Althouse: The intriguing shape of the betting average graph.

August 21, 2024

The intriguing shape of the betting average graph.

IN THE COMMENTS: We all get together and recognize that the "intriguing shape" is a dinosaur. Wince digs up the precisely relevant Monty Python clip:

37 comments:

Elliott A. said...: The honeymoon ended before the convention; 8/21/24, 10:06 AM
Achilles said...: Looks slightly more realistic than the 2020 election vote graph.

Not much though. Still obviously fake.; 8/21/24, 10:06 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Joy beats just about everything else. I’m telling y’all. I don’t see the Trump signs here in northern Georgia and if there is a Trump country, northern Georgia is Trump country, from Sabana to Duluth. I don’t know what’s happening.; 8/21/24, 10:14 AM
Gerda Sprinchorn said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/21/24, 10:14 AM
Chest Rockwell said...: So Trump had a moderate decline compared to Harris large rise. And it looks like it's peaked and reversing. I suspect the more she's exposed to the public and her utter lack of policy positions and past statements catch up to her, we'll be at a Trump +3/5 or so.

Of course Trump can self immolate, but we'll see!; 8/21/24, 10:16 AM
Wince said...: "The intriguing shape of the betting average graph," by Ann Althouse.

This theory, which belongs to me, is as follows... This is how it goes... The next thing that I am about to say is my theory. Ready?; 8/21/24, 10:17 AM
Holy Moly! said...: Trump is a goof. People don't vote for goofs, much less have their signs in their yards.; 8/21/24, 10:23 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: I have no faith in polls being real. According to a commentary I read this morning, the two polls that have Harris ahead were either over-sampling Dems and under-sampling Reps - or - had little or no transparency on how they came to their numbers. When the polls first closed in 2016, I was on the NYTimes website and Trump's chances at winning the presidency was in single digits (maybe 2%). We all know what direction that changed in as the results began to come in, results not burdened with stopping the vote counts and massive fraud being committed by those who counted the "ballots"; 8/21/24, 10:23 AM
narciso said...: and ftx was a crackling good investment, rinse wash and repeat,; 8/21/24, 10:24 AM
RMc said...: (Harris') utter lack of policy positions and past statements catch up to her

They won't, because most of the country will never hear anything negative about her. Every member of the MSM is terrified that they'll accidentally re-elect Trump by actually asking Kamala an untoward question.; 8/21/24, 10:29 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "This theory, which belongs to me, is as follows... This is how it goes... The next thing that I am about to say is my theory. Ready?"

Exactly what I — Ann Not Elk — was thinking as I put the post together. Thin at one end... much much thicker in the middle... and then thin again at the far end. I almost put an image of a dinosaur in the post.; 8/21/24, 10:29 AM
John in PA said...: My first thought of the intriguing shape was that it looked like a dinosaur.; 8/21/24, 10:29 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Great comment, Wince, but you're the culprit on the italicization.

How do we turn it off?; 8/21/24, 10:30 AM
Ann Althouse said...: testing; 8/21/24, 10:31 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Ah! I did it!!!

I know the secret.

For everyone else, just do an end italics tag; 8/21/24, 10:31 AM
narciso said...: How about the lives of Mollusks; 8/21/24, 10:45 AM
john mosby said...: I thought it looked like a silhouette of a phallus, pointing left, or a schematic of a vulva.

Prof, why do you keep showing us dirty pictures!?

JSM; 8/21/24, 11:09 AM
tcrosse said...: Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy couple of months.; 8/21/24, 11:11 AM
Whiskeybum said...: Darn it Althouse! Now it’s no longer a secret!; 8/21/24, 11:14 AM
stlcdr said...: Woa, the dems were down to 20%?! I don't recall any poll indicating the democrat presidential possibility being that low.; 8/21/24, 11:21 AM
tommyesq said...: I just spent five days in deepest blue Vermont, and saw only a single Harris/Walz sign. No Biden signs. At least five Trump signs.; 8/21/24, 11:50 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I remind people that the poll averages the day before the 2020 election had Biden winning by 8%. Now, of course, the riposte is going to be that there was a margin of error of +/- 4% so the polls were right within that margin. Well, no- since we are talking about aggregated polls with 10s of thousands of respondents, the error bars are much, much smaller than what would be reported in a single poll. So, in 2020, the polls overstated Biden's support by 4%. Of course, all of the above is assuming the pollsters were all honest people doing their level best to guess the outcome, which any honest person is going to know is complete horseshit.

Biden was never behind in the national polling vs Trump- the race has always been, in my opinion based on the the previous two elections, about Biden and/or Harris +1 to +4%. That hasn't changed since Biden's expulsion from the race- what has changed is the motive for the pollsters.

Too many powerful Democrats wanted Biden to step aside and he would not listen last year or earlier this year. They wanted him out because they were afraid that too many voters would vote for Biden but then vote for the GOP in the down-ticket races. The Democrats are playing for taking both Houses of Congress plus the Presidency and they feared with Biden at the top they would fall short of taking the House and holding onto the Senate. They didn't want Harris either but she is what they are left with, so the pig lipstick has been purchased by the barrel by the press and most of the social media networks. Let's see if it works.; 8/21/24, 11:55 AM
tommyesq said...: Also, note that the Harris climb ceased on August 15th, exactly one day before she gave her "price controls" economic policy statement. Just as in 2020, her speaking publicly kills her popularity.; 8/21/24, 11:57 AM
Yancey Ward said...: As for the betting markets- these are almost surely too thin and open to manipulation- there are no good reasons for such dramatic moves other than that the variance is high because the markets are thin. You see a similar thing in stockmarkets- stocks with small floats are more volatile than stocks with large floats. These political prediction markets are like small float stocks- if you are trading them part of what you doing is attempting to drive them one direction or the other by having a big enough wallet. The DNC has a big enough wallet.; 8/21/24, 11:59 AM
tommyesq said...: Since January, Trump has been on a steady climb, interrupted only by the phony "joy" of the putsch and replacement of Biden. Harris still has to ride out two more months.; 8/21/24, 12:00 PM
David53 said...: Looks like a Velociraptor to me. A cold blooded predatory reptile that feeds on those too stupid or too slow to escape.; 8/21/24, 12:04 PM
Rocco said...: I saw a cannon on a turret.; 8/21/24, 12:08 PM
Rabel said...: If you go to their site and change the 3 month limit to 6 months you will see a different kind of intriguing shape.

Keyword - Splooge.; 8/21/24, 12:47 PM
mccullough said...: The graph resembles my 5 year old self’s drawing of my Stretch Armstrong; 8/21/24, 1:33 PM
mccullough said...: The graph resembles my 5 year old self’s drawing of my Stretch Armstrong; 8/21/24, 1:33 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Racehorse.; 8/21/24, 1:39 PM
n.n said...: Gastrointestinal politics.; 8/21/24, 2:12 PM
rehajm said...: Kind of fun with this shared italics responsibility. Like places where concealed carry is easy…; 8/21/24, 5:37 PM
Diamond said...: A woman screaming during childbirth.; 8/21/24, 6:16 PM
rehajm said...: Did dinosaurs build Stonehenge?; 8/21/24, 6:22 PM
~ Gordon Pasha said...: 3 years of law fare have probably pushed a lot of Trump supporters to keep their opinions to themselves.; 8/21/24, 9:34 PM
Rusty said...: Ya think. That's why there's no Trump sign in the yard. There are three or four families in the neiborhood who are unreasoning dem supporters. They are not above vandalism.; 8/22/24, 6:28 AM