Forecasting a Post-Biden World
It’s Joever, as the kids say — Joever, Bidone. But who will win the election now, and what’s next for America? A politics piece by Jacob Cohen (@Conflux).
Joe Biden dropped out yesterday. So who will be the nominee? Does this help Trump’s chances? I’m sure you have a thousand other questions, and I’ll try to answer them with the help of Manifold’s markets.
Here’s the deal — no malarkey. (Too soon? Sorry.)
Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, and she was also endorsed by: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Jim Clyburn, and various other senators and representatives (including the chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus, and Hispanic Caucus). Including speculated potential challengers, like Pete Buttigieg and Govs. Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, and J.B. Pritzker.
The market thinks this will be enough, giving Kamala Harris an 85% chance to be the nominee. The rest of the probability mass is widely scattered among many other names. (Marianne Williamson is the only person likely to challenge her, but the market doesn’t think Williamson has a chance.)
Trump’s Chances
Trump’s chances of winning, according to Manifold, have steadily fallen from 68% last week (after the assassination attempt, when it seemed likely that Biden would continue, as the status quo) to 57% now.
But the price change in the last 24 hours was only a few percent. This makes sense, because the market was previously averaging three scenarios:
Biden vs. Trump (Trump has a ~75% chance)
Harris vs. Trump (Trump has a ~60% chance)
Someone else vs. Trump (Trump has a ~50% chance)
The first scenario was eliminated, but the last one got a lot less likely. So the overall change is relatively small.
VP Pick
The market has already started forecasting Kamala Harris’s potential VP pick. The top three contenders, with a nice combined probability of 69%, all happen to be white, male governors of purple or red states.
Musk
Finally, some words about Manifold: our site went down after the announcement, which we sincerely apologize for — but thanks to our dedicated engineers (and just a little help from AI), we got it back up in a couple hours. One amusing result of the debacle was that Emmett Shear tweeted about it, and Elon Musk responded to the tweet with the tears-of-joy emoji.
We think this is the first time that Elon Musk has acknowledged Manifold. We’re not sure how we feel about it 😂
(...well, Elon, if you’re reading this, we are sure that you should join Manifold and tweet about it more — I mean, post on X about it more…)
Some more in-depth analysis about Biden’s withdrawal after the cut!
(credit for the “Is it Joever?” needle to Andrew Gritsevskiy and Derik Kauffman, who are both very cool)
Though seriously, some traders predicted it! (And to give credit where credit is due, other prediction market platforms Polymarket and PredictIt consistently had higher “p(drop)” than Manifold and Metaculus.)
(With 6606, this takes the record for most participants ever on a Manifold market, surpassing the 6552 of the LK-99 market — though that one’s still open, so it has some time to catch up.)
SemioticRivalry
Perhaps the foremost was SemioticRivalry, who has made a profit of over 1 million mana betting that Biden wouldn’t be the nominee. (He’s been going back and forth with Joshua for the #1 all-time leaderboard position.) Meanwhile, my mana balance has been going negative due to all the loans I got on my Biden YES bets. The point is, if you’re deciding whether to listen to Semiotic or to me … our track records suggest him.
I asked him a few questions about this situation — here’s what he said:
How Did You Predict This In Advance?
there are two factors that were very underrated that led me to have a significantly lower credence in Biden DNOM than the markets
1: Biden was in very bad shape for re-election. Approval rating isn't everything, but it's a very strong predictor and Biden has been below 40% since October. He gets killed by Trump in immigration and inflation, and voters view him as too old. It's been very obvious to me that his candidacy was risking a 2nd Trump term relative to almost any other possible candidate.
2: Democratic leadership is unusually pragmatic and competent, and they are well aware of point #1. I think this point is probably quite controversial, because most Democrats feel like their party always loses, but it's absolutely true. I don't think the DSCC has lost a serious primary election since 2008, and Senate Democrats very consistently overperform in competitive elections. Republicans consistently blow winnable Senate elections with terrible candidates like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker while Democrats very consistently elect strong Senate candidates in the close races. Pelosi isn't as effective in campaigns, (though it's harder to be organized with the House being so big) but is an enormously effective legislator and pragmatist, one of the best the US has ever had.
