failry close to one another. I think it would be wiser to make the starting be the assumption that those markets are effecient and go from there.

Biden was a strong candidate and he wafflecrushed in early voting and in the polls and barely beat trump is some of the swing states.

Nobody can say for any certainty whats going happen from an historical point because so many things are different.

But ftr, i do have Kamala winning the pop vote.

Good time to remind everyone that you could still bet Trump at like +500 in December of 2020.

People love to bet on their favorite team, what can you say? There’s all kinds of +EV election bets on there because they love betting on daddy.

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