2024 US Presidential Election Betting Thread

i'm probably not understanding the spreadsheets -- why do we think she gets 53% remaining?

ran it last night just based on existing county trends versus outstanding votes which showed her losing ground. not dispositive at all as late ballots can/will be different, just wondering what the bull case for lake is

Looks like Lake lost.

Apes don't always win.

I fully expect the usual lying, crying, and grifting from Kari Lake to commence, tout de suite.

she was getting more than that in day of ballots - gallego's huge lead was due to early ballots where he did very well

maricopa was the real wild card and gallego did better there than expected

i had accounted for the counties and believed 53% was within reach

she hasn't lost, it's still up in the air, but gallego did gain ground today which was a big surprise

13% of ballots still left to count, but she obviously needs a huge percentage of those to close the gap

last bastion of politics markets is in PV MOV.

0.75-1.5 steaming but still dogs... my rudimentary model incorporating last 3 days count trends is still saying just under 1.0%.

should one trust my assumptions and excel sheet building skills? i wouldn't, i'm sure i left a decimal place off somewhere.

but if you're crazy enough, get in and enjoy the ride

estimated 472,000 votes left

maricopa went stronger for gallego than expected but i think she's very much drawing live

I pretty much sat this cycle out as I didnt have any outs for it until a couple days before on Robinhood. I bet a little bit on Trump but not a ton, so I'm not going to gloat or anything like that.

I just have a couple of small points from stuff I saw in here.

Swoop, it is very, very obvious that you are not an American. You view us like we're characters on a TV show (which I guess we are, to you). I really can't think of anyone else that I know of online that is as wrong and arrogant about it as you are, over and over. You act like you have your finger on the pulse of the average American when you so clearly do not. The fact that you think that the left should nominate "The Rock" next cycle is evidence that you still dont get it, and probably never will. And listen, thats fine. I dont want you people to ever get it. But you and people like you will never, ever understand the appeal of Trump. Again, its fine. But you should know how much you dont get it. Not knowing what you dont know is the worst place to be.

Respect to everyone in here who took your losses like champs, and of course to all the winners. Its nice to know that we werent the crazy ones after all. Polymarket comes out of this looking really good, as do prediction markets in general.

The left really has a lot of soul searching to do. I cannot believe the stuff Im seeing online since the election. It seems they actually want to double down on everything that made them lose in the first place.

Just my 2 cents which I know isnt worth a whole lot. I would love to say I knew it all along but I didn't. 2020 scared the **** out of me (which we can all admit now was 100% stolen, right? Rightt??)

Edit: I should say that I do have some respect for you. though, Swoop, in that you dont hide, you post your bets and defend them. So Im not trying to come down on you too hard. I do respect you, but I think your analysis has more flaws than you think

Swoop since 2012 has been “I have a political science degree and…….some long drawn out narrative of his personal biases of why a dem would win.”

Don't forget military ballots, which should go 70-30 Lake. IIRC there were around 1,000 of those in 2020.

Lake 1c on polymarket.

Meanwhile Trump is 95c to be inaugruated. I'm missing something obv.

same with kamala >5% next pres

it's the odds biden or trump dies before biden's term finishes

Yeah that's basically a mixture of people closing out positions and the chance either candidate dies I assume.

And yeah, as everyone has noted, I got it wrong this cycle, but had 10% as much in play as in 2020 where I got it all right, so i'll take my loss, I legitimately stated it was close to a coinflip on election day which roughly matched conventional wisdom of polling averages and whatnot, I just obviously massively underestimated the chances that polling was systematically broken. I won substantially more betting on Rugby League this weekend than I lost on the election, i'm glad I didn't size up on a low conviction read that was wrong, and life goes on. I got somewhat lucky having dust (1k or w/e) on Biden being the D nom when I very easily could have piled 5 figures on that incorrect read if I had been more organised in terms of having liquidity in the right books at the right times.

The one thing I did get right was 7/7 swing states would go the same way, I was just dumb and didn't hedge with Trump wins 7/7 swing states at +600 or whatever it was on election day and only having dust on Harris going 7/7, I really should have had more on Harris 7/7 and obviously had Trump 7/7 too, despite the result I maintain that Harris -99.5 at the +1000ish peak that was available was better than straight up and the same was true for Trump at like +750 or whatever the peak was his side (I don't have the exact numbers handy).

