Again Rein, why was the betting market correct in 2020 but wrong now in 2024?
#15 | Posted by Bluewaffles

The betting market was wrong in 2016, btw, and could very well be wrong now:

The Wall Street Journal had a major piece on Polymarket yesterday, writing:

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning on Friday, while Harris's chances were 40%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.

Trump's gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump's favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump's growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. "More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line," Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.

That's cool, now explain the swing state polling.
#2 | Posted by Bluewaffles

Swing states are where the rightwing/red wave polling is the worst:

[I]t is time for those who analyze polls to start acknowledging that there is now a third type of poll --the red wave, right-aligned narrative polling that only exist for a single purpose--to move the polling averages to the right. They are exploiting the "toss it in the averages and everything will work out philosophy" of these sites to once again launder these polls and game the averages--and thus our understanding of the election. Party leaders should expect them to keep these polls coming, and keep working the averages until it looks like Trump is winning in all polling averages. It is what they did in 2022, and it worked. They are doing it again this time, and once again it is working as the averages are moving and everyone is treating this movement like an organic rather than a deeply corrupt process.

Since late August more than 70 right-aligned polls have been dropped into the polling averages. The two states that have been worked the hardest are North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In October of the 27 Presidential polls released in Pennsylvania, 16 are from right-aligned pollsters, a majority. Since August 31st of the 41 Presidential polls released in North Carolina, 21, a majority have home come from right aligned pollsters. . . .

The red wave campaign this year is on a much greater scale than 2022. It started much earlier, has many more actors and has produced far more polling. It needed to be bigger for in general election years there is more polling. So to move the averages more polls were needed, and they got to work earlier doing so. And this is important. In 2022 the campaign began late, in mid-October. They had less time to move the averages so their polls were often 3-4 points to the right of the polling as they needed these bigger margins to move the averages in a shorter time period. This time, because they started earlier and are producing more polls their polls are often only 1-2 points to the right of the polling average or independent polls. They are working the averages more carefully this time, over using the time and volume to move them gradually so the op is not as crude and as easy to see as last time. If Harris leads by 2.5 points and you drop 5 polls showing the race tied or her ahead by 1 or even 2 points the averages moves and it looks like she is losing altitude.

One of the hazards of mucking around with the ministerial duty to certify election results. electionlawblog.org
#33 | Posted by et_al

Yes, if the state attorney general brings the charges. In the case you link to in Arizona, the state attorney general, Kris Mayes, is a Democrat.

FTA you linked to:

"The danger is real, but much of the speculation about mechanisms Trump or his allies might use to overturn election results risks unnecessarily raising the anxiety level of voters."

and:

"There is no way to make the system entirely failsafe against all risks. I'm particularly worried that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will have long delays in getting to a definitive result, given that their laws still " unconscionably--refuse to permit their election officials to start processing absentee ballots until election day. If the results of the election cannot be known for several days, this will almost inevitably spawn suspicion and distrust, fueled by social-media conspiracy theories, and might lead to major efforts to disrupt the vote-counting process."

"Trump is for he/him. Kamala is for us."

Andy Ostroy
@AndyOstroy
Every #Trump supporter should watch this new @ProjectLincoln ad. He's riling you up about prison sex-change surgeries, but it was HIS administration's policy that paid for them. Watch the ad, read this NY Times article, and discover the truth...

Was Kemp cowed by Trump's attacks on his wife? If Trump does win, not even Republicans want to be on his enemies list:

Trump's attacks on Kemp, his wife reverberate across party

In fiery speech, former president assails state's top Republican for disloyalty'

It was a stunning display of venom aimed at Georgia's Republican governor by the party's presidential nominee.

On Saturday, at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Donald Trump referred to Brian Kemp at least twice as "little Brian." He described him as a "very average governor." He said, "Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor ought to get off his ass and do something about it."

Most bitterly of all, Trump accused Kemp, state first lady Marty Kemp and Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger of "disloyalty"--in particular, the governor and secretary of state for failing to secure election victory in Georgia in 2020 and accusing them of "doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win."

First, Katyal worries that rogue governors might manipulate the certification process. Much of his essay rests on envisioning plots in which corrupt governors play the central role. But simply speaking politically, this is unlikely in any decisive state. In nearly all the swing states, the governors are Democrats, who are hardly going to be receptive to any entreaties by Trump. Georgia is an exception, but the key figures in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, have done as much under fire as any political officials to prove their commitment to certifying an accurate, lawful count.

