You get rewarded if you win with this bet, right? The motivation could be as simple as making easy money.
In any case, what is the significance of having betting odds be reliable (besides avoidance of 'the house' deceiving their customers)?
The shorter the odds, the lower the return on your investment, so if one person is investing millions in order to narrow the odds, he's also diminishing his own potential profit margin. Unless he's collaborating with others who've bet on very long odds the other way, which is illegal, but that wouldn't stop them.
The effect seems to be to make Trump supporters and Republicans in general so overconfident that turnout might be suppressed if enough people feel they don't have to vote. That's the real danger, because it would make it easier to rig the election.
I see. I do wonder about the real influence of a political betting market on voter outlook. As far as I know, reporting on election betting is fairly new. Do Republicans (or others leaning in this direction) really pay any more attention to that than, say, public polling?
I plan to vote regardless, but yes, I put more stock in betting site odds than public polling. Public polling is vulnerable to people concealing their views, it’s vulnerable to only certain cohorts responding, and, of course, it’s vulnerable to top down bias in fudging the methodology to get the results you want to publish. In theory, a prediction market doesn’t have those weaknesses because it’s reflective of people with actual stakes, in the form of their bet, predicting what they think is most likely to happen in order to try to win money.
I’m not saying that the only explanation is that someone is specifically investing millions of dollars to make Trump voters overconfident, but I am saying that yes, there’s an argument to be made that betting markets are a form of polling and thus a potential tool to shape public opinion.
You get rewarded if you win with this bet, right? The motivation could be as simple as making easy money.
In any case, what is the significance of having betting odds be reliable (besides avoidance of 'the house' deceiving their customers)?
The shorter the odds, the lower the return on your investment, so if one person is investing millions in order to narrow the odds, he's also diminishing his own potential profit margin. Unless he's collaborating with others who've bet on very long odds the other way, which is illegal, but that wouldn't stop them.
The effect seems to be to make Trump supporters and Republicans in general so overconfident that turnout might be suppressed if enough people feel they don't have to vote. That's the real danger, because it would make it easier to rig the election.
I see. I do wonder about the real influence of a political betting market on voter outlook. As far as I know, reporting on election betting is fairly new. Do Republicans (or others leaning in this direction) really pay any more attention to that than, say, public polling?
I plan to vote regardless, but yes, I put more stock in betting site odds than public polling. Public polling is vulnerable to people concealing their views, it’s vulnerable to only certain cohorts responding, and, of course, it’s vulnerable to top down bias in fudging the methodology to get the results you want to publish. In theory, a prediction market doesn’t have those weaknesses because it’s reflective of people with actual stakes, in the form of their bet, predicting what they think is most likely to happen in order to try to win money.
I’m not saying that the only explanation is that someone is specifically investing millions of dollars to make Trump voters overconfident, but I am saying that yes, there’s an argument to be made that betting markets are a form of polling and thus a potential tool to shape public opinion.
The odds were 5/1 on trump when he won in 2016.