Voting early gives me the chance to chat with the town's receptionist at City Hall, no crowding, and if run over by a Peterbilt with bad brakes before election day my vote will count as legal when cast, and alive to cast it.
Standing in line with bubblegum chewing girls: That's unfair to Taylor Swift and her fan base, and envious of her popularity and wealth. And if old enough to register and vote, they are young women, not "girls," where I know this and respect it, but thought "girls" would be more provocative for headlining.
(Crabgrass has generated no giant young women fan base, and I cannot sing. Jealousy abounds. Swift's young too, not with one foot in the grave as here.)
The heart of the post is to look at polling "science" and betting "instinct" as ways of forecasting the election early, while without a crystal ball. Making life easy, first, a chart after "The Debate" where Trump opened talking of Haitians in Ohio eating neighbors' pets, and then DailyBeast; chart first, from EmptyWheel:
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| break at Sept. 11, the day following The Debate |
That's betting instinct, as that's what investment is - now, DB:
Trump Tanks in Election Betting Odds After Harris Debate
CHIPS ARE DOWNThe former president’s rambling about dog-eating and crowd sizes seemingly didn’t inspire confidence.
Donald Trump nosedived in several election betting markets after his performance against Kamala Harris in their first presidential debate Tuesday night.
The Republican nominee had a 46.8 percent chance of winning in November compared with Harris’ 51.9 percent as of early Wednesday, according to electionbettingodds.com. The site, which uses odds data from four markets, reported that Trump saw a 3.7 percent decline in the last 24 hours while the vice president surged 4.8 percent.
Trump’s chances of returning to the White House also got longer on Polymarket, the prediction market where users bet cryptocurrencies on who will win the election. [...] A separate market on the site about who polls will say won the debate currently gives Harris a 99 percent chance.
On PredictIt, buying a share on Monday to predict a Harris victory in the election would cost 53 cents—indicating an approximate 53 percent chance—while buying a share for Trump would cost 52 cents. As of Wednesday morning, backing Harris costs 56 cents while Trump’s have fallen to 47 cents.
Harris now has a 2.7 percentage-point lead over Trump in an average of national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight.
The bad news doesn’t end there for Trump. Shares in his social media company Trump Media & Technology Group—the parent company of Truth Social— [...] which has been bought and sold as a kind of proxy for Trump’s chances of winning in November, is mostly owned by Trump himself.
And we've seen the chart. Crabgrass only quotes DailyBeast, but there were multiple returned items, over two web searches:
Search = poll industry is hopelessly infected by gamblers trying to change the odds.
Search = any change betting odds after trump eating pets comment
I'll check those links, but there is sentiment-bias to both, as phrased - that is admitted, so readers might want to do their own differing web searches, (certainly if sentiments differ).
Some discussion: Betting on U.S. midterm elections in 2022 was limited, stateside, but detailed English betting exists now (13 Sep 2024, 07:00). If the links above are modified, past day, past month, readers get the latest. Also, the pet eating thing may have begun with JD:
That tweet being from Sept. 9, (pre-Debate) - and Vance appears to be doubling down on the story, refusing to admit to likelihoods; and what would he say if Springfield, Ohio, residents, in very small numbers, swore they'd seen Bigfoot? Also, the story now includes trapping geese to eat, which is a bit distant to cats and dogs being abducted and eaten, and a very lame way out. That, while yesterday it was reported Trump was campaigning, Laura Loomer, in tow:
Former president Donald Trump has traveled the country this week accompanied by far-right activist Laura Loomer, unnerving some GOP allies with his increasing embrace of a provocateur with a history of espousing conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric.
“The history of statements by Ms. Loomer are beyond disturbing,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview Thursday. “I hope this problem gets resolved. I think we should be talking about things that people are concerned about, and this issue, I think, doesn’t help the cause.”
Lindsey was speaking of Loomer, but equally could have been speaking to the pet eating issue. Why Trump - Vance want to demonize and scapegoat Haitians in Ohio is for them to explain, but it's not seeming to be gaining many votes.