In reality I probably should have had something like Harris pop vote -160 which I missed and would have lost, no Harris straight up which I added small late and lost, and then had substantial amounts on both Trump and Harris -64.5 and -99.5 spreads (especially -99.5) in case of a polling miss in either direction or insanely high or low turnout skewing it either direction which is what happened, just not in the direction I was leaning

Anyway, will learn from it moving forward and keep in mind that the best value is probably in swing state correlation and the electoral college being less close than the market thinks on average. I really did think Trump was unelectable nationally after the record turnout against him in 2020 despite Harris being a flawed candidate, and got that wrong.

Way too soon to know what the political climate will look like in 2028 to have any idea of what to do, but making a note to my future self, always hedge it with the swing state correlation in the direction you're not leaning as well as the market will likely continue to overestimate the chances of swing states splitting evenly etc

Onto the next cycle

I am actually pretty relieved to have lost as little as I did this cycle, sure I lost like 6-7k or whatever all up but it could very very easily have been so much worse and after winning like 50 odd k on a 60k outlay last cycle I will absolutely take not getting super wrecked when I was wrong about everything except swing state correlation this cycle.

Hey, every vote counts.

Excellent post by TomG, as usual.

I was happy to see at first how civil, the after election discourse was, as opposed to the last cycle. But then I thought, well, only because they ( the majority on this forum) won. But then again, I didn't see any gloating and in your face comments, so respect and congrats.

It's obvious in hindsight why Harris lost.
( she lost more than Trump won. Trump actually got less votes than in 2020).

I seriously doubt Michelle Obama would ever run. She'd be too afraid of losing and ruining her and her husband's legacy

She, Harris, wasn't a good candidate.
Typical Liberal arrogance and condescension. Her main argument was, vote for me because Trump is bad. Not vote for me because I'm good.
And you can see on all the finger pointing in the wrong direction how liberals, my people, still don't get it. I'm so done with the Democrats.

Yes, immigration and, I'll admit it myself, the extreme position on Trans rights, ( no, Trans kids should not compete in girls sports) are two of the major issues that helped Trump and hurt Harris.

Anyway, I made my peace.

Edit. Made a big mistake. Trump got slightly more votes this cycle than 2020.
Last time I checked, he only had 68 million, and I was simply going by memory.
I can't get nothing right ��

A ton of people seem to think vote counting is over, California is 77% counted among others

It won't change the popular vote winner (although will narrow further)

Some people made memes on election night about 'where did the 15 million votes go' etc probably in bad faith (both rigtards on the left and rigtards on the right complaining about 2020 still) when nowhere near all of the votes were counted

Also population growth has to be factored in each cycle to turnout etc

But as it stands now it's 71.1 to 74.6 million votes

https://edition.cnn.com/election/2024/results/president?election-data-id=2024-PG&election-painting-mode=projection-with-lead&filter-key-races=false&filter-flipped=false&filter-remaining=false

CNN

Presidential election results 2024 | CNN Politics

Trump got 74.2 million last cycle, Biden 81.2m, it looks like theres about another 4-5m to be counted mostly on the west coast that skew blue but not heavily enough to overcome the popular vote margin or change the outcome of any states

If the remaining votes split about 60/40 dem or so (approx current west coast numbers, in reality it's slightly better for Ds as outstanding votes I assume will skew postal although would need to double check that) we're looking at something like another 2.4-2.5m harris votes or so and another 1.5-1.6m Trump votes or so, so it looks like the final count may end up more like 73.x million for Harris to 76m or so for Trump, which while down on 2020 turnout especially factoring in population growth isn't an insane drop off or anything, it just represents a decent single digit % swing to Trump which is exactly what happened.

I did say Trump would get a similar number of votes and he roughly did after adjusting for America's population growth in that generally speaking peoples minds are made up about him either way; the part I got wrong was that I thought high turnout with female voters post Roe would lead to Harris getting closer to Biden's numbers which would have been enough if she had got say 82m votes or so (slightly underperforming Biden after adjusting for population growth)...

