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naraburns  nihil supernum  21d ago (text post)   26930 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Polymarket are now effectively running a death lottery on Trump. Also, the odds seem really good for the 'Trump will not be President' wager considering what happened this year. It was around 1/200 when I looked. 4 sitting Presidents of 46 have been killed so far. the historical odds is something like 4/46 * 2/50 of being killed in a 2 month window if we include November to January before certification. so about 1/280, so purely on historical odds alone its not a good bet but if you think Trump is significantly more likely than average then those odds start to look interesting.

I mean actuarial life tables give trump a 1/100 chance of dying of natural causes in that time frame, those odds are a bit low if anything on actuarial life table grounds.

Wait you are saying there is a 1% chance he will die in the next 90 days? That seems unlikely

Yep.

Actuarial life tables give him a 1.45% chance to die of natural causes in the next 90 days, Trump is healthier than the average 78 year old but he is fat and could have heart disease for all I know so I wouldn't give him non-zero odds.

Also surely decent delta of 'significant health event which disqualifies him from the presidency without actually killing him'

I consider that he's way healthier than the average 78 year old a big reason to give him lower odds relative to his life table, the "significant health event" angle does happen too but I think it still only gets him to 1%

I'm tempted to throw a little money at "Trump will not be president" as a hedge against my despair in case it actually happens. Is Polymarket open to Americans?

Is Polymarket open to Americans?

No, though if you use a VPN and crypto they can't exactly stop you. This would be a violation of their terms of service and also the law, though the extent to which that violation would be on you versus them is not clear to me.

So long as you're not obnoxious about it there's nil incentive for them.

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