Polls have Trump taking most swing states and one of the betting firms I saw this morning has given him a 59% chance of winning.

i follow 538 when looking for this kind of thing and they are giving the cheeto a win in 51 out of 100 random elections............ so trump is ahead by an asshair

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/?cid=rrpromo

I mean, they were also huge on Dr. Oz and a Republican senate.

Why? Because just like now the zone was flooded with low-quality Republican pollsters (which even led to Democrats withholding funds from a senate race in Wisconsin that ended up being decided by one point, and potentially to a turnout collapse in Florida).

Thanks for bringing in actual data. 

Chrkeller was arguing that companies don't like to lose money. Mistakes can still be made, even on the industrial scale. Bad data can make misleading conclusions. Even good data though, can be interpreted completely incorrectly. Especially when you don't have all the facts.

Bad data like Trump being under polled in 2016 and 2020?

Just because you don't like that data doesn't mean it is bad data. 

The data has it being tight, with an edge to Trump.

You shouldn't backhand jab the messenger.

And yes, professional betting firms aren't in the business of losing money and I'm certain they understand data better than the random folks in this thread.

Betting Odds
Trump
Harris
RCP Average
60.1 38.4
BetOnline 59 40
Betfair 58 36
Betsson 61 40
Bovada 61 38
Bwin 61 41
Points Bet 61 40
Polymarket 62 34
Smarkets 58 38

You've misread me on like every single point. 

I gave no judgment on the actual data and I didn't give a backhand jab. (edit: I guess you were talking about the "actual data" bit. I wasn't quite talking about you.) 

I pretty much just said bad data is misleading and good data can be misinterpreted, and mistakes can happen on industrial scales. Do you disagree with those statements?

For the love of God...

The election is a toss-up, it has been a toss-up for weeks, the polling averages have barely changed.

PredictIt at one point had Harris and Trump at the same odds of winning. Polymarket is a fucking joke, it's a crypto platform owned by Peter Thiel which Americans can't even bet on, Trump's odds are being gamed by a few wealthy betters and Musk loves tweeting about it. It's rich idiots that are going to lose their money.

A Mystery $30 Million Wave of Pro-Trump Bets Has Moved a Popular Prediction Market - WSJ

A block chain analysis firm has found this huge move seems to have been largely driven by just 4 large accounts, and that those 4 accounts appear to be controlled by one entity. They have $30 million now bet on results such as Trump winning the election, Trump winning the popular vote and Trump winning Pennsylvania.

Analysts suspect this could be an influence campaign, not genuine betting. One says $30 million is nothing to some of the parties who are motivated to try and affect the election. They liken this to the "Romney Whale" who placed similar one-sided bets for Romney over Obama in 2012.

===

Some of these betting firms are VERY CLEARLY being gamed by rich idiots.

Polling gets it wrong in both directions though. In 2012 they had Obama/Romney as a very close race with Romney slightly ahead a few weeks out and just about every post-Dobbs election has underestimated democrats.

Assuming that Trump is being underestimated based on 2016/2020 is a flawed way of thinking, things change and many notable things have happened since then like pollsters making changes to account for bias, Dobbs being a proven turnout motivator and Biden dropping out throwing things out of whack could all possibly lead to polls now underestimating Harris.

Silver Bulletin has Trump at 47.2% & 538 has him at 46.3% which are right around how he performed in 2016 (46.1%) & 2020 (46.8%). I don’t think they are underestimating him anymore.

Polymarket has established itself as a joke, shit is only 4 years old as well. Likewise with polls, look at the crosstabs, Atlas for example just released a horrific poll, toss the shit on the pile and move on, it's a toss-up and it will likely remain a toss-up and get over the fact that it's a toss-up, that's a large group of Americans for you.

There has been a 0.8% swing due to "trash polls" which 538 claims isn't a significant, I disagree given how close the polling has been but oh well, I'm not a pollster. Atlas claims Trump is winning 52% women (utter joke) and 30% of African Americans (Lmao). C'mon man, you don't need to be a genius to tell that something has gone seriously wrong with this poll.

But I can't be arsed to look and post about every single poll when they're all basically saying the same thing: Toss-Up. Just throw them on the averaging pile and move on, the election is going to be a close race no matter what, it's useless to fret about such minor changes. You can repeat as many times pollsters got 2020 wrong but they also got many post-Dobbs elections wrong (underestimated Democrats).

It's just as likely that pollsters have corrected for their mistakes made in the past, it's even a possibility they're overestimating Trump in an effort to not underestimate him this time, it's not a certainty that "polls were wrong before so they'll be wrong forever" and as for betting firms, I frankly don't give a shit what betting firms say when they're so easily influenced by rich idiots like Musk.