From those two points, it follows that there is a reasonable probability of a power struggle between leadership and Biden over the nomination. For a while, it seemed like time would just tick until August, but the early debate offered a very clear signal to begin the fight. After that, it essentially became a game of chicken, and there are very few people who I would take in a game of chicken over Nancy Pelosi.
I don't really think this is very generalizable- this was a quite unique political situation, mainly due to Trump. The Dems hate Trump so much that they were willing to do something really drastic to try to beat him. Plenty of people model politicians as totally self interested in power, and certainly there are plenty who are like that, but if that is your only model, you would have failed to predict these people putting their careers on the line to start an unprecedented rebellion just to lower Trump's chances of victory. Toppling an incumbent President who has already won all the delegates has literally never happened before, and if I had to guess it will probably not happen again this century. I do think people should be more aware of the effectiveness of Schumer and Pelosi, though, and I'm sure history will give them their due credit.
Kamala Harris: Underpriced for the Nomination?
Regarding Kamala, I think she is somewhat underpriced in the markets. In the DNom market, she's at 84%, and in the overall Presidential Election market she's at 34%, and I'm a buyer at both of those prices. Manifold gives a conditional price of 40% which is about right to me, but I think her nomination is probably >90%. The delegates to the DNC are overwhelmingly state and local officials, and the chairs of all 50 State Democratic Parties made a statement endorsing her, along with two thirds of the D members of Congress, all on day 1 of her candidacy. She also has several entire states of delegates already on her side. It's extremely difficult for me to imagine a successful rebellion against that show of force.
Kamala's chances are clearly better than Biden, but I think most plausible candidates not named Kamala Harris or Joe Biden would have much better chances against Trump. Kamala has several disadvantages. Most importantly, she inherits Joe Biden's disadvantage vs Trump on the issues, mainly inflation and immigration. She also has some weakness in identity- she will win a lot more nonwhite and young voters than Biden, but probably lose white voters that other candidates would win. That coalition is likely to be inefficient in the electoral college. This can be partially offset by a VP, but they traditionally have very small effects In my opinion, a candidate like Josh Shapiro would be >60% against Trump, and I'm fairly confident if Nancy Pelosi was dictator of the Party, she would just nominate him. But in reality the DNC has a process, and I don't think anybody has a realistic shot to whip 2,000 delegates against Harris.
Shoutout to Semiotic for that great, thorough analysis! You can now follow him on Twitter for more.
Finally, some more quick things:
The Ballot in Ohio
One reason cited by DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for Biden not to drop out (and to nominate him by voice vote, instead of the convention) was worries about whether he’d appear on the ballot in Ohio due to deadlines. In fact, Harrison got into a Twitter war with Nate Silver about this. Manifold thinks the nominee will probably be on the ballot in Ohio, though.
Will Biden Finish His Term?
The market’s only trading at 78%! Apparently it was at 57% on Polymarket.
One Last Market
I haven’t just been writing newsletters for Manifold — and I have the “Core Team” role in the Discord server now. What else is going on? Will Manifold soon be nothing but Conflux?
I’ve given my customary M1,000 subsidy for Manifold Politics fun markets. But there are already some pretty convincing theories in the comments, so the subsidy might be gone soon…
I’ve been Jacob Cohen, known on Manifold as Conflux. I make puzzles at puzzlesforprogress.net, don’t release any new episodes of the Market Manipulation Podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and blog at tinyurl.com/confluxblog — where I’m releasing one partially-finished project every day in what I’m calling “WIP Week.” Yesterday’s was a behind-the-scenes of the puzzle book I made in Google Slides and self-published. Today’s, releasing at 6pm, will generalizably answer questions like “is tomato a fruit?” Should be light and fun!
Check out Manifold Politics at manifold.markets/politics, or via its Politics or 2024 Election categories. And if you enjoyed this newsletter, don’t forget to like, share, and/or subscribe to Above the Fold on Substack!
(PS: If you want to read more Substacks about Biden dropping out, Nate Silver and Matt Glassman, among others, had some solid commentary, I thought.)