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The Odds are.......

Jayjay said:
I got it from an article on 538, which referred to this page.
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Thanks for the links! fivethirtyeight.com may indeed do a better job at prediction than "prediction markets" do, but this speaks to the excellence of fivethirtyeight.com rather than the ineffectiveness of prediction markets. (BTW, prediction markets' efficacy depends on big bets; thus Predictit, which limits wager size, thereby limits its own accuracy.)

And never forget that a prediction that Clinton will win with probability 65% (as Betfair(?) showed at one point in late September) expects to be wrong 35% of the time. If it were "correct" with more than 65% of its 65%-guesses, than the guessed probabilities were off!
 
Elixir seems to have been using PredictIt's display: PredictIt

PredictIt works as follows: you buy and sell "shares", and if you win, you get $1.00 for your share minus the site's vig or bookie fee. If you lose, your share is worth $0.00. You can bid up the price if you want to buy some shares, and bid down the price if you want to sell some shares.

The site's vig is 10% of one's profit: winnings - total price for buying.

The higher the price, the higher the bettors' estimate of the likelihood of winning.

PredictIt also has a Senate map. From it, I estimate that the Democrats would gain an average of 4.27 seats, giving D 51 - R 49.

I did that by treating PredictIt's average prices as probability estimates, with $1.00 being 1 and $0.00 being 0 and linear in between.
 
I did that with PredictIt's electoral-college map, and I found Biden 301 Trump 237.

mybookie.ag is more difficult. It uses "American odds":
  • Negative number: its absolute value is how much one will have to bet to win $100
  • Positive number: how much one will win if one bets $100

So, +N gives 100/(N+100), and -N gives N/(N+100).

That site currently has Biden -175, Trump +135, Kamala Harris +20,000, Mike Pence +27,500, and any other +50,000.

Their probabilities are 0.636, 0.426, 0.0050, 0.0036, and 0.0020, with a sum of 1.072. This is greater than 1 because the bet amount includes the site's vig. I'm not sure how it's added, so I'll correct for it by normalizing the probability, adding the raw numbers and dividing the results by that total. I get Biden 0.593, Trump 0.397, Harris 0.0046, Pence 0.0034, any other 0.0019.

For the popular vote, the odds are Biden -500, Trump +300, giving raw probs 0.833 and 0.25, total 1.083, norm probs 0.769, 0.231.

This is rather curiously high for Trump, and I suspect that it says something about the sort of people who like to bet on sports.

Doing the calculation for the electoral votes gives an estimate of Biden 296 Trump 241.

My estimated average vig for mybookie.ag is 6.7%, from the average unnormalized sum of 1.067.
 
I did the calculation for the US Senate, and I find a Democratic pickup of 4.35 seats, giving D 51 - R 49.

The site also has odds for the 2024 Presidential race:
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez _ +300 _ 0.25 _ 0.157923141
  • Joe Biden _ +300 _ 0.25 _ 0.157923141
  • Kamala Harris _ +350 _ 0.222222222 _ 0.140376126
  • Elizabeth Warren _ +800 _ 0.111111111 _ 0.070188063
  • Bernie Sanders _ +1000 _ 0.090909091 _ 0.057426597
  • Michelle Obama _ +1000 _ 0.090909091 _ 0.057426597
  • Andrew Cuomo _ +1200 _ 0.076923077 _ 0.048591736
  • Ted Cruz _ +1200 _ 0.076923077 _ 0.048591736
  • Josh Hawley _ +1200 _ 0.076923077 _ 0.048591736
  • Tom Cotton _ +1500 _ 0.0625 _ 0.039480785
  • Pete Buttigieg _ +1500 _ 0.0625 _ 0.039480785
  • Michael Bennet _ +2000 _ 0.047619048 _ 0.030080598
  • Cory Booker _ +2000 _ 0.047619048 _ 0.030080598
  • Ivanka Trump _ +3000 _ 0.032258065 _ 0.02037718
  • Mike Bloomberg _ +3000 _ 0.032258065 _ 0.02037718
  • Kanye West _ +5000 _ 0.019607843 _ 0.012386129
  • Mark Cuban _ +5000 _ 0.019607843 _ 0.012386129
  • Elon Musk _ +7500 _ 0.013157895 _ 0.008311744
(odds, unnorm prob, norm prob) - unnormalized sum = 1.583048551
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
If Trump loses, the only big bucks to be made will be from lawyers. Well, maybe not. Trump has had a big problem in the past stiffing lawyers. Many very good law firms will not even return Trump's calls.
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He's got lots of lawyers already in house under Barr.

