Political betting thread.......

[reformed nice guy]

2 hours ago, sancho panza said:

No,jsut storing my work somewhere in a chronological order as a refernce point

 

I find it extremely interesting so please keep on posting!

[wherebee]

aussie bookmarkers offering 100-1 on karmala being presidential winner.

not big enough.  1000-1 i would have stuck 5 bucks down.

they are not offering odds on 'joe biden steps down before election'.  shame.

[eek]

4 hours ago, wherebee said:

aussie bookmarkers offering 100-1 on karmala being presidential winner.

not big enough.  1000-1 i would have stuck 5 bucks down.

they are not offering odds on 'joe biden steps down before election'.  shame.

I would want to read the T&Cs very closely as (given his age) it's clearly possible that between November and January Biden could fall ill and die.

However if the bet is "who will win the election on November 2nd" the only options are those on the ballot paper (i.e. Trump and Biden). 

You can tell I've been bitten by Betfair more than once when the headline bet doesn't match the rules underneath.

[sarahbell]

Gamcare

https://www.gamcare.org.uk/

Edited October 22, 2020 by sarahbell

[SpectrumFX]

14 hours ago, wherebee said:

aussie bookmarkers offering 100-1 on karmala being presidential winner.

not big enough.  1000-1 i would have stuck 5 bucks down.

they are not offering odds on 'joe biden steps down before election'.  shame.

500 to 1 on betfair right now.

 

[SpectrumFX]

Now 510

 

[sancho panza]

14 hours ago, eek said:

I would want to read the T&Cs very closely as (given his age) it's clearly possible that between November and January Biden could fall ill and die.

However if the bet is "who will win the election on November 2nd" the only options are those on the ballot paper (i.e. Trump and Biden). 

You can tell I've been bitten by Betfair more than once when the headline bet doesn't match the rules underneath.

One of the reasons I've held off getting involved over the summer is the age of the two candidates.ALso,I've felt that unlike last time there'd be value on election eve reducing my ocunterparty/other risks.

and on.

Personally,I think second bit in bold is worng,Nevada/New Hampshire/Minesota and even possibly Oregon are in play.

I wouldn't use Nate Silver much but the overriding point stands.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/trump-could-lose-the-popular-vote-by-6-million-and-still-win-the-electoral-college

Did you know that the Republican candidate for president has lost the popular vote every single time since 1988 with just one exception?  That exception was in 2004 when George W. Bush beat John Kerry.  Other than that one time, Democrats have been winning the popular vote in election after election.  In 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, and yet Trump won the election because of how the Electoral College works.  So as we analyze this election, focusing on national polling numbers is not necessarily going to tell us who is going to win.  Instead, we need to focus on the swing states, because getting to 270 electoral votes is how you win a presidential election.

In the end, pretty much everyone agrees that the outcome of this race is going to be decided by three states in the north (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan) and three states in the south (Florida, North Carolina and Arizona).

Trump won all six of those states in 2016, and most polls show close contests in all of them this time around.

So Democrats should not put too much faith in the national polls that show Joe Biden with a sizable lead.  Most of those polls turned out to be not very accurate in 2016, most of them habitually oversample Democrats, and it is well known that many Trump voters are not really eager to talk to pollsters.

Ultimately, the truth is that this election is a lot closer than most people think, and it is easy to imagine a scenario in which Biden squeaks out a relatively small victory in the popular vote but loses the Electoral College just like Hillary Clinton did.

If you doubt this, just consider the numbers that Nate Silver has come up with.  The following are what he believes Biden’s chances of winning the Electoral College are at various margins of victory in the popular vote…

• 0-1 points: just 6%!
• 1-2 points: 22%
• 2-3 points: 46%
• 3-4 points: 74%
• 4-5 points: 89%
• 5-6 points: 98%
• 6-7 points: 99%

To me, those numbers are utterly shocking.

If Biden wins the popular vote by less than one percent, Silver says that Trump has a 94 percent chance of actually winning the election.

Wow.

And even if Trump loses the popular vote by 6 million or more, the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman says that Trump could still potentially win…

The Washington Post‘s Paul Waldman added yesterday, “Turnout projections are running at around 150 million this year (137 million voted in 2016), which would mean that if Silver is right, Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president. If Biden won by 4 percent to 5 percent, or 6 million to 7.5 million votes, Trump would still have a one-in-ten shot of prevailing.”

