Elections

Is PredictIt’s Uncertain Legal Status Driving Trading Action?

Over the past year of trading, the largest spikes in trading on PredictIt’s “Which party will win the 2024 U.S. presidential election?” market (#6867) appear to have been caused by news related to the platform itself.  The CFTC initial revocation of PredictIt’s no-action letter (August 4, 2022), news of PredictIt’s lawsuit and injunction (September 15, […]

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Trump Indictment Bump

Weirdly reminiscent of how then-President Bill Clinton went up in the polls after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, former President Donald Trump received a bump in various prediction markets following both his Thursday, March 30th indictment and Tuesday, April 4th arraignment. But it wasn’t just the prediction markets.  In different Ipsos polls taken before and after

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Comparing the different 538 models in U.S. Senate races

FiveThirtyEight’s model is actually three different official model versions built on top of each other with polling, fundamentals, and expert forecasts: Version Component(s) Lite Polling Classic Polling, Fundamentals Deluxe Polling, Fundamentals, Expert forecasts Polling: Polls are weighted based on their sample size, recency, and pollster rating.  (Pollsters are rated by methodology and past accuracy.)  In

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Did Bookmakers & Prediction Markets fare that badly in the 2022 Senate races?

There has been some ridicule about prediction markets’ poor performance in the 2022 Senate elections, but the data for individual Senate races is less clear.  Below we look at the state-level forecasts for 2022 Senate races from the following sources: These 12 platforms are being compared in two different ways: Prices, probabilities, and odds were

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PredictIt prices: Warnock 2020 v. Warnock 2022

Senator Raphael Warnock’s two U.S. Senate races in Georgia were viewed very differently by PredictIt traders. In the 2020 U.S. Senate special election, all candidates ran in a “jungle primary” on the day of the General Election, with a runoff vote scheduled for January 5, 2021.  The price for Democratic “Yes” contracts in the Georgia

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