FiveThirtyEight released their prediction today that Biden currently has a 53% of winning the election | Tweet
The other day I asked:
Should we anticipate easy profit on Polymarket election markets this year? Its markets seem to think that
Biden will die or otherwise withdraw from the race with 23% likelihood
Biden will fail to be the Democratic nominee for whatever reason at 13% likelihood
either Biden or Trump will fail to win nomination at their respective conventions with 14% likelihood
Biden will win the election with only 34% likelihood
Even if gas fees take a few percentage points off we should expect to make money trading on some of this stuff, right (the money is only locked up for 5 months)? And maybe there are cheap ways to transfer into and out of Polymarket?
Probably worthwhile to think about this further, including ways to make leveraged bets.
What’s the actual probability of casting a decisive vote in a presidential election (by state)?
I remember the Gelman/Silver/Edlin “What is the probability your vote will make a difference?” (2012) methodology:
This gives the following results for the 2008 presidential election, where they estimate that you had less than one chance in a hundred billion of deciding the election in DC, but better than a one in ten million chance in New Mexico. (For reference, 131 million people voted in the election.)
Is this basically correct?
(I guess you also have to adjust for your confidence that you are voting for the better candidate. Maybe if you think you’re outside the top ~20% in “voting skill”—ability to pick the best candidate—you should abstain. See also.)