2020 US Presidential Election thread - Joe Biden inaugurated at 5pm today

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Original post by Theloniouss

Betting's about more than just the odds. I don't imagine many people can afford to bet 2 grand on 1-10 odds more than a couple of times, and the probability is that you'd lose it all.

Then they shouldn't be betting 2 grand.

People who make money betting will calculate the size of their bets based on the total they have available to bet, divided by a reasonable number that accounts for the probability. For example, if you have £100 to bet, your maximum individual may be £1, £2 or less. That way in the trump scenario you would be able to cover 10x similar situations, and end up profitable. If you only have £100, and your betting £50 of it per time, your going to be giving your money to the betting companies very quickly.

Its the same in poker and any game of chance, you split your pot into small amounts, that enable you to take on many bets/games, and as long as you are right about the odds more than you are wrong, you will ride it out and eventually after 100, 200, 1000 occasions, you will end up on top.

If you want to throw 2k on a single bet, then you better be rich..

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 65

Theloniouss

21

Original post by fallen_acorns

Then they shouldn't be betting 2 grand.

People who make money betting will calculate the size of their bets based on the total they have available to bet, divided by a reasonable number that accounts for the probability. For example, if you have £100 to bet, your maximum individual may be £1, £2 or less. That way in the trump scenario you would be able to cover 10x similar situations, and end up profitable. If you only have £100, and your betting £50 of it per time, your going to be giving your money to the betting companies very quickly.

Its the same in poker and any game of chance, you split your pot into small amounts, that enable you to take on many bets/games, and as long as you are right about the odds more than you are wrong, you will ride it out and eventually after 100, 200, 1000 occasions, you will end up on top.

If you want to throw 2k on a single bet, then you better be rich..

Hence "You poor soul"

I would also dispute that you're likely to find betting odds that line up with the true odds in that way, given the sole aim of brokers is "give them worse than the true odds".

It's also not really the same as a card game, where the true odds are (comparatively) easy to calculate.

Reply 66

Original post by Theloniouss

Hence "You poor soul"

I would also dispute that you're likely to find betting odds that line up with the true odds in that way, given the sole aim of brokers is "give them worse than the true odds".

It's also not really the same as a card game, where the true odds are (comparatively) easy to calculate.

I mean, I don't know how much cash the other poster has lying around.. I was just disputing the idea that betting 2k on trump is inherently a bad idea. If he got the right odds, and he has the right bank balance, then it could be a very good decision.

Your certainly right that its very hard to find occasions where the odds are misplaced, its a real skill - and why so few people can ever actually make money betting against bookies and the like. Much easier to bet against people instead, which is why a load of my gambler friends from uni ended up trying to do loads of peer to peer stuff in person and on sites.

Card games like poker still work well for real people, as the ability to calculate the odds given that you don't know what cards other people have - still make it near impossible to easily calculate the true odds. But for computer programs? Years ago they said that cash games (static games with fixed blinds/antis) have as good as been solved by algorithms/computer programs. For normal people though, the money-management side of things is similar to betting, you only stake a small amount of your total amount on each roll of the dice (game of cards) so that you have enough to ride out the highs and the lows to expose the true average (your win percentage).

Reply 67

Jebedee

Original post by fallen_acorns

It all depends what odds he got. Betting isn't about the outcome, its just about being able to place your bets at better odds than reality.

E.g.

If someone offered you 1-10 odds that trump would win.. you should bet heavily on it, even if you don't think he will win.. because the real chance of him winning (going by the polls and political commentators) is certainly higher than 10%. Meaning even if you lost that bet, if you consistently bet the same situation again and again, you would make a profit because the minority of times that you do win, will pay more than the majority of times when you loose.

But if he was being offered 1-1? Then hes absolutely crazy.. There is no indication that this is a 50/50 race, and your just asking to loose money in the long-run.

I'd bet on trump if the odds were high enough, even though I think 8/10 times he is loosing this election. The odds are awful though at the moment, probably because a hell of a lot of trump supporters saw him jump a few percent in the polls and started throwing their cash around. You probably got great odds back in july when there was multiple 10 point diferences between him and biden and his numbers were in a freefall.