Of course he is not the first to come up with this sort of a projection.

Back in August, Republican strategist Todd Blodgett also envisioned a scenario in which Trump could lose by about six million votes and still win the election…

Joe Biden could run up enormous margins in New York, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and Delaware, while racking up respectable margins in Rhode Island, New Mexico, Oregon, Hawaii, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Virginia. Biden-Harris presently leads in Michigan, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. From those states, a national popular vote margin that doubles Clinton’s could result.

And it is critical to remember that Trump does not even have to win all of the states that he won last time in order to be victorious.  In fact, according to Blodgett Trump could even lose both Michigan and Pennsylvania and still emerge victorious…

If Trump loses Wisconsin and Michigan, while holding the other electoral votes he got in 2016, he wins. Even if Trump loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, while again taking Wisconsin and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, and the states he won last time, he’d still win, 270 to 268. Maine’s pro-gun 2nd Congressional district, incidentally, is among America’s whitest and heavily blue-collar.

So no, Democrats should not be confident of victory in November at all.

As I discussed yesterday, there are all sorts of numbers that indicate that this race has gotten tighter, and we just got another very alarming number for Democrats just a little while ago.

According to the latest IBD/TIPP daily presidential poll, support for Trump just hit “a new high”…

Today’s Biden vs. Trump poll finds support for President Donald Trump hitting a new high, just a hair below his 2016 vote share. The race against former Vice President Joe Biden appears to have gotten much tighter since the Oct. 12 launch of IBD/TIPP’s daily presidential poll. Republican voters have come home, while Democrats have strayed, but Biden retains an edge among independent voters, IBD/TIPP shows.

In particular, the poll shows that Biden leads Trump by only 2.5 points at this juncture…

The latest Biden vs. Trump poll update shows the Democratic challenger leading the Republican incumbent by 2.5 points, 48.5%-46%, in a four-way presidential poll of likely voters. Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen has the support of 2.6%, and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins 0.7%.

So why should we take that poll seriously?

Well, it turns out that the IBD/TIPP poll was one of the only accurate surveys in 2016, and they claim to have had the most accurate presidential poll for “four elections in a row”.

Considering that track record, maybe we should pay attention to what they are telling us.

And according to Nate Silver, if Biden only wins the popular vote by 2.5 points, that gives him less than a 50 percent chance of actually winning the Electoral College.

If Trump loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College in 2020, that will make it the third time in the last six elections that the loser of the popular vote has ended up winning the presidency.

Can you imagine how devastated Democrats will be if that actually happens?

Many on the left are still dreaming of a Biden landslide, but right now I am seeing so many things that indicate that Trump now has the most momentum.

I am certainly not forecasting who will win, and this election could definitely still go either way.

These last two weeks are going to be absolutely critical, and one major mistake could end up making all the difference.

[sancho panza]

These have to be on your radar whichever way you're betting

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/here-are-3-reasons-why-very-few-experts-are-trusting-the-national-polls-that-show-biden-with-a-huge-lead-over-trump

So why are most of the major national polls deeply flawed?

Here are three big reasons…

#1 Oversampling

For some reason, most of the polling organizations that the mainstream media relies upon insist on oversampling Democrats time after time.  This is something that the Trump campaign has complained about repeatedly, and yet it just keeps happening.

During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump’s senior campaign advisor Steve Cortes used the phrase “massive oversampling” to describe what is happening…

Speaking on Fox News’s “Bill Hemmer Reports,” Cortes said, “I think polls matter. We pay some attention to them. It’s very critical to look at the inputs into these polls because the inputs often determine the final output numbers. And many of these polls — I haven’t looked at this one yet specifically, but many of these polls have massive oversampling of Democrats.”

Let’s take a look at one very specific example of this phenomenon.  According to Zero Hedge, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed Biden with a huge lead represented an “egregious oversampling of Democrats”…

A new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll released on Sunday gave former Vice President Joe Biden a 14-point lead over President Trump, suggesting that “the debate – is having a material effect on Mr. Trump’s political standing.”

