Any thoughts/info on the polling miss? Trump doing better with Hispanics than Romney jumps out at me but don't follow the numbers closely enough to see how much of the 4 percent miss can be attributed to that.

Polling miss overstated nationally. And lol at people trying to proclaim LaTimes and IBD as most accurate polls when they were literally the least accurate. State polls, turnout, demographics, etc are a different story.

This thing traded down through the 0.80s into the 0.70s and even some shares changing hands in the 0.60s in the last 1-2 hours. Now back in the high 0.90s. Still not sure what I missed, but I'm in, in the mid 0.80s. Still some free money out there folks.

National polls were fine
State polls in the midwest were awful
But yes the Hispanic figures I just can't wrap my head around, if exits polls are to be believed, which some people say they shouldnt be

Yeah, to continue the analogy it was like the MMA fight judges in PA,WI,MI kept saying Clinton 30-28 until the last minute of the last round when they switched to Trump 30-29 without much evident reason. So AA can lose showdowns. Luckily there was about 1-2 hour time span on election day where the betting sites were behind on the reacting to the early vote results so it allowed a nice opportunity to hedge the Clinton bets and minimize losses. Gonna be hard to trust polls again next time.

I dont agree that the polls failed to sample some hidden segment of far right Trumpers.

Likely voters who polled in favor of Clinton simply didn't show up.

That can happen when the candidate runs a very careful and defensive campaign because they think they are a lock as long as they dont screw up. Tresselball.

It is also an argument for choosing a candidste through a fully contested primary process not internal party politics.

She only won Nevada by 2.2%. Very close for something that was apparently a lock.

Turnout could have been the reason Clinton didn't win. Either that or a large number of likely Clinton supporters went for Trump at the last minute.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-0...trump-will-win

Perhaps you've read this article, but it says:

He strongly believes it would be a turnout issue that would cause Clinton to lose.

Well, put that another way, Clinton suffered a national beatdown (compared to polling predictions) that was totally unforeseen and still won Nevada by 2.2, kinda makes it seem like it really was a lock?

Didn't someone take a six figure loss?

All the big anti-trump bettors claim they got out for small profits. I know I took a 2k loss, but that's only because I had a huge amount of money on "sure things" VA and NV.

I bet big against Trump and I let it all ride with no hedges. Needless to say I didn't eek out any 'small profits'.

25k total action:

15k on Hillary at average of around $1.35
10k on individual states, most of which was on Nevada which saved me from a really bad day.

I don't regret it at all though, it was a hell of a ride, a great learning experience and a truly fascinating day.

Well, unfortunately I won my small reverse-jinx bets on Trump winning. More importantly, I just came here to post that Trolly McTrollson and Melkerson both paid super fast, no issues. Appreciated.

Seems like many who had 5 or 6 figs on Hillary and flamed all dissenters (thereby convincing us to go smaller, and make less money) ended up winning. There's no poetic justice in politics betting.

Maybe, but she did win the popular vote and only received a true beatdown in the rustbelt states (WI, MI, PA, OH). Nevada is a west coast state, big city of Las Vegas, lots of Hispanics and minorities, should be liberal and heavily pro-Clinton even with all the gains Trump made elsewhere.

Some people in the thread claim to have bet six figures. One guy claimed he maxed out his credit card. And he did so on Pinnacle, so unless he had some extra money elsewhere that he could trade out with (which I assume he didn't, because he maxed out everything he had), he's now in huge debt. Hope no one lost too big.

Also if you search "Hillary Clinton bet lost" on Google, there are reports of bets of 220k, 500k, 183k etc. on Clinton. I hope they were very very rich to begin with.

I bet against Trump (though not that big), didn't trade out and ended up taking a 2k loss like you.

It annoys me because a couple of months ago, I thought it was too risky to bet, but everyone on this forum, virtually everyone on other forums and many "educated" people believed Trump wouldn't win and gave compelling reasons why it was almost impossible for him to win. Moral of the story: trust your own instinct, it's usually the most reliable indicator in situations like this.

I think too much faith was put in polling. WI, MI, PA all showed Clinton having comfortable 3-5 point leads. Trump won each state. Perhaps Clinton voters just weren't enthusiastic enough to vote on election day, therefore stayed at home? You have to ask yourself who will have the supporters who are most likely to vote. It could also be because polls over-sampled Democrats, people lied to pollsters or there was a last minute switch to Trump. But I think enthusiasm was the most likely reason - people answered Clinton to polls then just stayed at home on election day.

Anyone else got any theories for why polls and the actual vote was way off?

If you said anything about voting trump, why somebody would vote for trump, or anything not considered 100% negative on Trump you got roasted.

That's true, anyone who said they were voting Trump was labelled a racist, bigot etc. Similar to Brexit - anyone who said they wanted to leave the EU was called a racist, xenophobe etc.

But it's just polling. People don't get ridiculed for saying they're voting Trump to a phone pollster, do they? I don't think so.

Hopefully you learned the lesson. Just because people have high post count on forums proclaiming they are experts, that does not make them such.