Would Congress nonetheless defy the ECRA and act illegally? To reject a state's electoral votes would require a majority in each house of the newly elected Congress. No matter which party controls the House and Senate, its margin is expected to be thin. Sen. Susan Collins was the leader oncr the Republican side in the bipartisan Senate group that drafted the ECRA. Other Republicans in that group who will still be in the Senate in January 2025 include Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young, and Shelley Moore Capito. Let's assume for the sake of analysis Republicans control the House and have 51 or 52 Senators. It would still take only one or maybe two Republicans to abide by the terms of the ECRA that they themselves drafted to defeat any plot in Congress to steal the election.

The second and only other basis on which the bipartisan Congress agreed it could lawfully object is also extremely limited. Congress can object if the document a governor sends in, identifying the electors, is defective in some way. Again, this provision does not give Congress the power to second guess the voting process in a state. Indeed, Sen. Ted Cruz voted against the Act precisely because it shut down Congress' power to do so.

The entire thrust of the ECRA is to emphasize that any disputes over the voting process are to be resolved in the courts, not in Congress.

How?
#2 | Posted by homerj

The how is outlined in an article Et Al posted recently:

The second and only other basis on which the bipartisan Congress agreed it could lawfully object is also extremely limited. Congress can object if the document a governor sends in, identifying the electors, is defective in some way. Again, this provision does not give Congress the power to second guess the voting process in a state. Indeed, Sen. Ted Cruz voted against the Act precisely because it shut down Congress' power to do so.

The entire thrust of the ECRA is to emphasize that any disputes over the voting process are to be resolved in the courts, not in Congress.

" He will try to ensure Harris is denied 270 votes in the Electoral College, sending the election to the House, where Republicans are likely to have the numbers to choose Trump as the next president"
How?
#2 | Posted by homerj

I saw Kyle Cheney, one of the authors of this article, on MSNBC this morning, and he said that this plan will only potentially work if Republicans retain the House and Johnson retains the speakership.

DonOLD Trump has a bad case of penis envy:

OMG, brutal, just brutal:

Don't tell Fresno500, he wants to kill the _______. He said so on this very site!
#17 | Posted by gracieamazed

I think Fresno500 is black, but be that as it may be. You totally ignored the context in which that comment was made and as a result also missed the sarcasm with which it was made.

Gal ... there was at least one article that made it to the front page about Kamala leading betting markets a few weeks back. So was that article wrong because it didn't gauge Trump's surge in popularity or what?
As well, Harris is losing every swing state aggregate polling. Are we to believe there's a problem with these polls as well?
#16 | Posted by Bluewaffles

As I said upthread, Forget the betting markets, forget the polls. Just vote:

The red wave campaign this year is on a much greater scale than 2022. It started much earlier, has many more actors and has produced far more polling. It needed to be bigger for in general election years there is more polling. So to move the averages more polls were needed, and they got to work earlier doing so. And this is important. In 2022 the campaign began late, in mid-October. They had less time to move the averages so their polls were often 3-4 points to the right of the polling as they needed these bigger margins to move the averages in a shorter time period. This time, because they started earlier and are producing more polls their polls are often only 1-2 points to the right of the polling average or independent polls. They are working the averages more carefully this time, over using the time and volume to move them gradually so the op is not as crude and as easy to see as last time. If Harris leads by 2.5 points and you drop 5 polls showing the race tied or her ahead by 1 or even 2 points the averages moves and it looks like she is losing altitude. . . .

The red wave 2024 campaign also includes a major new entrant, Polymarket, an off-shore crypto-based betting market whose lead investor is Peter Thiel, former business partner to Elon Musk and primary political patron of JD Vance. Polymarket is buying product placement on sites and with influencers for their 2024 American election results even though NO AMERICAN CAN LEGALLY PARTICIPATE IN PROCESS THAT DETERMINES THE DATA. Polymarket is everywhere. Harry Enten higlights their data on CNN. Right wing influencers pump Polymarket maps showing Trump "winning" everyday. Nate Silver is an advisor to Polymarket. Elon and Twitter of course are pumping this stuff, hard.