Another factor having a ‘material effect’ is the poll’s egregious oversampling of Democrats – with 45% of those asked identifying as either “Strong Democrat” , “Not very strong Democrat” , “Independent/lean Democrat” – vs. the 36% of those asked identifying as the same degrees of Republican.

13% of those asked are “Strictly Independent.”

Most surveys that have been done on party affiliation show a very even split, and those numbers have not moved very much at all over the last several years.

So by including far more Democrats than Republicans in their surveys, these pollsters are going to come up with skewed results that are unreliable, and unreliable results are not helpful to anyone.

#2 Shy Trump Voters

Personally, I believe that this is an even bigger factor than oversampling.  Pretty much everyone agrees that Biden voters are far more eager to talk to pollsters than Trump voters are, and that makes it very difficult to come up with truly accurate numbers.

In fact, the head pollster for the Trafalgar Group, Robert Cahaly, says that his numbers show that Biden voters are “five times as likely to talk to a pollster” as Trump voters are…

Possibly the most startling assertion Cahaly makes is that, by a ratio of as much as five to one, Trump-favoring voters are harder to nail down. The Biden voter is five times as likely to talk to a pollster as the Trump voter. All pollsters are aware of this factor, but Cahaly thinks it has grown in just the last few weeks, when the ratio was more like four to one. Cahaly thinks other pollsters are underestimating this factor.

Just think about it.

If a pollster from CNN or the Washington Post called you, would you be eager to talk to that individual?

I sure wouldn’t.

And many Trump supporters are also hesitant to disclose who they are voting for because they are suspicious that they might be repercussions.  Every polling organization understands that “shy Trump voters” were a major factor in 2016, and it appears that those voters will once again be a major factor this time around.

#3 The Enthusiasm Gap

Another thing that everyone agrees upon is that Trump supporters are far more enthusiastic about their candidate than Biden supporters are.

If you want to have a good laugh, go on Twitter and compare the boundless enthusiasm that we are seeing at Trump rallies to the absolutely anemic enthusiasm that we are witnessing at Biden rallies.

In most elections the candidate with more enthusiastic supporters ends up winning, because enthusiasm is such an important factor in actually getting people to the polls.

So the truth is that the race is much closer than the mainstream media is leading people to believe, and with two weeks to go until Election Day the race could still go either way.

Once we get to November 3rd, one of the biggest stories will be the fact that so many Biden supporters are voting by mail this year.  In fact, one recent survey found that Trump voters are more than twice as likely to vote in person on Election Day as Biden voters are…

Trump supporters are more than twice as likely than Biden supporters to say they plan to cast their ballots in the presidential election in person on Election Day (50% vs. 20%). By contrast, far more Biden than Trump supporters say they plan to vote – or already have voted – by absentee or mail-in ballot (51% Biden supporters, compared with 25% of those who back Trump).

And another survey found that 74 percent of those that “strongly disapprove” of President Trump are likely to vote by mail…

Americans who most strongly disapprove of President Trump‘s job performance are also the likeliest to vote by mail this November, according to an Axios survey.

The survey, taken between June 8 and Sept. 21, found that 74 percent of those who said they “strongly disapprove” of how Trump has done as president said they will vote by mail rather than in person this year.

If these numbers are accurate, then we should expect President Trump to have a strong lead when the first votes are counted on the night of the election.

But Joe Biden will not concede no matter how large the lead looks, and his campaign will be counting on the mail-in ballots to put him over the top.

Needless to say, this is a recipe for disaster, and the period of uncertainty that this will create will not be good for our nation at all.

Edited October 22, 2020 by sancho panza

[spygirl]

Incumbents usually in in US elections.

It's that simple.

Something gas to go very wrong - Carter n Iran.

Or you fuck up - Nixon, Bush 1.

[spygirl]

1 minute ago, sancho panza said:

These have to be on your radar whichever way you're betting

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/here-are-3-reasons-why-very-few-experts-are-trusting-the-national-polls-that-show-biden-with-a-huge-lead-over-trump

So why are most of the major national polls deeply flawed?

Here are three big reasons…

#1 Oversampling

For some reason, most of the polling organizations that the mainstream media relies upon insist on oversampling Democrats time after time.  This is something that the Trump campaign has complained about repeatedly, and yet it just keeps happening.

