Strong Harris Victory Predicted By Market-Based Forecasting Model

ALL the swing states go to Harris!

Status as of September 25, 2024

Tom Miller is betting – literally - on a strong Democratic victory in November.

A professor at Northwestern University, Miller’s prediction is based not on polls, but on the prices for both candidates on the PredictIt betting site.  A betting site is more accurate than polls, he maintains, because they are fresh; polls are 4-5 days out of date.  And while polls may survey only 500- 1,500 voters, PredictIt - the most liquid of the betting sites -  takes in some 37,000 bets every day. 

The betting now is 58:46, Harris victory over Trump loss (as of Sept 23^rd).  This is up 2 points for Harris in the past day alone.

For a glimpse into the future, note that the Harris price is going UP.  

Miller attributes the jump to the day Trump made disastrous comments to Black journalists.

On July 31 Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists. He falsely suggested that Harris misled voters about her race. This was a pivot point, as election forecasts moved from an anticipated Republican win to a Democratic win.

The PredictIt site went berserk as bettors jumped from Trump to Harris. 

Miller explained that "Over 100,000 shares traded that last day of July, three times the usual number…Literally overnight, the election shifted from leaning Republican, to trending Democratic, as Harris surged to over 270 [electoral vote count; 269 is a win].”

Harris's electoral count rose in the weeks that followed, and then took another jump after the Harris-Trump debate and the Taylor Swift endorsement.

All these events are translating into an epic win for Harris.

I would disagree mildly with Miller in the interpretation of the PredictIt results: they started to rise immediately after Harris was named as the Democratic candidate, and have been rising steadily ever since. 

There have been four significant ‘betting days’:  Biden’s endorsement of Harris (384,000 shares changed hands); Trump’s fiasco at the Black Journalist event (100,000 shares traded); Harris gets the Democratic nomination (188,000 shares); and the combination of the debate and Taylor Swift endorsement (158,000 shares).

The upshot is that Miller says that Harris is way ahead and the polls haven't yet shown that lead, as they are 4-5 days behind the betting pool.  He adds that there is a huge win for Harris that is still building.

In supporting news, election forecaster FiveThirtyEight projects that Harris is on course to win every single swing state.   

The forecast predicts that Harris will win by a margin between 0.4 points and 3.3 points in seven battleground states.  She is forecast to take Wisconsin by 2.8 points, Michigan by 2.5 points, Nevada by 1.7 points, Pennsylvania by 1.3 points, Georgia by 0.7 points (but she’s coming from behind, so this is significant), Arizona by 0.5 points, and North Carolina by 0.3 points.

FiveThirtyEight forecasts that Harris will win with 293 electoral votes to Trump's 259. They peg her chances at 61% to Trump's 38%.

My kind of odds.

The truth will come in November, of course, but the polling news is uneven at the moment.  The polls failed massively in 2016, predicting a Clinton victory, for several reasons that in retrospect look incredibly obvious.  The polls did not factor in educational representation, so they undercounted the non-college White voters that went to Trump.  The educated voters were also more likely to respond to polling surveys.

Who knows what errors are bring committed today?  Remember the “red wave” that was predicted in 2022? Ironically, the unexpected Republican defeat pushed the party harder to the right…into the failing arms of Donald Trump.

Another indicator that the PredictIT market poll is right, comes with the difference in fundraising.  Harris outraised Trump by a factor of four in August, $189-million to $44-million.  And even though she greatly outspent Trump, she still has a cash chest worth $100-million more than he does.

And her September donations will include a $47 million cash boost from nearly 600,000 donors in the 24 hours following the first and probably only Harris-Trump debate.

An interesting if negative indicator is that when Trump went to the Palmetto Bowl college football game in South Carolina, he was met with audible boos from the stands.  They are unmistakable about 20 seconds into the video.

Whenever I’ve walked the grounds of Clemson University, one of the contending teams, I’ve been struck by the number of kids who look like they were outfitted by lawyer-parents: expensive shorts and BMW’s.  Trump is not being greeting by the lower classes here.

And among the working classes, he is being ridiculed for his campaign issues…this sign in San Diego should sum it all up:

Trump never had much of a chance in California anyway, but it would be a pleasure to see other signs underlining the dementia of his policies.  If you have any links, please send!

In the meantime, the smart bets are on Harris!  Our votes in November will make this a crushing Reality Show!