ETA: That would probably be illegal for barr to take that case. But since when do they bother with following laws?
 
Derec said:
Seems a lot tighter than poll based maps.
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Yup. Still, the same betters rate it 61/39 in favor of a Biden win.

If Biden loses the two pale blue states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, it's over.
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I think that's about as likely as this:

bluwave.JPG

PA might be out of Trump's reach now that SCOTUS has overruled the GOP's stay on counting "late" (late arriving) ballots sent by the purposely crippled USPS.
Trump's paths to victory are threefold - he can win by rigging/suppressing the vote, he can win by rigging the count, or he can win by getting a corrupt SCOTUS to hand him the Presidency dictatorship. He is not going to win a free and fair election where votes actually get counted. Granted, he can win it legitimately even with a 4-5% loss in popular vote, but it really looks like that would be a very rosy outlook.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...-new-wisconsin-poll-that-has-biden-way-ahead/

538. As the days to election day get close, the polls are getting weird. And better for Biden.

...
Once in a blue moon, you see a poll that makes you blink twice to make sure you’re not seeing things. This morning’s ABC News/The Washington Post survey of Wisconsin was just such a poll. It showed Joe Biden 17 points (not a typo) ahead of President Trump, 57 percent to 40 percent, among likely voters. To put it mildly, this is a stunning margin in what is supposed to be one of the most competitive swing states in the country — a place that Trump carried by less than 1 percentage point in 2016.
...

Iowa. Biden is leading Trump by 5.0% in some of the latest polls.
Minnesota is up in some polls as much as +14% for Biden
Michigan - Recent polls say Biden is up as much as 13%

Why? Possibly covid-19, now sweeping the upper Midwest is hammering home the fact that Trump is incompetent. we have had enough time for Trump's many failures here to reach enough people that it is going to cost the Orange Clown.

This evening, from 538
Iowa - Biden is up +1.6%
North Carolina - Biden is up +2.1%
Florida - Biden is up +1.5% trump is gaining here but still behind
Georgia - Biden is up +1.4%

If Biden sweeps the upper Midwest, all he needs one of these to make it impossible to win, and if Florida goes to Trump one of the remaining states flipping to Biden makes Biden president.
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Here's the thing though...

With half Dems voting absentee...and nearly 1% of absentee votes getting disqualified prior to this pandemic general election...and poll margin of error, Florida may be a tie.

Now don't forget, too, that in Dem strongholds lines will be hours long and if the media starts calling places for Trump because half the Dems voted absentee and many of those aren't in the counts yet, discouraged people will leave voting lines.

Pennsylvania may also be a shitshow if all the chaos continues...people in urban areas may be afraid to vote...

In any case, polls are one thing. Results are impacted by many factors.
 
At least Michigan has patriots with semi-automatic assault rifles attending the polls in order to
intimidate voters who don't like guns er ...
protect the freedumbs ...uh,
wave their portable penises around in public.
 
Coleman Smith said:
Here's an update of interest:

$284 million has already been wagered by British bettors on the US election outcome

"As of Wednesday morning, £220 million, or about $284 million, had already been wagered on the Betfair Exchange, said Darren Hughes, a spokesman for Betfair. The London-based company operates the world's largest online betting exchange."
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To put things in perspective, that's about the amount of money spent on UK national lottery in ten days.
 
