Above the Fold - Super Tuesday
Will polls and prediction markets be proven right? Trump overtakes Biden.
It’s Super Tuesday. The day when the political enthusiasts' calendars are marked not with anticipation of dramatic twists but with a collective, knowing nod towards the predictable.
The questions being asked this year on Manifold are not, “Which Republican will win each state?”, but rather, “Will Donald Trump come within 10% of losing any state?”
Okay, yes I know, Super Tuesday this year isn’t the most exciting. But you want to read this post until you at least witness my MS Paint art piece. It’s stunning.
Super Tuesday
While the outcomes for each state may be clear, Super Tuesday will still be a crucially important test of how well our political forecasting institutions are performing. We’ll see how well polls perform and how prediction markets and expert analysis compare.
However, if you're looking for a fun time, Manifold users have been loving prop bets. These have completely taken over our site ever since independent multi-choice free-response markets were implemented!
(I had a long boring joke here about the market-type name but gave up. You’re probably welcome.)
And if the ninety markets we pretend to be one weren’t enough for you, here are some more:
Trump overtakes Biden on Manifold
For weeks, we’ve seen Trump's odds over Biden grow to a substantial lead on other forecasting sites such as Polymarket. Now, while Manifold believes their users may be getting a little carried away with betting Michele Obama up to 8%, Manifold has more slowly updated in that direction with Trump overtaking Biden for the first time.
Trump, red, is now at 50% to win with Biden, blue, at 45%. Other (not shown) still holds a respectable 5% (did someone say Michelle Obama??? 👀).
The discrepancy between forecasting sites has been notable over the past few weeks. Polymarket has had Biden at 30%-40% for a few weeks now while Manifold had him steady around the 50% mark.
Their odds have always favoured Trump more than ours which even prompted Trump to retruth Polymarket graphs and links on his social media platform. Whether this has led to a lot of republican bettors in contrast to Manifold’s heavy democratic skew being the reason for the continued differing forecasts is unclear. I suspect it could play a role, but is not the main factor.
I wanted to quickly give props to the Polymarket team for doing such a good job with their site and marketing lately. A win for them is a win for all prediction markets.
State of the Union
Want more prop bets? You got it!
Manifold will be hosting its first official “Manifold TV” viewing experience! A watch party with your favourite community accompanied by an embed stream, live chat and bet panel. Set an alarm on your phone now so you don’t miss out on what should be an intense live betting frenzy as we look to predict the next words coming from Biden’s lips.
The code will be ready in 2 days, we promise.
Manifold’s very own user running for office!
I know nothing about SF politics. So while I can’t make an educated endorsement, I can say it’s super exciting that @MikeChenSF, an active creator on Manifold, is running for office!
Mike has been making markets on whether we can expect various policies to be passed in SF.
Regardless of who you decide to vote for, be sure to vote today!
Thanks for reading!
Hopefully, I did a good job at hiding the fact I know nothing about US politics. But it’s great as I can just rely on Manifold to keep me educated. If you want to read something which can provide more nuance on Biden’s odds then you should read Conflux’s post!
Best
David Chee