Betting Markets and Actual Voters

I’m sure you’ve heard of Polymarket, which is a crypto prediction platform. Last week, close to half a billion (with a “b”) was wagered there. As of last Friday, Polymarket saw the Convicted Felon with at 60% chance of winning in November. I’ve been getting questions about whether “the market” knows more than the pollsters, who are showing a much tighter race.

Polymarket has been in business since 2020. Users can bet on all sorts of outcomes. Currently, there are about 210,000 registered users. In 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and received a cease and desist order, related to improper registration of the platform.

There are two reasons I don’t take them seriously. First, their largest investor is Peter Thiel. And while we don’t know who wagered that half a billion, I’m betting it’s not “regular people”. Moreover, since it’s inception, only 12.7% of users have made a profit. A coin toss has a 50/50 chance of landing heads. If you’re taking a multiple choice exam with 5 answers to a question, and you guess wildly because you have no idea what the answer is, you have a 20% chance of being correct. If you can, with certainty, know that one of the answers is incorrect, your chances go up to 25%.

Since 100 - 12.7 = 87.3, that means close to 90% of the bettors bet WRONG.

Therefore, I don’t take the betting markets seriously.

As an aside, if you want to talk about a betting market that DOES have strong track record of calling elections, you need to look at the US Stock Market. Overall, when the S&P 500 is up, the incumbent party has held the White House 83% of the time since 1928. The market called the previous 9 elections correctly, prior to 2020. In 2020, the market was up, but the incumbent party lost - think Covid, and THANK YOU JOE BIDEN! The market is UP this year. By a lot. More deets.

While I don’t like how close things seem, I’m seeking out positive signs AND I’ve been out canvassing this weekend.

On the positive side, we need to think about both polls and betting markets NOT having a “margin of error” but rather a “margin of effort.” If the election is close, it will come down to a confluence of enthusiasm and effort.

This can be seen in Miami, where the Harris-Walz campaign is leveraging the three Taylor Swift concerts this weekend to energize and engage voters. Remember, when Swift sings, her audiences are not all local, people fly in from other places, in this case, including swing states! The campaign has put up billboards, advertisements, and interactive SnapChat filters.¹ If history is a guide, the campaign will have volunteers walking the lines as people await the concert, with information. More info here and here. Other musical guests have been joining Vice President Harris at rallies, including Lizzo and Usher. Rumor has it a concert is planned.

Scuttlebutt indicates that rallies are enthusiastic for both Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. The rallies are filled. Reports from the swing states indicate that canvass sites are teeming with volunteers and going gangbusters.

If one wants to canvass for the Harris-Walz campaign, they can go to the website and see what opportunities are available TODAY (the site redirects to your location automatically). Options include canvasses, phone banking, even training opportunities for newbies. Want to canvass for the side of darkness? Give them your information, and perhaps they’ll get back to you.

Last weekend, Governor Walz held a rally at the FedEx Great Hall at Acrisure Stadium. Well attended, enthusiastic people. Meanwhile, the Convicted Felon is expected to attend the Steelers-Jets games Sunday night, and the Steelers wanted everyone to know that he’s going to be there “as a guest of an individual suite holder.” Source. No rally, no voters, just a team letting attendees know there will be extra security - potentially slowing down stadium entry, so some old guy can watch a football game, if, of course, he can stay awake.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

I’m not out doing “regular” canvassing. I received targeted lists of identified undecided voters, and I go out to help them. On Saturday, I went to one house to speak to a 21-year-old woman who wasn’t home. The man who answered the door (I’m thinking brother) said that she’d be home all day Sunday. I asked if he was all set, and he looked at my shirt, and told me he was, and he would be making my shirt happy on Election Day and really hoped I could help her. On Sunday, we had a long talk about the situation in Gaza, it went almost an hour. It was a difficult conversation. In the end, she came to the conclusion that the possibility of hope, ceasefire, and return of the hostages was better than the “bomb into oblivion” that the other side would undertake. I had to remind her about the Muslim ban, which is horrible to even think about. But every vote counts, and is worth fighting for.

At another house, I met a woman who said that she had been undecided, but was convinced to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket by her granddaughter, between the last time a canvasser appeared, and my visit. She is 75, a registered Republican, and has never voted for a Democrat before. She has filled out her ballot (“All of your people”) and didn’t know when the drop-box would be open. We checked my phone and set a plan for this Tuesday for her (and her two sons) to drop off their ballots.

At one house, I heard something I’ve NEVER heard before, in all my years of canvassing. The targeted voter was a man, but his wife answered the door. She explained to me that they were going to vote, and she was under no obligation to tell me anything because I had no right to be at her house, and it was illegal to ask people for whom they were going to vote. (That’s not true.) She is a Chinese immigrant, and in my town, there is a group of Chinese immigrants who are in the tank for the Convicted Felon, and are also involved with “Moms for Liberty”, and have unsuccessfully run school board candidates. I’ve spoken to some of them in the past and they have said that they believe the Convicted Felon will support their small businesses, and never enact tariffs because (and this is a quote I’ve heard several times) “Tariffs would hurt China, and he loves China, and would never do anything to hurt us.” Yeah, painful.

I was headed to an undecided house, and ran into a Harris-Walz canvasser who, by chance, had just been to the house I’d been assigned. This was her second day canvassing. HER SECOND DAY!!!! She’s never canvassed before. It’s so wonderful to see new canvassers - you can just feel the enthusiasm, the hope, the joy. It’s these armies that are doing the work.

The undecided woman? We had a nice chat. Once again, the issue is Gaza. We spoke about 20 minutes, and she said she was still undecided. We set up a time for me to return next weekend, and she will be inviting over a few also-undecided friends. For American Muslims who have emigrated from the Middle East, the choice is legitimately painful. Convincing them is measured in millimeters not inches, but we’ve still got 2 weeks.

GO OUT AND GET A VOTER!!! There ARE undecided voters in YOUR area!!!!

1. I know nothing about SnapChat, but I mentor a wonderful woman who is cuspy Millenial-Gen Z who explained it to me. In case you are as clueless as I was - it’s a place where posts remain only for a few seconds after they are viewed. It is mostly used by Gen Z and Gen Alpha people. The interactive filters will allow users to go to information on specific issues.