Fuck polls. Go vote!
Seriously, polls mean nothing. If you want to know what people actually think, then look at the money. Betting odds everywhere still have trump destroying her. That’s what people actually think.
*That’s what people who’s entire profession is establishing likelihood of outcomes think.
Oddsmakers are often wrong, but over the long term, they’re more often right, it’s the entire basis of how they make money.
Polls are just polls. Oddsmakers literally are putting thier money where their mouth is. If you’re confident they’re wrong, take the bet. They WANT you to.
Edit: after reading the great responses, I think I’m sorely underestimating the volume of bets and how keeping both sides betting against eachother in this case is the strongest factor in the current odds.
Wtf… No. Don’t replace polls with a weird poll proxy. Ignore all that shit and vote.
Yeah, don’t go to the places people are actually willing to risk their money. Go to the people with agendas and no evidence of who they even asked. Good one.
Betting odds are influenced by other factors beyond the underlying probability, including behaviour of betters and where bets are placed.
Take horse racing. If a horse was given a 40% chance to win but lots of people start piling money on that horse rather than any others, this creates unbalanced risk for the bookmaker as bets on one outcome need to be balanced by bets on another to ensure the bookmaker makes money.
The bookmaker will respond to this by adjusting the odds of the popular horse upward to a higher probability, e.g. 60% And that can happen purely through market behaviour, even though nothing about the horse or the track or the race itself has changed!
So it could be that Trump is the genuine statistical favourite. But it could also be that Republicans are just more likely to gamble and place bets on their candidate than Democrats are.
Then it’s easy free money, go take it from the degenerates. Nearly all sites are offering double your money if she wins. The rates are usually dynamic, so get it while it’s hot, it may not last at such a discount once the clever betters see this steal.
On lots of these sites, Harris has been paying half of Biden for the last 3 weeks, well before Biden even announced his retirement. Maybe the betters knew something others didn’t, maybe it was just chance…
A reminder, folks: That a mathematical justification must exist for polls to stay in business. They work off of weight ratios, and if one thing is more likely according to a calculation, they weight that and ratio the bets to be less profitable for those who bet on it.
Polls attempt to weight real-world data and adjust using, you guessed it, mathematical justification. In general, counting the total number of people in a room is more precise than estimating a percentage and working in some flavor text.
You’re right, but I noticed that the odds have been shifting in Kamala’s favour. She was around +250 just a few days ago, and now she’s about +160.
Trump is still the favourite to win (-188), but a couple debates might turn that around.
Prediction markets like we are talking about only change based on the bets that other betters have made. Pure prediction markets don’t even take a hosting cut, but most aren’t pure, so a percent or so goes to the inferstructure costs. It isn’t like a traditional Vegas sports book when the house picks horrible odds that you can take or leave where they know they will win.
Pasted my comment from elsewhere here to support the argument.
The way in which most polls are conducted is often biased towards older voters as they’re often phone calls. How many young people are answering phonecalls from unknown numbers? Also the sources pollsters get their numbers from are also often biased as well.
Here’s a report from Pew Research who make their money from polls, so this is the rosiest of takes on it https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/21/does-public-opinion-polling-about-issues-still-work/
Here’s a take from the Times and what they’re trying to do about it. I’ve pasted the archive.is link https://archive.is/sQ5Vi
And here’s a report from journalists that doesn’t profit from polling https://theweek.com/politics/2024-election-polls-accuracy