During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump’s senior campaign advisor Steve Cortes used the phrase “massive oversampling” to describe what is happening…

Speaking on Fox News’s “Bill Hemmer Reports,” Cortes said, “I think polls matter. We pay some attention to them. It’s very critical to look at the inputs into these polls because the inputs often determine the final output numbers. And many of these polls — I haven’t looked at this one yet specifically, but many of these polls have massive oversampling of Democrats.”

Let’s take a look at one very specific example of this phenomenon.  According to Zero Hedge, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed Biden with a huge lead represented an “egregious oversampling of Democrats”…

A new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll released on Sunday gave former Vice President Joe Biden a 14-point lead over President Trump, suggesting that “the debate – is having a material effect on Mr. Trump’s political standing.”

Another factor having a ‘material effect’ is the poll’s egregious oversampling of Democrats – with 45% of those asked identifying as either “Strong Democrat” , “Not very strong Democrat” , “Independent/lean Democrat” – vs. the 36% of those asked identifying as the same degrees of Republican.

13% of those asked are “Strictly Independent.”

Most surveys that have been done on party affiliation show a very even split, and those numbers have not moved very much at all over the last several years.

So by including far more Democrats than Republicans in their surveys, these pollsters are going to come up with skewed results that are unreliable, and unreliable results are not helpful to anyone.

#2 Shy Trump Voters

Personally, I believe that this is an even bigger factor than oversampling.  Pretty much everyone agrees that Biden voters are far more eager to talk to pollsters than Trump voters are, and that makes it very difficult to come up with truly accurate numbers.

In fact, the head pollster for the Trafalgar Group, Robert Cahaly, says that his numbers show that Biden voters are “five times as likely to talk to a pollster” as Trump voters are…

Possibly the most startling assertion Cahaly makes is that, by a ratio of as much as five to one, Trump-favoring voters are harder to nail down. The Biden voter is five times as likely to talk to a pollster as the Trump voter. All pollsters are aware of this factor, but Cahaly thinks it has grown in just the last few weeks, when the ratio was more like four to one. Cahaly thinks other pollsters are underestimating this factor.

Just think about it.

If a pollster from CNN or the Washington Post called you, would you be eager to talk to that individual?

I sure wouldn’t.

And many Trump supporters are also hesitant to disclose who they are voting for because they are suspicious that they might be repercussions.  Every polling organization understands that “shy Trump voters” were a major factor in 2016, and it appears that those voters will once again be a major factor this time around.

#3 The Enthusiasm Gap

Another thing that everyone agrees upon is that Trump supporters are far more enthusiastic about their candidate than Biden supporters are.

If you want to have a good laugh, go on Twitter and compare the boundless enthusiasm that we are seeing at Trump rallies to the absolutely anemic enthusiasm that we are witnessing at Biden rallies.

In most elections the candidate with more enthusiastic supporters ends up winning, because enthusiasm is such an important factor in actually getting people to the polls.

So the truth is that the race is much closer than the mainstream media is leading people to believe, and with two weeks to go until Election Day the race could still go either way.

Once we get to November 3rd, one of the biggest stories will be the fact that so many Biden supporters are voting by mail this year.  In fact, one recent survey found that Trump voters are more than twice as likely to vote in person on Election Day as Biden voters are…

Trump supporters are more than twice as likely than Biden supporters to say they plan to cast their ballots in the presidential election in person on Election Day (50% vs. 20%). By contrast, far more Biden than Trump supporters say they plan to vote – or already have voted – by absentee or mail-in ballot (51% Biden supporters, compared with 25% of those who back Trump).

And another survey found that 74 percent of those that “strongly disapprove” of President Trump are likely to vote by mail…

Americans who most strongly disapprove of President Trump‘s job performance are also the likeliest to vote by mail this November, according to an Axios survey.

The survey, taken between June 8 and Sept. 21, found that 74 percent of those who said they “strongly disapprove” of how Trump has done as president said they will vote by mail rather than in person this year.

If these numbers are accurate, then we should expect President Trump to have a strong lead when the first votes are counted on the night of the election.

But Joe Biden will not concede no matter how large the lead looks, and his campaign will be counting on the mail-in ballots to put him over the top.

Needless to say, this is a recipe for disaster, and the period of uncertainty that this will create will not be good for our nation at all.

It's not Shy Trump voters.