You can see exactly same thing going on in poker part of the forums and listening to consensus will only result in losing a lot of money.
I am not saying beginners can't learn anything from them, far from it, but you should know when stakes are high enough for you to stop listening to consensus.
General elections are high stakes.

Exactly. I think the phrase 'its like the blind leading the blind' comes to mind.

But there is also a chance everyone here was right, but unfortunately turnout unexpectedly dropped at the last minute. People who answered over the phone they were voting for Clinton, couldn't be bothered to queue up for an hour to vote on election day because they weren't that enthused about her (that's just a theory anyway).

I pointed out that goofball's vaunted model listed the chances of Clinton winning Montana and South Dakota as higher than Trump's odds of winning North Carolina and Florida.....

This fell on deaf ears and I was even attacked over it.

Not sure who attacked you. Given how polarising the candidates were, there was a 99.9% chance any deep red/blue state was staying deep red/blue. Conservatives hate Clinton and Liberals hate Trump. But no value on the exchanges when odds are 1.01 or 1.02 for those states.


Regarding elections, I think the best way to predict the outcome (and therefore make a profit from betting) is analysing what percentage of people in the country want change. Change is the crucial word. According to polls, something like 80% of Americans wanted change and a majority didn't like the direction the country was going in. The "establishment" had failed them. In addition, the country usually switches between 8 years of Republican and 8 years of Democrat. Therefore, you could predict from this that Trump would get elected. Or, at the very least, odds of 5.5 (or however high they were) were far too high for him.

The same is true in other elections. EU referendum, people wanted change on immigration and wanted change from "establishment" politicians who never listened to them. UK General Election in 2010, people wanted change from Labour who were seen to have failed on public spending and caused the recession to be much worse than it should have been. US Election 2008, people wanted change of the first black president and who would hopefully fix the mess on the economy + foreign policy.

You also need to predict how big turnout will be for each side. Turnout will always be big for the side that wants change. Can the other side match that turnout, is the question? Also, older people are far more likely to vote than younger people (just the way it is - younger people care more about posting on instagram than they do about politics, generally speaking). This makes it more likely Republicans/Conservatives win, assuming people don't want radical change. I believe Obama was an exception - he appealed to young people in a way no other politician has done.

So, in my opinion, to predict the outcome you need to gauge how likely it is the public want change + likely turnout. Turnout and desire for change are usually linked.

People here simply focused on the wrong things. They focused on this supposedly "insurmountable" electoral college advantage Clinton had. They focused on all the "stupid" things Trump said. They focused on how Trump would get destroyed in the debates and therefore had no chance of becoming president. None of that mattered in the end.

Of course, I could be completely wrong in this analysis. But that's how I see it. I think with the EU referendum and now this election, odds for the side that wanted change were a lot higher than they should have been.

The level of delusion in much of MSM being reflected throughout this political forum makes me think there will be some very profitable bets to be made in 2020.

@MultiTabling:
There are different ways to predict an election, and when it comes to a presidential election, I don't think I would claim either as necessarily superior or inferior.

You can try to guage the general feel, consensus, and flow of opinion to try to predict popular trends. You can evaluate the candidates' strengths, weaknesses, and campaign abilities to try to guess what the future will hold. This strategy is probably more effective earlier in the election, but it is VERY easy for people to mistake their own biases for solid predictive info, so a bit of care is required.

The other strategy is a data and numerically based strategy. This allows you to eliminate subjective biases, but you still need to be able to understand the limitations of your model or numerical analysis, and whether or not the type of information in the above paragraph can cause shifts or effects that available data does not adequately address. Of course, you also need to be aware of whether or not the data you are using in your predictions is reliable, whether error could be due to incompetence, dishonesty, or some other factor. This becomes more effective later on, though never perfect.

Ideally, you would combine elements of both strategies and have minimal false assumptions while using the maximum amount of available data to create a prediction - certainly easier said than done.

As annoying as it is, when it comes to betting, the existence of a majority of people telling you that you're wrong is probably good for you - because they're probably betting the other side and improving your odds.

got 13/2 on trump about 10pm GMT. The shy Trump voters theory proved correct.

Made $20k on Trump this election.

If you guys didn't chase me out with all your bullying, maybe you could have gotten a different perspective. There's always 2020

You mean data and numerical strategy in terms of the math of the electoral college? How states like Pennsylvania hadn't voted Republican since the 80's? I think people placed too much emphasis on that (so much so that I believed it, just because the people I spoke to were so confident it would hold true and were betting large amounts on Clinton themselves ).

I do strongly believe it's based on movements and desire for change. The country wanted change (which you could observe in both the primaries and numerous polls) and Clinton represented the corrupt establishment in many people's eyes. Bernie Sanders also represented that change and might have won the election, had he been the democratic nominee.

The personal attacks on Trump by Clinton just didn't work. The vast vast majority of people don't care about that stuff when they come to vote. Trump effectively convinced enough voters in crucial swing states that change was needed, and Clinton couldn't convince enough voters that the path the country was currently going in was the right one.