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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9142 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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I know very little about prediction markets, so can someone explain to me how likely it is that Trump's surge on for example Polymarket is the result more of speculative behavior than of people rationally trying to predict the winner of the election? I don't really see any reason to currently view the race as being anything other than pretty close to 50-50. People might say well, if I believe that then why not try to make some money on it? And maybe that's fair. But that does not necessarily mean that the betting odds on Polymarket are actually an accurate guide to the likely election outcome.

Other countries have let people bet on politics for a long time and no, they’re far from always accurate. Right before Brexit, the betting market hugely favored remaining in the EU for example.

Prediction markets are well-calibrated when there is sufficient liquidity.

A 20% chance is not a 0% chance. It will happen 1 in 5 times. When it does happen, the prediction market is not "wrong".

This is what Nate Silver had to say over and over again in the wake of 2016 when he made a "wrong" prediction by giving Trump only a 30% of winning. Most people simply fail to understand how prediction works.

Yes, but for a non-repeatable event it’s also very easy for a pollster to say they were right. After all, even someone who predicts a 95% likelihood of A winning can say “well, the 5% likelihood of B winning happened to be the outcome in this scenario, my forecast was in fact entirely correct” and this is completely unfalsifiable.

The prediction markets, if anything, seem to be underselling Trump's chances right now.

I'd check out RealClearPolitics, which does a good job of aggregating all the polls. Trump is ahead in 6 of 7 swing states right now. Based on current polling averages, Trump wins 302 electoral votes. More importantly, polls are moving in his favor each day:

https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states

Another data point. At this point in the campaign 8 years ago, Hilary was up by over 6.7 points nationally. Biden was up by 10 points. So we'd expect the polls to undersell Republican support on average. If the 2024 campaign follows the same trajectory as previous ones, Trump wins the popular vote by 3% and an electoral college landslide.

So, absent other information, I'd put Trump's odds at 70-80%. But I also know that I'm lacking information and fallible. I trust that the prediction markets are likely to be a truer reflection of the current state of the race than my opinions. There's actually a decent amount of liquidity in this particular market, with over $1 billion gambled, and a small bid ask spread of just 0.1%.

While I fully agree with your general point and thrust of argument, particularly in overall polling differences compared to previous elections, the current leads in key states are still well within normal margins of error. We are in various cases talking about leads of 0.X% when a margin of error can be wide.

While I fully agree that based on historical patterns this would be a shoe in, there is a point that this assumes no changes in how polls were conducted between election cycles to try and improve their accuracy. There are many interests- commercial, strategic, and political-competitor- that have incentives to try and improve polling accuracy, and so it's not good to assume the same errors will continue to be repeated in the same way.

New equivalent errors may be introduced, and there are even conspiratorial takes on why polls may be wrong (such as presenting polls claiming a much closer race to support the effectiveness of future cheating by reducing the amount of cheating needed to plausibly 'narrowly' win), but these would have to be made and I don't think you or most other people are making them.

The prediction markets, if anything, seem to be underselling Trump's chances right now.

As much as I think the "Trump campaign is in disarray! They were not prepared for Kamala! Coconut-couchfucker-joy!" offensive was fake, I'll keep repeating "it's not over until it's over". Someone else also pointed out back then that relying on pollsters' past bias might be risky, because you never know when they might decide to correct for it.

Oh yeah, I'm with you. And we also can't escape the fact that many swing states have serious flaws in their election security.

A lot can still happen. I would expect a maximally damaging and fake news story to drop against Trump in the next few days. (50% chance). But on the plus side, Biden seems to hate Kamala so some of the levers that the current administration can pull (like sabre-rattling with Iran) won't get pulled.

But on the plus side, Biden seems to hate Kamala

Source?

You make it sound as if pollster bias is just a simple matter of them deciding not to correct for them, rather than them trying repeatedly to correct for it but reality being surprising in various ways.

Hofstadler's Law of polling mean there is always a shy Tory effect, even when you correct for Hofstadler's Law.

Yes, and you seem to be implying there's something strange about that?

If the bias is consistently in the same direction, I find it unlikely that they are actually trying to correct it. I'd have to look up the post I'm citing, but I think they were talking about Sweden where their right-populist party was underestimated during one election, overestimated in the next one, and finally estimated correctly in the one after that. This is what you'd expect to see if they were trying.

Trump has had two Presidential elections so far. Even with no bias, you'd expect the error to be the same sign 50% of the time.

The dark and cynical but not quite CapitalRoom level of cynicism is that the pollsters have to keep the polls showing the possibility of a Harris victory to give the Democrats cover when they "find" enough ballots to put her over the top.

I do have to say it's concerning that this election runs through several of our nation's most corrupt cities: Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

I won't make specific claims but it's the height of naivete to think these cities can run an election correctly.

There is also the possibility that the underlying cause for the bias could have abated. Support for Trump can have normalised in poll answering demographics for instance.

I still find it likely that some underestimation is going on but I wouldn't be surprised if the poll aggregate is largely accurate or even overestimating Trump.

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