FiveThirtyEight, along with Ipsos and The Washington Post, is running a poll of likely Republican primary voters before and after the debate. Based on this polling, they are going to assess who won. Who will they say "won" the debate?
Criteria they will consider include the favorability and unfavorability ratings of each candidate, and the percentage of voters that are considering that candidate. Notably, they are assessing this based on each candidate's starting point.
They included in their polling three candidates who will not be at the debate, Donald Trump, Francis Suarez, and Will Hurd, so I'm including them in the possible outcomes.
If they say that no-one won the debate, or they do not state a winner, resolves N/A, but if they state multiple winners I will resolve to that set of winners. I reserve the right to resolve N/A in any case, though I do not intend to and will not have shares in the market.
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i’m not upset that i lost, but i’m genuinely confused at how this resolves desantis and not haley (speaking as someone who wasn’t holding any Haley)
It’s so easy to say “but desantis was already popular”
He’s popular because he says the dumb anti woke stuff that they love, which he repeated at the debate to the same success
He didn’t do anything crazy, but why would he? Whatever he did, he was still the favourite afterwards. Did he need to surpass trump for it to be considered a win?
@Gen You're missing the point. This article, officially associated with the study, and named in the link text of this market's description, dances directly with the word "winner" and does not proclaim it to be true, and in fact spends the majority of its text stating why it is not a claim they actually agree with.
"Sometimes more is less."
@cloudprism Yeah, I understand that. I saw it
This one definitely comes out stronger for Haley, and it would probably make sense to resolve Haley if that were the core reference point.
I just find it funny that even that one says, (paraphrasing) “desantis polled the best in every category, but..”, and you still think it’s totally unreasonable for people to think DeSantis won
@Gen That's because the market did not resolve to other people's subjective opinions. FiveThirtyEight is very idiosyncratic compared to the rest of the media. Most of the media moves on after they hear the first result. FiveThirtyEight is much more rigorous, and as such provides readers with a much better picture of how the debate shifted things.
@Gen Please stop paraphrasing to launder your preferred interpretation into discussion. You do so in almost every comment.
@cloudprism I mean I probably will just stop discussing now, im not trying to swing anyone, the markets already settled
@Daniel_MC Retroactive N/A resolution for a subjective decision is far worse than a decision not everyone agrees with
@Daniel_MC Think of it like sports, the umpire is accused of rigging almost every game. If you constantly scrutinise the process or undo the result (almost totally unheard of in sports), two things happen. People stop wanting to umpire, and people stop wanting to play
There are many sporting moments where the “umpires” have decided the game, a perfect example is the 2021 f1 championship. It was an impossible decision, but ultimately the best thing to do is to stand by the decision once it’s made. (Plenty of examples in the UFC, too)
Even if it’s unfair, they always accept the umpires call. Let them make mistakes, correct for it in the future, whatever. Remove them if you have to, but don’t ever let it be a waste of time
There was nothing egregious here, Gabrielle said his clear opinion, opened up for discussion, saw the complaints, and decided to consult with several people before finalising his decision.
can we not have subjective outcomes? They all end up N/A if you open it up like that
See: people complaining about Twitter markets, because it’s ‘technically a post, not a tweet’. Its not worth it.
@Gen This is the argument I agree with, actually. My first job as a teenager was soccer referee. There was a call I made during a game that turned out to be contentious. The families were yelling at me. But I stood by the call and continued the game. Afterward an adult referee pulled me aside and commended the effort.
I clearly do not agree with this resolution, but it is mainly because I picked up on Haley's rise better than anyone else betting. I'm upset that this fact will not be taken into account. But that's baseball.
@Gen I think in this case, it's reasonable to present counterarguments and then expect that somebody involved in the resolution will think that they are worthy of a response and explain why they did not carry the day. My guess is that this isn't happening because they weren't aware of the arguments and don't have a good reason why they weren't considered. Which is a little frustrating.
@SemioticRivalry Everything that you’ve brought up was discussed before the resolution was made. Ultimately it was a very tough decision and one choice had to be made. I believe that it was the right decision made and that I took into account all of the different arguments.
If I had selected all three, people would have complained that Ramaswamy wasn’t at the top of any of their measures. If I had selected just DeSantis and Haley, people would have complained that FiveThirtyEight had clearly said that DeSantis was the winner of the graph that said who won the debate. And with selecting DeSantis, there are the complaints that they listed three as the best performers. I could have resolved N/A, but then no one would have been happy, since everyone has an argument for why their preferred choice was right.