Trump is energising a hefty number who dont normally votes.

Theres a good 40% of Americans who never or rarely vote.

They are almost Trumpites to the core.

[sancho panza]

18 hours ago, wherebee said:

aussie bookmarkers offering 100-1 on karmala being presidential winner.

not big enough.  1000-1 i would have stuck 5 bucks down.

they are not offering odds on 'joe biden steps down before election'.  shame.

AS someone else has asaid the bet here is the result sept 3.

When youre dealing with spetuagenarian candidates and election betting,their age has to be considered even if you jsut hedge it.

Edited October 22, 2020 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

12 minutes ago, spygirl said:

It's not Shy Trump voters.

Trump is energising a hefty number who dont normally votes.

Theres a good 40% of Americans who never or rarely vote.

They are almost Trumpites to the core.

It's one of the issues that enabled me to get brexit right.I spoke to a lot of people,many of whom hadn't voted before(some in 40 years) and there was no way hteyre being polled.as you say same in the States.From what I've been reading more widely-and talking to a few yanks I know-Trump has highest levels of Black and Hispanic support of any Republican,also higher levels of male support(females more likely to be polled)

Edited October 22, 2020 by sancho panza

[Wight Flight]

To bring this back to the UK for the moment.

You can get 40-1 on Tom Tugendhat being next PM

I am considering a bet on that (and I have only ever bet twice before on anything)

 

[sancho panza]

12 minutes ago, Wight Flight said:

To bring this back to the UK for the moment.

You can get 40-1 on Tom Tugendhat being next PM

I am considering a bet on that (and I have only ever bet twice before on anything)

 

SOme logn bets are worth a nudge but generally because the electoal system involves a lot of pompous Westminster bubble types,I generally wait for the final two.

[Wight Flight]

2 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

SOme logn bets are worth a nudge but generally because the electoal system involves a lot of pompous Westminster bubble types,I generally wait for the final two.

Agreed. But the Conservatives do have form on picking a relative unknown as leader.

He might be a wise choice. More research needed .

 

[sancho panza]

Re problems with polling this election

Possibly equating Trump lsoing

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-losing-ground-with-white-voters-but-gaining-among-black-and-hispanic-americans/

Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters But Gaining Among Black And Hispanic Americans

There’s a well-known truth in politics: No one group swings an election.

But that doesn’t mean that the demographic trends bubbling beneath the surface can’t have an outsized effect. Take 2016. President Trump won in large part because he carried white voters without a college degree by a bigger margin than any recent GOP presidential nominee, though there had been signs that this group was shifting rightward for a while.

Likewise in 2018, a strong showing by Democrats in suburban districts and among white voters with a four-year college degree helped the party retake the House, a shift we first saw in 2016 when Trump likely became the first Republican to lose this group in 60 years.¹ And this is just scratching the surface. In the past few years, we’ve also seen hints that more women voters are identifying as Democrats and that some nonwhite voters might be getting more Republican-leaning.

The question, then, in 2020 — as it is in every election — is what will the electorate look like this time around? Can we expect a continuation of what we saw in 2016 and 2018, or might some of those trends slow or reverse direction? And, of course, are there any surprises lurking beneath the surface that we haven’t quite identified yet?

We tried to answer this question by comparing data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to 2020 data from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape polling conducted over the past month.² This comparison is hardly perfect — the 2016 CCES data is based on data from people who were confirmed to have actually voted while the UCLA Nationscape data is a large-scale survey of people who say they have voted or will vote, and the two studies use different methodologies, which could lead to differences in what types of voters were reached and how they were weighted. But this is as close as we can get to a direct comparison before the election, and it did allow us to identify some interesting trends.

[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]

First off, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is attracting more support than Hillary Clinton did among white voters as a whole — especially white women, older white voters and those without a four-year college degree — which has helped him build a substantial lead of around 10 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average. However, Trump is performing slightly better than last time among college-educated white voters, and he has gained among voters of color, especially Hispanic voters and younger Black voters.

White voters made up more than 7 out of 10 voters in the 2016 electorate according to CCES, so any large shifts in their attitudes could greatly alter the electoral calculus. And as the chart below shows, that’s more or less what has happened: Trump’s edge among white voters is around half of what it was in 2016, which could be especially consequential as this group is overrepresented in the states that are most likely to decide the winner of the Electoral College.

