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naraburns  nihil supernum  8mo ago (text post)   28515 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

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Yesterday, I put down various cash bets around Harris winning the Popular vote. "Surely Dems win the popular vote regardless of the electoral college!"

I actually was convinced that I was onto a free money glitch by buying "Harris/Dems win the popular vote" at 25cents. I also put bets into "Trump wins 2/3/4/5/6 swing states", neglecting to even consider he wins all seven swing states.

Whoops, NOPE! I'm grossly miscalibrated. I actually did not have faith in prediction markets, and thought all "dumb" rep voters were skewing Polymarket/Kalshi etc. I'm laughing at myself that I actually thought I'm not at the top of the bell curve.

How do i get better at this? Some of my current thinking is:

  • twitter / X is actually representative: I skew center-right, so mostly see pro-DJT/Rep tweets. I thought that's a bubble + history meant for sure popular vote. Not sure how much to calibrate the other way. Will I see same amount of pro-Republican views in 2028 even though it could very well swing back towards the Dems in 4 years?
  • Betting against Elon Musk: Peter Thiel said "I would never bet against Elon... in anything. That's, sort of, hard rule number one". I think I will actually have to take this stance seriously, even though Musk is not infallible.
  • Voter turnout number expectations:
  • non-white voting blocks going towards Trump: I knew there's an undercurrent of latino and black guys voting for DJT, but didn't realize how much of the Latino vote he got. He didn't win the black vote by any means, but definitely out performed. Also, for whatever it's worth, the Michigan Muslim (and Arab in general?) vote. Will this continue, or will they flip flop back to the Dem coalition next time?
  • I didnt like Hilary Clinton in 2016 and I had even worse feelings about Harris this year. How much does that matter to the election in general? The comments on Trump and JDVance's Joe Rogan appearances were very positive, but that is in line with the "typical" Rogan fan. Does that represent the 30 year old guy vote?
  • I knew I lived in a bubble since i've only lived in coastal elite cities. At the watch party at a bar in my huge coastal city, everyone cheered for every Harris thing and booed everything Trump. I know the women feel that way, but do all the men too (or are they trying to get laid?). Two blond women did come in late and cheer quietly when some Rep senator won, but not sure if those two were tourists.
  • had 2 data points from friends that their bucks county relatives all voted Trump, but I disregarded it. This one is hard since these friends are libertarian/center right like me. But perhaps next time giving more credence.

what else have i missed? Gotta think on this more.

Maybe I will do more small prediction market bets to hone my forecasting. Does anyone here know if this is a skill that can be honed and trained, without dedicating your entire life to it?

The main thing you missed is that the swing states are correlated. If the polls miss extra Trump support, that will most likely materialize across demographically similar states. A 2-3 point polling error in Trump's favor (one standard deviation) wins him all the swing states.

Except there’s three groupings of swing states by demographic- older and whiter(the blue wall), blacker and more religious(Georgia and NC), and secular urban with lots of Hispanics(Arizona and Nevada). We wouldn’t expect these three groups to be correlated with each other much at all.

Polling errors are usually reported at two-sigma, but regardless this misses the real problem -- which is that they don't account for systemic error at all, which clearly exists in spades for Trump. (although not uniquely so -- this phenomenon seems to exist globally, to the point where you'd do better considering it to be baked in than not.

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