2024 US Presidential Election Betting Thread
Ladies and gentleman, that time of the year is almost upon us. Republican debates start next month and I am looking forward to seeing all my friends again. It almost feels like school is back in session.
Some interesting candidates this year and wondering if Domahhhh is going to risk his entire net worth on a coinflip of a single election (getting -180 of course).
We didn't think it could get any worse but here we are. I wish the BOL to all competitors in this arena.
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.
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
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
Spoiler
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
What makes you think she wasn't helping democrats?
what?
She ruin her reputation by trying to help democrats is what I am saying. And what I meant by fake news is that it not that it fake but it biases against the right. It made me lose a bit of money by not trusting my own instinct and maxing more on Trump but it causes a lot more pain on people betting against Trump.
How is it remotely helpful to any political party to incorrectly believe they are on course to win a state lol
Accurate polling data is helpful because a political party will know whether their strategy is working or not and they can accurately assign resources to close winnable states or races etc
Inaccurate polling data doesn't help anyone unless I guess it could help a party if they trick their opponent into wasting resources on an unwinnable race or a race that they have locked up but they need to know it's inaccurate data for that to be the case
Biden pardoning Fauci is up from 9c a few hours ago on poly to 35c now.
IMO this is more likely than not. I don't play poly but this could easily get in the 65-75c range, regardless of it having any merit.