FTA:

When fascism finally went mainstream in America, it came hawking a $60 made-in-China Bible and shadowed by a 50-foot American flag braced by construction cranes--and it opened with a story about Arnold Palmer's private parts.

Elon Musk's Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign

There's deeply cynical and then there's things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris's support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I'm going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like "fake" and "impersonating", which we'll return to in a moment.)

Am I worried Trump will take action similar to those individuals? No.....but again, he deserves the comparison.
#22 | Posted by eberly

You should be. Former members of his cabinet are, video at link:

Remember?

Trump's former Sec. Def. Mark Esper: "[Trump] was suggesting that... we should bring in the troops & shoot the protesters."

Q: "The commander-in-chief was suggesting that the U.S. military shoot protesters?"

Esper: "Yes, in the streets of our nation's capital."

Clickable AOC link:

She has a constituency now and the support of average Dems:

@#24 ... Average Democrats never supported Kamala as a candidate for anything. ...
Yes, they did support her.
#25 | Posted by LampLighter

Harris won multiple elections in CA where average Democrats supported her. She was also supported by average Democrats as part of the winning Biden/Harris ticket.

Remember the red tsunami in 2022 that wasn't? Notice the same pattern come mid-October:

Republicans have over 70% chance of winning Senate in midterm elections, betting markets say
Last Updated: Nov. 8, 2022
First Published: Oct. 24, 2022

The Republican Party's prospects in today's midterm elections have been continuing to climb this fall, with betting market PredictIt now giving the GOP a more than 70% chance for taking control of the U.S. Senate away from Democrats.

Republicans reached a 76% chance of winning the Senate last Thursday and were at 74% as of Monday, according to PredictIt data.

Democrats had been enjoying an edge over the GOP throughout August and September, but that advantage went away in the second week of October.

"Broadly speaking, Democrats' momentum from the summer has largely leveled off, with voters increasingly focused on Republican issues such as the economy, inflation, and crime, at the expense of Democrats' agenda items, including Roe and guns, according to recent polls," said Benjamin Salisbury, director of research at Height Capital Markets, in a recent note.

Forget the betting markets, forget the polls. Just vote:

Burst of trades inflates Trump's margin in election prediction markets

Small group of bettors lifts odds of Republican victory to 62 per cent on cryptocurrency-based Polymarket

In theory, betting markets may offer a more accurate forecast of election results than polls and models, though fee structures, market sizes and other limitations can cloud those results.

Polymarket competitor PredictIt infamously gave Hillary Clinton roughly 80 per cent odds of victory in 2016 before her loss. PredictIt traders also continued to give Trump a 10 per cent chance of winning the state of Wisconsin weeks after the race had been called in the media.

"Funny but not haha how Democrat Senators like Casey PA, Sherrod Brown OH etc are frantically buying into Trump policies on trade immig.. They abstain from Kamala rallies."

I think that article is trying to read too much into that ad. Casey is trying to appeal to Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Here's the Casey ad (video at link):

Transcript
I'm a Republican and I'm a Democrat. Our marriage, pure bliss. But on politics, we just don't agree except for Bob Casey. He's independent. That's right. Casey's leading the effort to stop corporate greed, inflation and price gouging Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating. So, in this house, we agree it's Bob Casey who's doing right by Pennsylvania. I'm Bob Casey and I definitely approve this message.

"Overall, Baier interrupted Harris at least 38 times in 27 minutes, about twice as often as Baier interjected with Trump (at least 28 times in 36 minutes)."

FTA:

Donald Trump-backing Christian supremacists gathered en masse on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Yom Kippur on Oct. 12, to fast, atone, and receive messages about a holy revolution, national deliverance from LGBTQ "demons," and "spiritual warfare" matched to a physical "ground game."

As one preacher put it: "You are not here to be blessed. You are here to do war."

The militant gathering--marketed to draw "A Million Women" (it did not)--was riven with apocalyptic urgency. And it culminated with religious leaders taking up sledge hammers and pick-axes to destroy a replica of a pagan altar to an ancient goddess of "sexual immorality." Staged in front of the U.S. Capitol, which was desecrated by many of their co-religionists four years ago, this spectacle of destruction evoked dark memories of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Yeah, Trump looks good for a 78 year old girdle, Depends and makeup wearing senior citizen: