# So will anybody ever trust the polls again? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 4, 2020, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714 "2020-11-04T05:49:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/306 "2020-11-11T22:41:10Z")
People on PredictIt are basically playing mini-analyst and deciding how much to factor polls, historical trends, hunches etc. I think everyone is going to do this to some extent - the Bernie and Biden polled roughly evenly against Trump in head-to-heads when the primary was still going on, but I think most people would expect Bernie to decline closer to the election. The theory for PredictIt being better than any single analyst would be the crowd wisdom theory that people will wind up settling on reasonable numbers when the people who overestimate how important one factor is have to settle on a price with the people who underestimate it. Also, there are of course people who just want to bet on their candidate to win (or bet on the other candidate to lose in order to feel better if it happens). Also at a very surface level, there are some little signs of amateurishness with PredictIt - on the Election Profit Makers podcast a few weeks ago they mentioned that betting No on Trump getting reelected was cheaper than betting Yes on Biden being elected which is a pretty obvious market inefficiency that probably stems from a lot of inexperienced gamblers going on the site. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/307 "2020-11-11T22:51:43Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > People joining after that point we’re almost all Trumpers getting in when they could buy Trump cheap until the market filled up. I expect that nobody could get in after that point, since I was unable to get in several days before that. One interesting question to me is how long before Nov. 3 did the market fill up? My takeaway from all this is that I should buy one share of any market I might want to bet in early and then I can take the easy money after the race has been called… ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/308 "2020-11-11T22:55:19Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I expect that a significant number of current market participants are not active in the market. They put $10 on Trump two years ago and forgot about it, or they’ve already maxed out how much they can bet (so they can’t make new bets to move the market). I’m not sure exactly why they’re not. I don’t understand what you’re saying. These are the exact same people’s whose pre-election consensus price is being held up as an example of an accurate prediction. Not two years ago, but up to the very day of the election these guys were sagacious (in aggregate) and suddenly one day later they’re a bunch of complete fools. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I _am_ sure that days after it has become _abundantly_ clear that Trump did not win the election, a 15% chance of him winning the election is absurd. I completely agree with you. That’s precisely the point. What’s more likely? That a group which collectively thinks that Trump’s current chances are 15% got the election more right out of a generally accurate methodology, or that this group got the election more right because pre-election predictions which over-rated Trump’s chances were closer to the mark? > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The reasonable explanation for this is that there’s no one who is allowed to take the suckers’ money and put the odds down to 1% (which I think is the lowest a market can go in PredictIt for rounding reasons). This theory is strongly supported by the fact that when I tried to take the suckers’ money, I was not allowed to do so because PredictIt has rules that make the market illiquid. Again, the “reasonable explanation” makes no sense at all. The theory is not strongly supported by anything, as above. And you yourself said in your prior post that PredictIt’s rules were all about avoiding regulations (and also that it’s not an issue of liquidity). ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/309 "2020-11-11T23:14:30Z")
Sometimes in a conversation here, I feel like it takes multiple posts to really come to an understanding, but I feel like we’re really not making any progress here. I don’t know how else to explain it, so maybe someone else will come in and help us translate for each other, or I guess we’ll just live with the misunderstanding. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/310 "2020-11-11T23:19:34Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > (and also that it’s not an issue of liquidity). Ok, I can’t help myself. One more. Here’s the definition I’m using for liquidity: Liquidity is the ease with which you can turn assets into cash. If you had a bunch of coffee beans, and you tried to sell them at a coffee market, but there were a bunch of rules in the market place that made it really hard to sell them and you ended up having a hard time getting cash for your coffee, you might say that that coffee market is _illiquid_. Now, if instead of coffee, you had really certain _knowledge of an election result_ (possibly because you were a time traveler from the future or because the election happened in the past), you might try to go to a _prediction market_ to turn that knowledge into cash. If, due to the rules of that market, you were unable to do so, it would be because that market was _illiquid_. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2020, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/311 "2020-11-12T17:25:09Z")
If someone made a bet on Trump before the election and neglected to take the steps to actively sell it off, the bet is still active. I think that’s where most of the 16% lies. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714/312 "2020-11-12T19:07:55Z")
That’s not how the prices work on PredictIt. The 16c (or whatever) shown is the most recent price paid by someone for that contract. (It’s similar to stock market share prices.) Prior “active” bets have no impact on the current price. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-anybody-ever-trust-the-polls-again/924714.md?page=15)