Trump making surprise recovery in the WH2020 betting even though most pollsters have double digit Biden leads

Trump making surprise recovery in the WH2020 betting even though most pollsters have double digit Biden leads

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If you have been following WH2020 polling you’ll be aware that the numbers are still very much with Biden at both a national and a state level. But this is not being reflected in the current betting. What is the biggest political gambling event of all time as is shown in the Smarkets chart above and as can be seen the gap is closing. Quite what is driving this is hard to say but I think Paul Krishnamurty’s explanation in…

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The Battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar

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That sleepy #englishbulldog pictured in the previous retweet, is none other than the Trafalgar Group’s mascot “Horatio” Named of course after the Hero of the battle of Trafalgar, Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson. Since we are a polling firm, he goes by “Ratio”. pic.twitter.com/Kj5PhmqheH — The Trafalgar Group (@trafalgar_group) August 8, 2020 I spent 30 minutes on the phone this morning with Robert Cahaly, the Head of The Trafalgar Group which PBers will recall as the pollster who called Michigan, Pennyslvania…

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Working out Covid-19 and the political classes

Working out Covid-19 and the political classes

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Let’s step outside the Westminster bubble.  What is really exercising people just now?  A good way of judging this is to look at what petitions are being put into Parliament.  And indeed, one petition has caught on this week like wildfire, with 358,000 signatures at the time of writing (10am on Saturday), comfortably the petition with the most signatories. No, it’s not Marcus Rashford’s petition.  It’s a politely-worded request to keep gyms open should Covid-19 cases spike.  To set this in context, it has…

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The polling gets even better for Biden but Betfair punters remain cautious

The polling gets even better for Biden but Betfair punters remain cautious

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One of the features of the current White House race is how the polling has got better and better for Joe Biden as time has gone on but the impact on the UK betting markets particularly Betfair, has not reflected this. Ladbrokes reported yesterday that two-thirds of all bets that taken on the election had been the Trump – my guess being that the smaller ones are going for the Republican but the bigger bets are for the Democrat. This…

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The great vacillator: Starmer needs to find some backbone

The great vacillator: Starmer needs to find some backbone

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He appears far too scared of Tory criticism There has been a minor infectious outbreak in Westminster. Not Covid-19 in this instance, where recent case numbers remain much lower than in the Spring, despite Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efforts. No, in this case the infection is rebellion. On the Tory side, Chris Green – formerly PPS to the Leader of the Lords – quit over the government’s Covid-19 policy. Labour, by contrast, suffered a more substantial set of resignations, as two junior…

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Anatomy of an Error – Why forecasts missed the 2016 result

Anatomy of an Error – Why forecasts missed the 2016 result

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On election day 2016 the 538 forecast gave Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning. Of course, she did not. Forecasts now given Biden an even bigger advantage, but coverage of the race is haunted by the miss in 2016. It shouldn’t be. We know what went wrong in 2016, and we can see that Biden’s advantage is more resilient to the issue. The Midwest Mistake It is sometimes said that the polls were wrong in 2016, but it wasn’t…

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The WH2020 early voting trends suggest that we could see a record turnout

The WH2020 early voting trends suggest that we could see a record turnout

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Is this good for Trump or Biden? Thanks to Michael McDonald who is collating all the published data on early voting and producing regular updates on his website which has enabled me to produce the chart above. Each state operates this differently so what’s available on the public record is not constant but we do have have from many states figures on the number of votes that have actually been cast by mail and at polling stations. We also have…

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