 

One factor driving this is that Biden looks to be doing better than Clinton among white voters without a college degree, a voting bloc that made up close to half of the overall electorate in 2016 and forms a majority of the population in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.³ While Clinton lost this group by more than 20 points four years ago, Biden is behind by just 12 points in UCLA Nationscape’s polling. This isn’t entirely a surprise: We saw some signs of Biden’s strength with non-college whites in the 2020 Democratic primary, as he did better than Clinton in counties that had larger shares of white Americans without a college degree. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why we’re seeing this, though. One possible explanation is that as an older white man, Biden just resonates more with these voters than Clinton did in 2016, especially considering the role sexism and racism played in voter attitudes in 2016. But it’s also possible that some of these voters are just turned off by Trump after four years with him in the White House.

Take white women. They backed Trump over Clinton in 2016 but were split pretty evenly between the two parties in the 2018 midterms. And now they favor Biden by 6 points in UCLA Nationscape polling, which would be around a 15-point swing toward the Democrats compared to what CCES found for the 2016 race. Trump has also taken a major hit among older white voters. In 2016, he won white voters age 45 or older by more than 20 points, but according to UCLA Nationscape polling, he now leads by only 4 points.

Trump isn’t losing ground among all white voters, though. White men, for instance, look likely to back Trump by around 20 points again. And Trump is also making inroads with college-educated white voters. Trump lost this group by more than 10 points in 2016, and Republican House and Senate candidates lost it by a similar margin in 2018, but Trump may be running closer to even among them now. As FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. recently noted, many college-educated white voters are Republican-leaning, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line. The question will be whether Trump can attract support from this group nationally, as he’s already essentially got a lock on many Southern states (although maybe not as many Southern states as he’d like). Trump is currently polling at 49 percent among white, college-educated voters in UCLA Nationscape’s polling, and if he stays there, that could help him hold on to battleground states he carried in 2016, such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, where college-educated white voters are more likely to prefer the GOP.

Trump has also gained real ground among nonwhite voters. To be clear, he still trails Biden considerably with these groups, but in UCLA Nationscape’s polling over the past month, he was down by 39 points with these voters, a double-digit improvement from his 53-point deficit in 2016.

While older Black voters look as if they’ll vote for Biden by margins similar to Clinton’s in 2016, Trump’s support among young Black voters (18 to 44) has jumped from around 10 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in UCLA Nationscape’s polling. Black voters remain an overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning constituency, but a notable reduction in their support could still be a problem for Biden.

 

Notably, young Black voters don’t seem to feel as negatively about Trump as older Black Americans do. For instance, an early-July African American Research Collaborative poll of battleground states found that 35 percent of 18-to-29-year-old Black adults agreed that although they didn’t always like Trump’s policies, they liked his strong demeanor and defiance of the establishment. Conversely, just 10 percent of those 60 and older said the same.

It’s a similar story with younger Hispanic Americans, a group where Trump has also made gains. According to UCLA Nationscape’s polling, Trump is attracting 35 percent of Hispanic voters under age 45, up from the 22 percent who backed him four years ago in the CCES data.

 

Most notably, even though Trump stands to gain with nonwhite voters across the board, his support seems to have risen the most among Hispanic voters with a four-year college degree. We don’t want to overstate the influence of this group — they make up about 2 percent of the population age 25 and older nationwide — but they are disproportionately concentrated in one especially vital swing state: Florida. In fact, 24 percent of Hispanic Floridians have a college degree, compared to 16 percent of Hispanic adults nationally.⁴ So even if Trump isn’t doing as well among older white voters, his gains among Hispanic voters, including highly educated ones, could offer a path to victory in the Sunshine State.

One last point on where Trump has made gains among Black and Hispanic voters: He has done particularly well with Black and Hispanic men, which might speak to how his campaign has actively courted them. For instance, the Republican National Convention featured a number of Black men as speakers this year. And Politico talked with more than 20 Democratic strategists, lawmakers, pollsters and activists who explained that many Black and Latino men are open to supporting Trump as they think the Democratic Party has taken them for granted. The same can’t be said of Black and Hispanic women, though, and the gender gap among nonwhite voters is shaping up to be even bigger than it was in 2016. Ninety percent of Black women supported Biden in UCLA Nationscape polling — unsurprising, as this group is arguably the most staunchly Democratic demographic in the electorate — whereas less than 80 percent of Black men did the same. And among Hispanic voters, 64 percent of women backed Biden compared to 57 percent of men.

