Reminder that you guys should go out and vote. Trump has been ahead since September 2023. Don’t let the echo chamber make you feel like it’s a done deal. That’s what I thought until I saw this article.

  • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Betting data? Is that like a turn off phrase or are people actually betting on elections

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        And it’s pretty interesting data when it comes to elections as it’s pretty much a live opinion poll if you track the odds over time—as most modern betting companies will adjust the odds automatically based on how people are betting

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          4 months ago

          Eh, it’s often wildly out of touch with reality. It’d be an opinion poll if people were objectively betting solely to try to earn the maximum payout, but it goes off the rail all the time with wishful thinking and intentional manipulation.

          • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Doesn’t the bookie need to have a decent approximation of the actual odds to avoid paying out more than they take in? Or are the margins just so big that it doesn’t matter?

            • mkwt@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              The bookie balances the odds according to how much money is coming in on each side. The bookie’s goal is to make money on the vig no matter what the outcome is.

              Economists think these betting markets are better at predicting results than regular opinion polls because people have to risk their real money to participate.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 months ago

      Didnt read the article yet but there are these things called “prediction markets” where people bet (usually with play money but sometimes real money) on real world events like politic decisions, elections, wars, but also very small or individual things. Its sort of a stock market for predicting real world events and it tends to be much better than most other systems at predicting stuff.

      For example this one was about Biden dropping out. https://manifold.markets/NathanpmYoung/will-biden-be-the-2024-democratic-n?r=QW5kcmV3Rw

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        From the image … I’m not sure that’s such a great predictor. Over all of the time from the debate it seems like the “market” was leaning “yes” for most of the time, until about the time basically all of the mainstream media was pretty certain it was going to happen (where it seemed pretty clear that plenty of leaks were occurring).

        I mean maybe this reflects the actual reality and it was in the air this much … but either way I don’t think this “market” knew more than the mainstream media was telling us.

        • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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          4 months ago

          Yeah i think trying to predict election stuff is a waste of time because all the decision making is super irrational. I dont really seriously use it for anything but its interesting to look at from time to time.

        • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          but either way I don’t think this “market” knew more than the mainstream media was telling us.

          No, but it is a culmination of all the available public information (and some private information you won’t find elsewhere) in a single metric. If you read a single article you would assume there is either a 100% Biden drops out or a 0% chance - if you read every single news article in existence, aggregated all social media buzz, polls, etc, into a statistical likelihood, you would likely come out with a number that closely matches the odds.

          Biden was only going to drop out once, so you can’t say how closely these odds matched the actual likelihood on this specific measure, but if you analyze hundreds of predictive markets like this, the implied odds pretty strongly correlate with the actual binomial outcomes

    • TheBigBrother@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Mate… no offense but Americans are ludopats, there is even a city which never sleeps with betting games all night long… viva Las Vegas!!

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        No no no. You don’t GET IT. You have to live the American lifestyle, and THEN you’ll understand how everything we say and do makes perfect sense.

        Here. Tell ya what. Here’s a gun, 40lbs of sugar and high fructuse corn syrup, and a liter of whiskey. This is breakfast. Eat it all. Yes, even the gun. The gun is made of chocolate only made to train your brain from a young brain that guns are happy times, and assosiate them with the release of positive endorphins to brainwashing you into having a positive assosiation with guns. Also unrelated here’s a pack of cigerrettes. They are also candy…or chalk…whatever. Pick one.

        After lunch, once your body is pumped up with alcohol, sugar, and bad choices, we’ll give you a gun! Ha ha ha, just kidding. We’ll give you acess to MANY guns!!! You can’t have just one silly!!! It’s just like Petey the handgun tells us as kids, “Always buy more guns”.

        Once you have all of that mastered, we’ll discuss how the metric system is stupid, and we’ll instead be using this banana to measure scale in pictures posted on the internet.

        And finally, now that you’re ready for the advsnced topics, it’s time to talk about politics. Remember, YOUR opinion is the only one who matters, and everyone who disagrees is clearly a nutjob trying to tear this country apart! THATS why we need so many guns…because we all know that a civil war is coming, and so we need to prepare by arming ourselves like a one man army.

        Oh, you thought I was engaging in satirical absurdist humor? No. This is real life in America…and I didn’t bring up religion yet!

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      Yes, it’s somewhat popular. At least it’s available at some bookies, I don’t know hay many people actually bet on it