Only the most recent 1k was at 1/1. The rest was in dribs and drabs spread over the last 18 months with a variation of odds.

FYI it isn't going to be a huge impact on my life if I lose but I'm very certain I won't.

Reply 68

Gundabad(good)

Original post by DefundTheBBC

One has Hollywood, also known as pedowood in love with him

Anti-fracking activists telling you to vote... Joe Biden.. despite saying non stop that he wont ban fracking.

Endorsed by the Republican that allowed Flint Michigans water to be poisoned with lead.

Joe Biden supporters don't even know what he supports.

:rolleyes:

I wouldn't trust a word you say.

Reply 69

Ascend

13

Original post by Captain Haddock

All this media focus on the riots has drastically distorted people's perceptions of where the threat lies... According to the DHS's annual threat assessment by far the deadliest terrorism threat to the USA is still far right extremism. At least Biden condemns the rioters. And it still baffles me how people are blaming Biden for riots that are occurring in Trump's America.

Indeed.

Nick Cohen: All extremists threaten us… but it's the radical right we should fear now

"However vicious it may be, the far left has not overrun the western centre-left as the radical right has overrun mainstream conservatism."

Reply 70

Ascend

13

^ In related news, Trump cronies have been accused of altering national intelligence reports to downplay far right extremism:

House Intelligence Committee Releases Whistleblower Reprisal Complaint Alleging Serious Misconduct By Senior Trump Administration Officials to Politicize, Manipulate and Censor Intelligence to Benefit Trump

The complaint specifically alleges that “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.

Reply 71

Ascend

13

^ As well as downplaying Russian interference in the upcoming elections:

The complaint asserts that, in mid-May 2020, and while purporting to serve as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Chad Wolf “instructed Mr. Murphy to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran. Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Mr. Murphy informed Mr. Wolf he would not comply with these instructions, as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger.”

Reply 72

Polls from yesterday range from Biden being +15, to +1.. with most hanging around +6-8 range.

Trump needs to really make a move or hope something changes if he wants to close the gap. Sure things improved in August, but now hes stalled and things look very stationary in the polls. I'm not sure what he can really hope for though, the first debate is at the end of the month, but I don't really think that they influence all that many people.

During the last campaign, he had the email scandal and such big events that ticked along, but this time around I feel like his campaign is running on empty. Their method of attacking Biden has seemingly failed, and the protests/controversy isn't in play any more, so what else is there? All I can see working in his favour is if biden has a huge mistake prone debate, but aside from that, I think the gap is too big.

Trump doesn't need to win the popular vote given the way the system works, but he needs to be within 3% to make the contest a close 50/50 race. This time during the 2016 election he was 3.3% behind, now hes 7.5% behind. Its not looking good for him.

Biden just needs to keep going and basically not **** up. He has the media on his side (fox news aside) who have been relentless on trump this week. BBC's internatinal home page has had a negative story about trump for each day of the week, often having multiple on the front page at once. Some justly so, others less so, but either way its going to be like this now until the election, trump has (by his own fault) given them so mayn things that they can bring up between now and then, and while none of it will mean a thing to his following, to the general public, it doesn't look good. It didn't matter with Hilary, she was also rather disliked, but biden - how can you dislike such a template type of guy?

Reply 73

Jebedee

Original post by fallen_acorns

Polls from yesterday range from Biden being +15, to +1.. with most hanging around +6-8 range.

Trump needs to really make a move or hope something changes if he wants to close the gap. Sure things improved in August, but now hes stalled and things look very stationary in the polls. I'm not sure what he can really hope for though, the first debate is at the end of the month, but I don't really think that they influence all that many people.

During the last campaign, he had the email scandal and such big events that ticked along, but this time around I feel like his campaign is running on empty. Their method of attacking Biden has seemingly failed, and the protests/controversy isn't in play any more, so what else is there? All I can see working in his favour is if biden has a huge mistake prone debate, but aside from that, I think the gap is too big.

Trump doesn't need to win the popular vote given the way the system works, but he needs to be within 3% to make the contest a close 50/50 race. This time during the 2016 election he was 3.3% behind, now hes 7.5% behind. Its not looking good for him.