---

In the end, elections are all about margins. That means Biden doesn’t necessarily have to win more white voters than Trump to win the election; he just needs to improve on Clinton’s performance four years ago. By the same token, if Trump can do better among nonwhite voters than he did in 2016 — even if he still doesn’t win them outright — that could open a door for him to win if white voters don’t shift toward Biden as much as the polls currently suggest.

But at the moment, the real margin to keep an eye on is Biden’s double-digit lead in the polls. That kind of advantage will be hard to overcome if Trump is merely chipping away at the edges of Biden’s support, especially when so many of Biden’s gains seem to have come at Trump’s expense.

2 minutes ago, Wight Flight said:

Agreed. But the Conservatives do have form on picking a relative unknown as leader.

He might be a wise choice. More research needed .

 

at that price you can have a few nudges.I think Bozza will be out soon.The knives have been hsarpened

[wherebee]

35 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

Re problems with polling this election

 

But at the moment, the real margin to keep an eye on is Biden’s double-digit lead in the polls. That kind of advantage will be hard to overcome if Trump is merely chipping away at the edges of Biden’s support, especially when so many of Biden’s gains seem to have come at Trump’s expense.

at that price you can have a few nudges.I think Bozza will be out soon.The knives have been hsarpened

I think polling in the age of the internet and identity politics is dead, to be honest.  I haven't answered an online poll honestly for years and years.  Why would you, when you know that any information given could be used against you, doxxing is a real thing.  Moreover, I never answer my phone to a number I don't know.  If it's important, they will contact me in writing and start a chain of evidence, which I always like.

Polling worked when you could generally rely on people to a) answer the phone and b) answer relatively honestly.  Those days are gone.

I go by i) the enthusiasm of crowds at rallies - whether you like hillary or not, she did have a very enthused base and also across the country.  Biden just.... does not.  Trump does.  ii) voter registration - republican numbers are massively up.  Dem numbers up in some states, but not in most.  iii) gun ownership - first time buyers.  This is a massive indicator for me - someone who is scared enough of the riots to go buy a gun is not going to vote for a party who will take that gun away.  Does not mean a vote for Trump, but it does mean hundreds of thousands of non-votes for Biden.

 

I was worried in August re Trump.  Now, my bet I placed at the start of the year looks pretty good.  I'll be watching the who thing with interest.

[sancho panza]

On 23/10/2020 at 00:31, wherebee said:

I think polling in the age of the internet and identity politics is dead, to be honest.  I haven't answered an online poll honestly for years and years.  Why would you, when you know that any information given could be used against you, doxxing is a real thing.  Moreover, I never answer my phone to a number I don't know.  If it's important, they will contact me in writing and start a chain of evidence, which I always like.

Polling worked when you could generally rely on people to a) answer the phone and b) answer relatively honestly.  Those days are gone.

I go by i) the enthusiasm of crowds at rallies - whether you like hillary or not, she did have a very enthused base and also across the country.  Biden just.... does not.  Trump does.  ii) voter registration - republican numbers are massively up.  Dem numbers up in some states, but not in most.  iii) gun ownership - first time buyers.  This is a massive indicator for me - someone who is scared enough of the riots to go buy a gun is not going to vote for a party who will take that gun away.  Does not mean a vote for Trump, but it does mean hundreds of thousands of non-votes for Biden.

 

I was worried in August re Trump.  Now, my bet I placed at the start of the year looks pretty good.  I'll be watching the who thing with interest.

The key thing here is that the polling and it's likely inaccuracy creates a huge arbitrage opportunity for those minded to use other indicators.

Most punters esp the politicalbetting lefty type all look at polls and get steered by their political leanings despite whatever Mike Smithson says.As you say,the reality is that polls aren't particualrly accurate when society as a whole isn't voting as per historical norms and isn't picking up the phone to tell the pollsters about it.Crucailly it's happening more and more.

