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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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I keep seeing posts that polls show it's 50-50 but polymarket has Trump's odds at 60, Harris' at 40 with over $2B in wagers. Terrifying.
It's 4 accounts' bets that put Trump's odds at 60, likely being done to influence people's perceptions about Trump's chances. It only took ~$30M to tip the scales to 60, which is a very cheap way to advertise for Trump considering the billionaires who support him. https://www.wsj.com/finance/betting-election-pro-trump-ad74aa71
I've seen some analysis correlating the shift in those odds not to any political news or polls, but to things like Elon Musk telling folks to go bet on Trump...
Many people who gamble big money go by past divergences between polls done before, and exit polls done after. These can vary between 5% to 10% , which is important when the published count is almost 50:50 in some states.
Many US states violate UN practices for free and fair ballot counting, and while this is blindly ignored for decades, it shows up in the odds. People in the USA tend to talk about this as the shy republican effect, and other names.
At the same time, I do not trust the polls being done now, because most people do not answer phone, text or email about asking, given there are so many scam polls out, so I have to wonder how this skews the results.
I would totally use the bookie odds and ignore the polls
Polls also only try to measure public opinion and don't quantify the very real effects that the vast toolkit of dirty tricks play in the election process, including whatever October surprises are lurking around the corner.
My big issue is the hidden vote counting, lack of recounts, and the exit polls being so unreliable in many states to choose the winners. So, unreliable, that all the major networks stopped using them after 2018 to call elections and fewer exit polls are being done. Exit polls have been established as good tools since the past 300 years. And when they consistently give bad calls, that area has always had ballot stuffing, or the electronic version of that
In my opinion, hidden ballot counting with bad exit polls will outweigh any other issues