At this point, for many tax situations, you cannot rationally believe both 'Nate Silver is credible' and 'I should not be betting on Biden'. If you have any trust in Nate you cannot think Biden is below ~80% to win. You can get 'Biden' for 65-66c on Predictit. Notably, there are several de facto copies of the same bet (Female VP, Dems win presidency). Even with fees, you are making a lot of stochastic money. Your capital will probably not be held up that long.
If you are outside the USA or [wink wink] you can get even better odds. There are many places you can get implied odds of 62-63%. Many sportsbook offer election odds. You can also use bet with crypto on sites like Polymarket. This bet gets worse if you are paying tons of income tax and cannot offset losses. But this is a very good bet for lots of people.
Polling Averages
I edited in an image of the rolling polling averages so people can judge this for themselves.
Here is another good analysis of why we should be confident in Biden.
In general, I think Rationalists should be a lot 'louder' about their advice when they are sure. For many tax situations, this is a complete slam dunk. I really wish rationalists had been louder about similar advice in the past when I could benefit.
Contest Entrants Think Trump is Going to Lose
Of the 98 entries, only six said that the Democratic candidate was under 50c to win the presidency. In fact, the median predicted probability for the Democratic candidate (hereafter Biden, for brevity) among contest entrants was 87%; notably, the median probability given by the models out there is also 87% (though Nate Silver has yet to release his and based on his fights with G. Elliott Morris it’s probably not going to come in very high).
This confidence in Biden (he is “Likely” to win the presidency, in the parlance of verbal handicappers) isn’t shared by the markets. Both BetFair and PredictIt price Joe in the low 60s, suggesting that the presidency “Leans” Biden (the price ranges on PI depending on the market you’re looking at). Even Silver thinks that’s too low: “I don’t think people realize how dumb and sometimes even irrational the prices are at political betting markets as compared to almost every other type of market (which is not to say other markets are always rational, either).” and “Too low on Biden.”
Note: My claims are completely orthogonal to whether Biden should win. Rationalists, in general, have some faith in Nate Silver and similar analysis. This post is about the logical conclusion of that faith. Please do not discuss the merits of which candidate is better for the country.
edit: At this point if anyone is reading and can access international markets the 'safe' line is to buy both 'pop vote' and 'Biden'. Pop vote is safe so you can 'hedge' Biden bets with a safe +EV pop vote bet. This way you win money unless Dems lose the pop vote (extremely unlikely).
Anyone with available capital interested in making money from this election should spend ~1hr researching TX, come to the accurate conclusion that Biden is favored there, and bet accordingly (buy Biden in TX, Dems to win TX senate race, Biden electoral college margin >210 EC votes, etc). The expected returns are much higher than betting on Biden to win overall, because Biden TX is currently trading at around 30% to win TX, when fair value is ~65%. These twitter feeds from (semi)pro politics bettors are a good place to start: 1, 2.
The key argument is that polling systematically underestimates Democrats with Latino voters in Texas, and that the electorate will be much more favorable to Democrats than in 2018, when Dems lost the Senate race by ~2.5 points in a worse national environment.
The Texas bet (TX) seems EV neutral to me, and clearly far worse than the nationwide electoral college (EC) bet.
Biden for EC: 95% likely (The Economist model), priced at 62%
Biden for TX: 26% likely (The Economist), priced at 29%
The two Twitter feeds are full of a lot of shitposting, and don't update me much.
0Liam Donovan
I mean yes, clearly if you believe the Economist and 538 models are reasonable, then the TX bet isn't +EV. My point is that the models are clearly unreasonable for the reasons listed above, and the bet is actually extremely +EV.
There are three arguments (1) polls underestimating Dems in Southern states, and (2) benchmarking against 2018 senate, and (3) some low-quality Tweets.
It's weird to hold a lot of stock in (2), given noise from candidate selection and other variables.
If you place a lot of weight on (1), the actually sane bet would be Biden in AZ. It's rated 2nd and 4th most likely to go dem by Cohn and Wasserman respectively.
Biden for AZ: 77% likely (Economist), priced at 54% on Election Betting Odds.
At this point, for many tax situations, you cannot rationally believe both 'Nate Silver is credible' and 'I should not be betting on Biden'. If you have any trust in Nate you cannot think Biden is below ~80% to win. You can get 'Biden' for 65-66c on Predictit. Notably, there are several de facto copies of the same bet (Female VP, Dems win presidency). Even with fees, you are making a lot of stochastic money. Your capital will probably not be held up that long.
If you are outside the USA or [wink wink] you can get even better odds. There are many places you can get implied odds of 62-63%. Many sportsbook offer election odds. You can also use bet with crypto on sites like Polymarket. This bet gets worse if you are paying tons of income tax and cannot offset losses. But this is a very good bet for lots of people.
I edited in an image of the rolling polling averages so people can judge this for themselves.
Here is another good analysis of why we should be confident in Biden.
In general, I think Rationalists should be a lot 'louder' about their advice when they are sure. For many tax situations, this is a complete slam dunk. I really wish rationalists had been louder about similar advice in the past when I could benefit.
Note: My claims are completely orthogonal to whether Biden should win. Rationalists, in general, have some faith in Nate Silver and similar analysis. This post is about the logical conclusion of that faith. Please do not discuss the merits of which candidate is better for the country.
edit: At this point if anyone is reading and can access international markets the 'safe' line is to buy both 'pop vote' and 'Biden'. Pop vote is safe so you can 'hedge' Biden bets with a safe +EV pop vote bet. This way you win money unless Dems lose the pop vote (extremely unlikely).