Biden just needs to keep going and basically not **** up. He has the media on his side (fox news aside) who have been relentless on trump this week. BBC's internatinal home page has had a negative story about trump for each day of the week, often having multiple on the front page at once. Some justly so, others less so, but either way its going to be like this now until the election, trump has (by his own fault) given them so mayn things that they can bring up between now and then, and while none of it will mean a thing to his following, to the general public, it doesn't look good. It didn't matter with Hilary, she was also rather disliked, but biden - how can you dislike such a template type of guy?

The reason people like me are so sure about Trump winning is we have 0 faith in the polls. The kind of people that will sway the vote don't participate in polls and are too busy in their daily lives to be "politically active".

There's going to be more of these than last time, that I can guarantee.
The kind of people that polls generally represent are people with too much time on their hands. The unemployed are generally going to side left as that is the side of the free ride.

Reply 74

Original post by Jebedee

The reason people like me are so sure about Trump winning is we have 0 faith in the polls. The kind of people that will sway the vote don't participate in polls and are too busy in their daily lives to be "politically active".

There's going to be more of these than last time, that I can guarantee.
The kind of people that polls generally represent are people with too much time on their hands. The unemployed are generally going to side left as that is the side of the free ride.

I think this was true for a while, but polling companies are getting better at mapping things out, and in my experiance they are also using probabilities more these days, rather than just saying outright what's going to happen. E.g. if biden wins the popular vote by 3%, then trump has a 50% chance of winning. I've heard that quite a few times this time around, but last time all I heard was "Hillary is ahead = Hilary will win".

Even if we did take polls as being incorrect in the same manner as they were last time, trump is a good 3-4% worse off than he was then, which if replicated in the election, would mean that he looses 90+% of the time. Even then he still has a chance, if his votes are clumped in the exact right locations, but its very unlikely.

He's not out, and the race isn't done by any means, but as I said in my last post, he needs to close the gap a bit to give himself a really good shot, and to do that he needs some shift or action that changes things a bit. 2 weeks ago he was having a good time, but this last week hasn't been that positive, and his static polling seems to reflect that.

Polls can be wrong, but the margin of error is only significant if the results seem close. E.g. the aggregate difference the day before the brexit referendum was 2%, for the 2016 us election it was around 3.5%, and the UK 2015 election was 3% out for most parties. That kind of range has a lot of error in it, but Boris being 10% ahead last year? He was always gong to win, even with a margin for error... And Biden being 8% ahead? If that keeps going until election day, it will be the same as Boris.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 75

anarchism101

Original post by Jebedee

The reason people like me are so sure about Trump winning is we have 0 faith in the polls. The kind of people that will sway the vote don't participate in polls and are too busy in their daily lives to be "politically active".

There's going to be more of these than last time, that I can guarantee.
The kind of people that polls generally represent are people with too much time on their hands. The unemployed are generally going to side left as that is the side of the free ride.

Seems you have precisely no idea how poll sampling works.

Reply 76

username4969948

16

Original post by Jebedee

The reason people like me are so sure about Trump winning is we have 0 faith in the polls. The kind of people that will sway the vote don't participate in polls and are too busy in their daily lives to be "politically active".

There's going to be more of these than last time, that I can guarantee.
The kind of people that polls generally represent are people with too much time on their hands. The unemployed are generally going to side left as that is the side of the free ride.

I'd strongly recommend you read an introductory book on research methods. You'll learn that polling methodology is a tad more complex that your simplistic understanding.

Reply 77

Jebedee

Original post by anarchism101

Seems you have precisely no idea how poll sampling works.

Original post by Kitten in boots

I'd strongly recommend you read an introductory book on research methods. You'll learn that polling methodology is a tad more complex that your simplistic understanding.

The most important factor is where they polling these people? Do you think people are going to feel comfortable answering telephone polls honestly if they support trump knowing full well the poller knows their phone number, name and address? With BLM insurgents smashing up people's residences?

Do you feel that conservatives are going to be trawling the Internet looking for volunteer polls instead of going to work?

If you disagree with any of my points then respond directly. I don't profess to be any kind of authority on polling methods but these are still issues that need to be addressed when you're arguing that polls are accurate when recent history doesn't corroborate that.

Reply 78

anarchism101