(Supposing that you’re betting real, actual money)
I would have a hard time parting with any real money at odds of less than around 20-to-1, at least as of now. (Poll to come)
I am not a betting man, mostly because RTFirefly handed me my butt in a bet on Howard Dean getting the nom back in the day.
But I would estimate the odds at a Trump re-election at 7-5, pick 'em.
I don;t think the impeachment inquiry has changed a lot of minds. The Senate is still not gonna remove him from office. And Ford very nearly got elected even after pardoning Nixon.
I think the enthusiasm of the Democrats and the press are leading them down the same path as in 2016 - the certainty that nobody could possibly support Trump. And he is the incumbent. Just like Nixon was the incumbent.
I didn’t vote for Trump. I haven’t made up my mind who I will vote for in 2020. That could be bad news for Trump, since I usually but not always vote Republican. It could be good news for Trump, because I am open to the idea.
I could be wrong about this. Or I could not be. We shall see.
Regards,
Shodan
My best guess is that he has about a 1/4 chance of winning the election. I figured he had about a 1/3 chance of winning the 2016 election so I’m still not terribly comforted by those odds.
I’ll take the 1:1, but I’m not going to bet more money than I can stand to lose.
At Betfair you can either bet £1 of your own money on Trump to get £1.42 extra back or bet £1.44 of your own money on “everybody else” to get £1 extra back.
Gen that $1 seems mean and $5 seems generous, so I’d take anything from $5 upwards.
So the options go from even money to 5-1? Seriously? No option for Trump’s odds being better than even? And you really think 100-1 is a reasonable choice?
Your odds should be more like:
1:2
Even
2:1
3:1
5:1
10:1
And that last one is pushing it. He’s the incumbent president with a 45% approval rating. Unless things change dramatically in tye next year, there’s no way his chances are less than that.
Personally, before the Syria fiasco I woild have said Teump is 50-50 against a moderate candidate, and 2:1 for him against someone like Warren or Sanders. But after the Syria debacle, I think the chance of impeachment has gone up dramatically because a bunch of Senate Republicans will no longer carry water for him. So now I’d say that his chances are 2:1 against if he faces a moderate, and maybe even against someone like Elizabeth Warren.
Caveat: No one knows what the odds are now. We won’t know until his challenger has been chosen, until the results of the various investigations are in, and most importantly how the economy is doing at election time. All the polls and commentary at this point are essentially noise, and if I had to bet on my predictions I’d be willing to wager about $1 for entertainment value only.
Greater than $100, not because I think the chances of his reelection are that low, but just so I can have a nice dinner out while I lament what the United States has turned into.
Well, to be pedantic we do know what the odds are now - they are on Betfair 2.42-2.44 implying that he has a 41% chance. You may feel that there’s too much uncertainty to bet with confidence now, but there are enough people already prepared to put up money that the spread between the back/lay prices is tight already. The back-lay implied probabilities are 41.3%-41.0% You may prefer to wait until closer to the election until we have more information, but if that information reduces the uncertainty of the outcome, you obviously won’t get such an attractive price to bet in the favored direction.
I’m a fan of betting markets, but even if that number is the best estimate today, the error bars around it are so large that it’s close to meaningless.
If I had to bet, I would bet that Trump loses. But I have zero confidence that there’s much information behind that choice, other than that his approval rating is currently below 50%, and that there doesn’t seem to be much upside to his popularity but lots of ways it can get worse. But who really knows? The future is full of unknown unknowns, which is why it’s unpredictable.
FYI, PredictIt is pretty much in line with Betfair at a bit over 40% implied probability.
I think 40% is about the right line. I would jump all over a 5-1 or better bet. The lower odds are pure wishful thinking.
Error bars? This isn’t a poll. There are no “real” odds other than what the betting markets give. Even when the official vote tallies come in, does that tell you what the odds really were?
OK, I think I answered wrong.
My guess is Trump has a 30% to 40% chance of winning. Which means I should not take a $1 bet, but definitely take a $5 bet.
I agree it’s ridiculous for this poll to not have any option between $1 and $5.
I would not make bets, either way, on elections. Partly, this is because I’m risk-averse, and partly because I want my take on the election to be purely driven by serious matters, not something as trivial as a personal bet.
That said, I can still estimate probabilities. I think that he’s at a less than even chance, but I don’t think any estimate of his probability any lower than about 25% is justified. Remember, if he does as well as he did last time, then he wins again.
My gut instinct was I’d take 2:1. The coin flip seems a bit aggressive for a Trump win and if I’m betting I want better odds then the real odds. I voted other since the actual choices are crazy.
Either he’ll win or he won’t. I’ve given up expecting sense from the (red state) American people.
I wouldn’t bet anything on it, only because I really wouldn’t want to profit from that if I “win”.
Realistically at this point I think that even with everything that’s going on, it’s about an even money proposition that he wins re-election.
You know there was a time that investing in a tobacco stock was a good investment. I still wouldn’t have wanted to do it.
I would see the 5:1 as a very rational bet but I wouldn’t make it. Putting myself in a position to profit from evil prevailing has too much cost to my irrational brain. No potential profit can overcome that irrational but real sense.
If we treat the information that’s unknown at any point in time as effectively contributing random variance, in principle there exists a “true” probability derived from the entire set of known information and a hypothetical perfect model for election outcomes. In practice, if we have a candidate model that we think can give a probability estimate that is closer to the true probability than the consensus implied probability in the betting markets, then we can test how good our model is by placing bets when our model’s estimated probability differs from the betting markets. If we’re right about our model, we’ll make money in the long run. So we can interpret what Sam said as meaning that he thinks any model has very wide error bars in its estimated probability at the moment.
I’ll take a $1.10 payout, but not a $1.05.