Coleman Smith said:
"As of Wednesday morning, £220 million, or about $284 million, had already been wagered on the Betfair Exchange, said Darren Hughes, a spokesman for Betfair. The London-based company operates the world's largest online betting exchange."
Click to expand...

I clicked to the main BetFair auction; the action available at the best bid and asked seemed large:

Biden Back 1.49 $282k Lay 1.5 $263k
Trump Back 3 $119k Lay 3.05 $86k

Quoting odds in the standard way, this means you can bet on Biden and get 0.49-to-1 or bet against him and get 2-to-1 (1/(1.5-1)). Or bet on Trump for 2-to-1 or against him for about 0.488-to-1 (1/(3.05-1))

IOW, if you have $230,000 you can Back Trump right now and triple your money if he wins.
A $460,000 bet on Biden at that moment has implied chance of 67%. If you make that buy, and think (correctly, as we will suppose) that Biden's chance is 77% instead of 67% then your expected net winnings are $66,000 uiam. That's real money.

Minus Betfair's commissions of course. To minimize these you need to leave your money in play at Betfair for future bets: a hefty commission is paid on withdrawal.
 
Swammerdami said:
Coleman Smith said:
"As of Wednesday morning, £220 million, or about $284 million, had already been wagered on the Betfair Exchange, said Darren Hughes, a spokesman for Betfair. The London-based company operates the world's largest online betting exchange."
Click to expand...

I clicked to the main BetFair auction; the action available at the best bid and asked seemed large:

Biden Back 1.49 $282k Lay 1.5 $263k
Trump Back 3 $119k Lay 3.05 $86k

Quoting odds in the standard way, this means you can bet on Biden and get 0.49-to-1 or bet against him and get 2-to-1 (1/(1.5-1)). Or bet on Trump for 2-to-1 or against him for about 0.488-to-1 (1/(3.05-1))

IOW, if you have $230,000 you can Back Trump right now and triple your money if he wins.
A $460,000 bet on Biden at that moment has implied chance of 67%. If you make that buy, and think (correctly, as we will suppose) that Biden's chance is 77% instead of 67% then your expected net winnings are $66,000 uiam. That's real money.

Minus Betfair's commissions of course. To minimize these you need to leave your money in play at Betfair for future bets: a hefty commission is paid on withdrawal.
Click to expand...

I'll be VERY interested to see how this shakes out if Biden wins outright, then SCOTUS starts throwing out ballots to overturn the election. If the bets are settled before inauguration day, someone is letting it hang out...
If there's a civil war, are the bets transferred to the winner of the war, rather than the winner of the election?
 
At this page I clicked on Rules:
Betfair Rules said:
... Who will be elected to be the next President of the United States of America as a result of the 2020 presidential election?
...
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. [Swammi's emphasis] In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2020. If more than one election takes place in 2020, then this market will apply to the first election that is held....

If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.

Betfair expressly reserves the right to suspend and/or void any and all bets on this market at any time if Betfair is not satisfied (in its absolute discretion) with the certainty of the outcome....
Click to expand...
It looks possible for Biden betters to win at Betfair, while GOP cheating keeps Trump in power. This is one reason I fear the BetFair "prediction" — still 67% — should be viewed with trepidation.
 
Elixir said:
At least Michigan has patriots with semi-automatic assault rifles attending the polls in order to
intimidate voters who don't like guns er ...
protect the freedumbs ...uh,
wave their portable penises around in public.
Click to expand...

Your penis isn't portable? Dear god, man. Do you have a crew to hoist it out for you on special occasions, at least? like maybe to get it to the local Farmer's Fair to troll the giant vegetable contest or something? I mean, even that 2,350 Lb. pumpkin was able to get onto a flatbed and win a $16,000 prize.
 
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