But she just didn't turn out the Democratic base and underperformed with Independents and various other demos (mostly men) compared to Biden. So Trump wins.

It's crazy i'm still seeing that election day graphic on both the right and left by the way. People are idiotic not knowing that the votes aren't ever all counted on the first day.

Anyway, we'll see how things go, presumably if Trump's term goes smoothly (lol) Republicans will be live in the midterms to hold their sweep and if not Democrats might take the house back although the Senate would require a massive wave election given the seats Republicans are defending are mostly on friendly territory. I'd assume Republicans start as heavy favs to hold the Senate and Democrats start moderate favs to retake the house given it usually swings against the incumbent in a midterm but obviously nothing is guaranteed.

Way too far out to speculate on 2028 without knowing the candidates, the state of the economy and how Trump's second term goes in general as well as whether Democrats make adjustments in their platform and choice of candidate or not.

Going to be very interesting to see how Susan Collins navigates trying to hold her seat. I assume with the Senate makeup, R leadership allows her to vote against Trump a ton to appear more independent which will help her. That's probably going to be the race of the cycle.

swoop

nowhere in normal discourse have i ever heard anyone talk about abortion rights

what does come up all the time is how messed up ukraine/middle east is, how much gas and groceries cost, and that nobody is hiring for good jobs (the biden admin literally changed their definition of recession mid term just so they could claim things weren't all gloomy

everywhere you see help wanted signs, but it's all very low paying jobs with no career upside like working as a laborer for a landscaper, working the fry machine, or helping people find the right color sweater

those bs jobs that nobody wants are the ones which the biden admin repeatedly claims a victory lap upon and everyone down in the real world and working the job market can see right through it

i hear abortion rights talked about a lot, but it's only when i listen to npr or hang out with my yuppie friends and they've had too much chardonnay and start talking politics - these are the exact well to do and highly educated liberals that the right routinely lampoons as out of touch - while i wouldn't ever frame them as out of touch (i'm one of them afterall) there is a massive cultural divide and while my people are the ones in charge of media and academia - we are firmly in the cultural minority of the united states

where i grew up, i was routinely made fun of and called a dumbass because i was going to college, same thing when i left the public school to attend a prep school which in the minds of my old public school friends think it was like this

and thus come to this conclusion

rip arizona

"swoop

nowhere in normal discourse have i ever heard anyone talk about abortion rights"

Yea this is big. I think the big lesson to take from this is that the internet and the real world aren't exactly the same. I sort of picture it like a Venn Diagram where you have the internet on one side and the real world on the other. A portion of both do come together but for the most part, theyre two separate realities. And if you only 'consume' America/our news from online or TV, you are going to get a warped view. As much as the left has been autisticly screeching about AbOrTiOn online, it's just simply not that relevant or important to the vast majority of people. Never mind the fact that abortion wasn't even on the ballot federally.

Another interesting thing I've learned is that quite a few of the obnoxious super left youtube channels lost TENS of thousands of subscribers overnight on the night of the election. Id wager that a big chunk, if not all of them, were bots. When the election was over, people stopped paying for them. I'm starting to think that the far left almost like doesnt even really exist. It's all bots amplifying each other, fake money being paid to celebrities and lots of mail-in/absentee fraud. Thats my conspiracy for today. For a betting angle, I think republicans will have an even better than it seems chance in the midterms if/when Trump can implement election integrity laws. That's a long way out and I wouldnt bet anything now but it's something to keep in mind.

A good proxy for 2026 will be how many cabinet nominees get in.

house - did you ever confirm whether 2% net profit gets siphoned off in poly markets? multiple rando sites say it does, but don't see anything like that in poly documentation

by DonJuan k

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/11/17/media/iowa-pollster-ann-selzer-retire-trump-harris

CNN

Ann Selzer to end election polling after 16-point miss in final Iowa survey | CNN Business

Such a huge miss and reputation ruin. She probably amplify a lot of biases and money lost. And I bet a lot of people think she try to help democrats. This is why people say fake news on the right.

What makes you think she wasn't helping democrats?