Author: Chris Gerlacher

On May 24, an 18-year-old killed 19 elementary school students and two adults in Uvalde, Texas. AP News reports that this is the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, where 20 children and six adults were killed. This latest tragedy has sparked renewed calls for federal gun control regulations. However, PredictIt’s […]

On May 2, Politico reported a leaked Supreme Court majority opinion draft that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case. If it were overturned, each state would vote on whether to allow abortion and what conditions, if any, would apply to abortion. The federal right to get an abortion in each state would be […]

Today, we take the polling data plastered across news channels for granted. These polls are scientific polls, a type of polling that relies on statistics to draw accurate conclusions about a big group from a small group. However, scientific polling only became popular to report on in the 1940s. Before then, election betting odds were […]

Successful political bettors are impartial. They don’t let the most outrageous news stories affect their bets. One easy exercise novice political bettors can do to develop this discipline is to catch officials who treat historical differences between Democrats and Republicans as if they’re accurate. For example, in the wake of racist tweets by President Donald […]

On Monday, May 2, Politico reported a leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. The leaked draft opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protections for abortion. It would also overturn Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 ruling that affirmed Roe v. Wade. The Roe v. Wade draft leak is actually […]

On March 1, 2022, President Biden gave his State of the Union address. That same day, PredictIt’s balance of power for the midterms remained almost the same as the day before. The day after Biden’s State of the Union the odds were virtually the same too. Aside from a few one-cent movements, PredictIt users favored […]

Political bettors who can catch on to the causes of political change before those changes show up in poll results can get a big win for themselves. Political and social change can be hard to catch before it shows up at the ballot box. But the signs of early transformations are on the ground for […]

Political bettors may flock to Nate Silver’s site or see how Alan Lichtman’s 13 keys align during a presidential election. But no matter how you approach presidential election predictions, the process involves a year-and-a-half of tension that begins when early candidates announce their campaigns — and runs high through the primaries and general election. But […]