Ultimately I made my decision after consulting people without stake in the market, both three Manifold users and three people who don’t use Manifold, and all six independently said that out of those options it made the most sense to say that DeSantis won.
So I haven’t been responding much because I know that there are decent arguments for each choice and fighting about any specific argument isn’t going to achieve anything, especially since reresolving would make people even more upset.
@Gabrielle As I said, I don't think there was one clear and obvious correct decision. But the reason for this resolution is the title of the graph? It was titled that way because that was the literal question asked to respondents, not because it was the only relevant criteria. If other criteria wasn't relevant, it presumably wouldn't have been included in the article titled "who won the debate?" I think that's horribly wrong in so many ways and my faith is somewhat shaken but thank you for explaining. I don't want to harass anyone involved but this is just so clearly wrong to me, it doesn't even seem like a close call and I find it difficult to reconcile going forward
@SemioticRivalry The graph was just one argument in favor, though I’d note that “who won” was FiveThirtyEight’s editorializing, not what they asked the respondents, which was “who performed the best”, and that Haley was a distant third on that question. In addition, DeSantis won on two out of their four measures and those two measures are the ones that matter more to the overall outcome of the primary, so it makes sense to weight them more heavily.
Beyond all that though, I still think that the key question is “what would an uninvolved person take away from this article”, and the collective answer seems to be DeSantis. If someone would like to run a test where they ask a large group of uninvolved people what they would say, and they overall to say a different answer, I would be happy to re-resolve to that.
@Gabrielle I appreciate your efforts to resolve this fairly.
FiveThirtyEight's "editorializing" is exactly the criteria specified in the description of this market.
> Based on this polling, they are going to assess who won. Who will they say "won" the debate?
If there is a "key question", it is this one.
@Gabrielle I do not agree that the graph titled "overperformers and underperformers", which showed Haley overperforming the most, is a "win" for DeSantis. Especially considering their quote after the graph:
Each candidate largely performed as well as Republican voters were expecting them to, according to their average performance and expectations scores.2 DeSantis received the highest average grade for his performance, followed closely by Haley and Ramaswamy. This was more impressive for Haley, though, considering that expectations were just slightly above average for her going into the debate.
I think at best, this is a push. They present "average grade" and overperformance as two equally relevant ways to interpret that graph.
and those two measures are the ones that matter more to the overall outcome of the primary, so it makes sense to weight them more heavily.
This seems extremely dubious to me. Shifting in net favorables and % considering definitely matters more for the outcome of the primary than raw debate grade. The two metrics Haley won show how the debate actually changes the opinions of voters. PredictIt backs this up: Haley's odds doubled from 4% to 8%, while DeSantis barely nudged from 13% to 15%. Similar results on electionbettingodds.com.
Beyond all that though, I still think that the key question is “what would an uninvolved person take away from this article”, and the collective answer seems to be DeSantis.
I just can't possibly see how this is true given the first sentence of the article and the data being so unclear.
@cloudprism I am posting this screenshot again, to show FiveThirtyEight's best assessment of who "won":
Anything else I might say would just be more restating of arguments I've made over and over again in this comment section. I'm frankly quite exhausted, and to an extent actually embarrassed by my own conduct. I know what I think the resolution should have been. I don't know what the best call to make is now. It's not my responsibility to make that call, anyway. I've stated my views, and I believe it best that I now unwatch this market and move on to other things.
@Gabrielle I agree with everything you said, expect your reason for not resolving NA - because it would make a lot of people unhappy.
Ultimately the criteria should decide if you resolve NA and, if anything, everyone having different arguments for how it should be resolved is more reason to resolve NA imo.
I'm not even sure that it would make the most people unhappy. You're more unhappy if it resolves to something you disagree with than if it resolves to NA. It's a choice between making everyone a little unhappy or making 90% of people unhappy.
Respect that you're in a tough position.
@cloudprism You probably should have asked it to choose a resolution, or pick a winner (spoiler: it would have picked Ron)
Small chance it would have picked a 3 way resolution though
@Gen I'm still talking with it and it is suggesting N/A because there was no actually stated winner.
@cloudprism I think the argument for all 3 is better than N/A, but I also think the DeSantis argument is better again