I like your lsit of three WB but I would add some that I think will contribute

4) Shy Trump voters

5) the economy.Despite the covid virus,more people feel happs with where the economy is than they did at the same point in the election cycle with Obama and Bush jnr

6) Incumbents rarely lose in the USA-ie people tend to herd around them even if they don't like them much.

7) Riots-middle class people don't like them-historically always a lurch to the right after them

 

Ref over underpolling.I've psoted before about the difference between Florida and say Wisconsin.WHere places are heavily polled,the moves are better reflected in the polling average.FLorida was 2% out in 2016 and Wisc 6%.

Ergo,I see Minnesota in play and possibly Oregon too.I think there's more chance of a Trump landslide than a Biden one but more chance of a Biden close win than a Trump one.

Despite it being a 50/50 call Trump is 2/1.....I think there's real value appearing as the polls close a bit.

Florida looks good for Trump.

[sancho panza]

Having mentioned PB.com,thought I'd have a look.It appears to be wall to wall 'guess the size of Biden's landslide'.....much like 2016 and Brexit(the two biggest paydays for serious political gamblers in many years)

A sign in it's own way that the race may be more 50/50 than widely accepted.

Still haven;'t decided if we're playing.Trump is the only bet in terms of value.

 

 

https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/10/25/this-is-starting-to-look-like-landslide-territory/

https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/10/23/if-this-election-follows-previous-ones-the-10m-more-women-will-vote-than-men/

[sancho panza]

Women aren't going to vote for Trump-Mish

https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/politics/why-trump-will-lose-the-election-in-one-word

 

8 reasons it's not 2016

https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/politics/eight-reasons-this-is-not-2016

[jm51]

Anecdotal:

I was lurking on cultivation sites during both of the Bush Jr elections. dubya was despised and hated by all the stoner/growers.

I wasn't lurking on any cultivation sites during 2016. I am now though. The consensus I'm seeing is not so much pro Trump but absolute hatred for the dems.

If the left lose the respect of people as left leaning as stoners, they're well and truly fucked.

[sancho panza]

5 hours ago, jm51 said:

Anecdotal:

I was lurking on cultivation sites during both of the Bush Jr elections. dubya was despised and hated by all the stoner/growers.

I wasn't lurking on any cultivation sites during 2016. I am now though. The consensus I'm seeing is not so much pro Trump but absolute hatred for the dems.

If the left lose the respect of people as left leaning as stoners, they're well and truly fucked.

interesting anecdotal there JM.I think motivations is a big one.WHich is a plus for Trump.

I'd be interested to know if the hard left are staying home?

Looks like turnout will be big.High turnout favours Trump imho.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/25/nearly-60-million-americans-cast-early-vote-trump-biden

Nearly 60 million Americans cast early vote as record-shattering turnout expected

Their enthusiasm reflected in post boxes stuffed with mail-in ballots and by hours-long queues at voting sites across the country, by early Sunday almost 60 million Americans had cast a vote in the presidential election, even as the candidates scrambled to deliver their closing message more than a week before election day, 3 November.

The vast numbers of early voters in the most consequential election in generations is fuelling what promises to be record-shattering turnout. Not since 1908 have more than 65% of eligible US voters actually exercised that right.

That leaves the swing state of Florida and its 29 electoral college votes as a glittering prize. So far, from 5.3m mail-in and in-person votes recorded, representing almost 40% of 14 million registered voters, Democrats hold an advantage of more than 7%, or around 400,000 votes.

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by sancho panza

[eek]

I would argue turnout is the complete opposite and favours Biden - even Trump has stated that his supporters will be voting on the day.

 

But only time will tell..

Edited October 25, 2020 by eek

[sancho panza]

Early voting has Trump in with a shout in battleground states.

https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

3 minutes ago, eek said:

I would argue turnout is the complete opposite and favours Biden - even Trump has stated that his supporters will be voting on the day.

 

But only time will tell..

for me,high turnout indicates positive participation and engagement.Generally,imo, positive motivation trumps(pardon the pun) negative particpation.Earlier on in the thread I psoted some fine detail from a poll which showed that the majority of support for Bdien was because they were voting against Trump rather than for Biden.Trump was the other way.Supporters generally supporting him rather than voting agaisnt Biden.

It's difficult.These are the unknowns and that's where the moeny is made,geting them right,particualrly agaisnt the flow of money.