Another example of why 2020 is unlike 2016? The betting markets are baffling to some, if the polls were reversed and Trump had the leads Biden currently has Trump’s odds on Betfair would be something close to 1.01 as opposed to Biden’s 1.5. But there’s plenty of indicators 2020 is not like 2016, like the charts above. My view is that the Dems are on course to retain the House, if they do that my hunch is that Biden also…
The story of 2016 was tycoon businessman Trump running against Dem nominee Clinton whose appeal I could personally never work out. Neither could the voters that mattered in the rust belt, so Clinton lost albeit by a small margin. 4 years on and the USA looks very different. In the midst of a global pandemic, Trump and Mitch McConnell have built an unholy infrastructure which threatens the very existence of the USA’s democracy. The courts Trump and Mitch McConnell have…
The final weekend before Tuesday’s election and a lot of activity on the UK betting markets where punters had been viewing Trump’s chances quite a bit better than the US data analysts. Above is the latest Betdata.io chart showing the Betfair exchange market where a colossal £241,037,171 has now been traded. I’m now focusing on state betting where the polling shows Biden being very competitive but where UK punters, as I have been reporting, are putting more on Trump. I’ve…
One of the extraordinary things about the the American election on Tuesday is the level of early voting. This is partly being driven by the efforts of the Republicans to curtail it and of course ongoing suggestions that Trump will try to steal the election in some form. The chart above is based on data from the the excellent election project site which is gathering huge amount of data and regular updates. The States I’ve chosen to include in the…
Above is the latest polling average for Florida from Nate Silver’s site where, as can be seen, Biden has been enjoying a small but significant lead. Yet when we look at the betting a different trend appears. This of the Betfair market from Betdata and Trump has been odds on favourite for quite some time. On the face of it a bet on Biden at anything longer than evens is great value – yet that doesn’t seem to be happening….
Seeing how close the current battle is in Ohio is a reminder to me of the effort by the Guardian at WH2004 to try to influence the election in this key swing state. The above is one of the thousands of reactions were received during the when the Guardian encouraged readers to write to voters in Clark County Ohio not to vote for Bush. This was, of course, in the aftermath of the Iraq war. This was another recation. This…
On the biggest political betting market of all time, as the Smarkets chart shows, Biden is rated as a 65% chance which given the polling and the other election predictors looks amazingly generous. The latest forecast from the Economist has Biden at 95% while Nate Silver’s site has the former VP on 89%. His national polling average has Biden on 52% with Trump on 43.2%. The state polling is in the main looked good for Biden with Florida, where there…
As I’ve argued before one of the huge hurdles that Trump has got to surmount is that the majority of those who vote in this election will be women and is perhaps the big reason why a late swing seems unlikely. All the data from recent US elections shows that there are more women than men, that they are significantly more likely to be registered and are much more likely to vote. At the midterms in 2018 10m more women…