If you have any trust in Nate you cannot think Biden is below ~80% to win.
That seems too strong. I’m assigning a 50% chance to Nate being the best authority on this, and a 50% chance to markets being the best authority. I still agree that betting on Biden has positive expected value.
My main reason for doubting Nate is the likelihood that the pandemic will have strange effects on turnout. I’m unwilling to bet on which direction that will surprise people.
For what it’s worth, 538′s final predictions have (narrowly) outperformed betting markets in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2018 (I haven’t looked at 2010 or 2014). Also, almost every consistently profitable politics bettor is putting massive bets on Biden this cycle, and my impression is that they either believe 538 is ~accurate or biased in favor of Trump. As an example, here’s the twitter account of one of the best professional politics bettors around; he believes Biden has a ~96% chance of winning.
He’s been a pro political bettor for years, so if he was betting based on biased odds he’d have gone broke a long time ago. It’s just a fact that Trump is extremely overpriced, and his share price is being propped up by extremely -EV bettors; him using that as an excuse to attack Trump supporters doesn’t undermine the quality of his analysis.
That seems too strong. I’m assigning a 50% chance to Nate being the best authority on this, and a 50% chance to markets being the best authority. I still agree that betting on Biden has positive expected value.
My main reason for doubting Nate is the likelihood that the pandemic will have strange effects on turnout. I’m unwilling to bet on which direction that will surprise people.
For what it’s worth, 538′s final predictions have (narrowly) outperformed betting markets in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2018 (I haven’t looked at 2010 or 2014). Also, almost every consistently profitable politics bettor is putting massive bets on Biden this cycle, and my impression is that they either believe 538 is ~accurate or biased in favor of Trump. As an example, here’s the twitter account of one of the best professional politics bettors around; he believes Biden has a ~96% chance of winning.
There’s a lot of partisan sneering against Trump supporters on that Twitter account which IMO calls his objectivity on the odds issue into question.
He’s been a pro political bettor for years, so if he was betting based on biased odds he’d have gone broke a long time ago. It’s just a fact that Trump is extremely overpriced, and his share price is being propped up by extremely -EV bettors; him using that as an excuse to attack Trump supporters doesn’t undermine the quality of his analysis.