Betting on elections is illegal in the United States. However, it's not illegal in other countries. PredictIt is a New Zealand-based betting exchange that allows wagers on U.S. elections. Players bet by purchasing shares whose price reflects the expected probability that the candidate will win. Unless a candidate is unopposed, their share price is somewhere below $1, so if you buy a share at the lower price and that candidate wins, you get $1 (minus the house percentage or "vig"). If they lose, you lose your original investment.
Betting markets are thought to be more reflective of current opinion than polls, because while people may lie to a pollster, they aren't likely to purchase shares for a candidate they think will lose. The current polling average has Biden at 40.7% and Trump at 41.7%, leaving 17.6% undecided or supporting other candidates. Anything below 4% is within the margin of error, so the two leading candidates are essentially tied.
However, PredictIt tells a different story. Shares for Biden are going for 51 cents, while shares for Trump are 46 cents, a 5 point difference, outside the margin of error. The market for which party wins the presidency has an even larger spread, with the Democratic candidate at 55 cents and the Republican at 47 cents, an 8 point difference. 8 points is generally considered between "solid" and "leaning."
Of course, the U.S. presidency is determined by the electoral vote, not the popular vote, so the outcome will probably come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of states. However, betting markets like these may be better predictors of the election than polls, which tend to inflate support for third parties. I'm not saying people are lying when they express support for RFK Jr. or the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, but when they're in the voting booth, support for third parties tends to evaporate, and the betting markets reflect this as very few people have enough confidence in those candidates to actually bet real money on them.
Also, for anyone thinking "who cares what some gamblers in New Zealand think about the US elections," Americans can bet in these markets by spoofing a location in another country where political betting is legal, or by having another person in one of those countries place a bet for them.
I wonder why. I imagine that in the scenario that Biden does end up winning, this will be something that conspiracy theorists on the right will point to as evidence the election was rigged by outside influence.
I’ve come to realize that Biden’s situation isn’t quite as dire as I’ve been thinking it was because Trump has gained plenty of support in places he doesn’t really need it, whereas he’s only gained support modestly in places he does need it; however, it seems to me pretty clear that if the election were held tomorrow Trump would win, and I still have a hard time seeing the situation changing in Biden’s favor as much as he still needs it to.
Trump has gained lots of support from black and Latino men, which has given him a significant lead in the Sun Belt swing states except [i]maybe[/i] for Nevada. Considering that Biden is out raising Trump by a wide margin it may still be wise for Biden to spend on advertising in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and even Florida, but I think his chances of actually winning any of those states now are between slim and none.
By contrast, Biden hasn’t really lost a whole lot of support with older white voters, which is why he’s still competitive in the “Blue Wall”, that is the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It seems like usually when a respected polling firm does polls of the swing states Biden is usually winning one of those three states, though it rotates between them. Poll A has him leading in Michigan but trailing in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Poll B has him leading in Pennsylvania but trailing in Michigan and Wisconsin, etc.
Well the good news for Biden is if he can just hang onto the [i]entire[/i] Blue Wall plus either Nebraska’s second congressional district or Nevada that’s enough to still win him the election, but like I said he has to win [i]all three[/i] of the Rust Belt states. No set of polls yet this cycle has shown Biden leading all three of those states at the same time, and very few if any have shown him leading in two of those three at the same time.
But every silver lining’s got a touch of grey. Both candidates are very much known quantities, and it’s late enough that most voters’ views of the economy are, as they say, “hardening”. So what would possibly change the trajectory of this election to bring back enough support to Biden to give him the win? I can’t imagine what it would be. I am highly skeptical that Trump getting convicted in the hush money trial would do it as I think that would change very few if any minds. Polls have shown that plenty of Americans already believe Trump is guilty, yet they plan to vote for him anyway.
It’s not fair or smart, but voters mostly give Trump a mulligan for Covid-19 because they figure he couldn’t control it, and I guess for some strange reason they think his response to it was acceptable; however, voters don’t give Biden a similar pass for the inevitable inflation that resulted from the pandemic, probably because they figure the president should be able to control the economy. 55% Of voters now see Trump’s presidency as a success, and 61% of voters think Biden’s presidency has been a failure. Furthermore, somehow even fewer voters now see Biden as [i]likable[/i] than those that see Trump as such. I don’t see how Biden or anyone can overcome mountains like those.
Voters are convinced, wrongly in my opinion, that Trump is competent and Biden is not. What else could possibly matter?
@Theyitis Electoral-Vote.com today had a post saying the same thing - that Biden should focus on the Blue Wall states over the Sun Belt. They also pointed out that his campaign manager is a Latina who may have a good grasp of what that community wants. An ad just came out with a Latino Marine talking about how Trump isn't a "real man" because he attacks women, and how Biden wants to protect women.
I'm not too concerned about the polls as Biden's considerable financial advantage will allow him to blast the nation with ads right before the election when they can do the most good. As political junkies, we sometimes forget that many voters don't pay any attention to politics until right before the election. Also, Trump seems to have a ceiling of the low to mid 40s, so if Biden can convince enough third party voters to support him, he should be fine. As I pointed out to another commenter, Biden's disapproval numbers aren't just people who don't think he's conservative enough; they're also people who don't think he's liberal enough. Most of those aren't going to vote for Trump.
I am concerned that if the pollsters' models are off and Biden's win is far enough from the predicted outcome, the screams of fraud will be as bad as 2020 or even worse. I can see some stochastic violence as a response, but nothing organized as the current administration will be in charge and won't let things get to the point they did on Jan. 6. Also, Trump isn't in power and won't be able to do any of the things he did before, like creating fake slates of electors.
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - U.S. voters view Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as better for the economy than President Joe Biden , as the incumbent's approval rating ticked lower in April from the previous month, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some 41% of respondents in the three-day poll, which closed on Sunday, said Trump, who is expected to face Biden in the Nov. 5 presidential election, has the better approach to the economy, compared to 34% who picked Biden.
@MarmeeMarch The crosstabs are important. Disapproval could be based on thinking Biden is too liberal or too conservative. It's not a good predictor of elections as people who disapprove of Biden will still vote for him, because they disapprove of Trump more. The recent drop in approval probably has to do with the war in Gaza. That should be over with by November.
As for the numbers for likely voters, that is well within the margin of error. The RFK and other third-party voters will probably hold their noses and vote for one of the major party candidates as they have in the past. I'm not sure how valid the poll is anyway if it didn't include the Libertarians, the Greens, or other independent candidates besides RFK.
Polls at this point are pretty worthless anyway. We don't know how Trump's criminal trials will affect the election. Around 20% of Trump supporters say they won't vote for him if he's convicted of a felony. Even if the percentage doesn't end up that high, Trump can't afford to lose any supporters. We also don't know the effect abortion will have. Democrats have overperformed expectations since the Dobbs decision, suggesting that pollsters aren't taking this into account in their models.
I just posted the PredictIt numbers because I thought they were interesting. At this point, the election could go either way, although I think Democrats will do better than expected given how they've done over the past year.
