Latest articles
Supreme Court Abortion Ruling Doesn’t Change Midterm Outlook
After the Supreme Court abortion ruling eliminating the right to abortion, 15 states banned all or most abortions immediately or will ban all or most of them within 30 days. Another five are likely to ban it shortly. Despite this consequential decision, PredictIt’s balance of power market still predicts a Republican House and Senate in […]
Texas Secession Doesn’t Affect PredictIt Balance Of Power Market
Texas State Republican Convention called for a referendum on Texas secession and declared Joe Biden an illegitimate president. Nothing in the Convention seemed to impact PredictIt’s balance of power or presidential markets. It’s not surprising that Texas secession didn’t move PredictIt markets. Secession is a local issue that doesn’t snowball into a national issue. It doesn’t […]
January 6 Hearings Fail To Change PredictIt Markets
The first January 6 hearings were held on Thursday, June 9 and Monday, June 13. These hearings into the origins of the January 6 Capitol riot gave the public new information, including: Proud Boys’ and Oath Keepers’ instigation of the day’s violence Police body camera footage of rioters attacking police officers Testimony from one […]
Why Public Opinion Polls Don’t Necessarily Predict Votes
Public opinion polls can be great snapshots of what the public at large thinks about certain issues. However, a large chunk of the public doesn’t vote. Even in the contentious 2020 election, only 66.8% of eligible Americans voted. The US Census Bureau noted that this election had the “highest voter turnout of the 21st century.” […]
Five Thinking Traps That Make Political Predictions Fail
Accurate political predictions are hard to make and rare to come by. There are a few predictive models that work, but even they have potentially fatal flaws. FiveThirtyEight predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the election 302 electoral college votes to 235. She lost 304 to 227. Alan Lichtman’s Keys to the White House model […]
Make Better 2022 Midterm Predictions By Using Instead Of Reading Odds
Taking PredictIt odds at face value is the wrong way to use PredictIt. As a prediction market, its prices have highs and lows that can be taken advantage of. Those highs and lows come from other users’ expectations. Since anyone can use PredictIt, there’s no reason to think one user is better than another. That […]
Do Events Like The Texas Elementary School Shooting Change The Midterms?
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 […]
Why The Roe v. Wade Leak Won’t Change Midterms Predictions
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 […]
How Election Betting Odds Used To Act As Presidential Election Polls
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 […]
How The Difference Between Democrats And Republicans Has Changed
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 […]