Will Kamala Harris be able to flip a state in the 2024 election?
Flipping a state means she wins a state not won by Joe Biden in 2020.
Maine or Nebraska's congressional districts do not count. For example, if Kamala Harris wins Maine's second district, that doesn't resolve this question.
This question closes a day before the election, and resolves as soon as results are known.
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Kind of odd to me that this market is bullish on Harris's chances, while the individual state markets remain bearish. Placed a No bet here, and a Yes bet on North Carolina on the thesis that an election that sees Florida flip without the same factors flipping North Carolina would be vanishingly rare. States have different electorates, but the probabilities aren't completely independent. Picked up my sweet arbitrage pennies, and now will patiently await the steam roller.
@JohnOta I totally agree. The poll aggregate for North Carolina is well outside of the margin of error.
I find it interesting that this market and the overall election odds are basically the same. Harris doesn’t need to flip any states to win.
And if Harris does flip a state, it seems very likely she would win.
@inactive1234 Yes, it's technically possible, but the probability is ridiculously low. Results in different states are correlated: If she wins a state red enough that it wasn't won in 2020, she has almost certainly won enough states to win the election. I would put the probability of Harris flipping a state but losing the election at probably <5%. But the probability that she wins the election without flipping a state is much higher than that.
@PlasmaBallin not disputing that there are significant correlations between states, but they do change a bit between elections.
@BrunoParga They do, but the only state she could feasibly flip while still losing the election is North Carolina. And even then, it would be very unlikely, both because she probably won't flip NC and because, if she flips NC, she will almost certainly win.
@BrunoParga The next most likely flips are Texas and Florida, but those have so many electoral votes that it would be almost impossible for Harris to lose if she won either one of them.
@PlasmaBallin makes sense, thank you. It is usually unlikely that a candidate of the incumbent party flips a state and loses, but this year it's perhaps more unlikely than usual. (Or not, I haven't checked past results.)
@BrunoParga Hard to say. On the one hand, there used to be a lot more swing states, making it much more likely that you could flip a swing state you lost last time while losing the ones you won last time. On the other hand, elections used to be less close. Would have been pretty hard for Bush to flip a state in '88 and still lose.
@thepurplebull There is not a 45% chance of NC flipping dem. Generously, the election is 50/50 right now. That essentially means that Pennsylvania is 50/50. If PA is 50/50, NC is more like 35/65
@FoxKHTML "Generously, the election is 50/50 right now. That essentially means that Pennsylvania is 50/50."
lmao
@Najawin Sorry, where am I wrong. Betting markets: 50/50. 538: Whoever wins PA is 91-94% sure to win the election. Or, an easier way to do it - Trump is has a 52% chance in PA per EBO odds. Even easier, Trump is 61% in NC, straight up.
@FoxKHTML EBO and the betting markets are both obviously mistaken here, as they're taking models like Silver's seriously, which is systematically biased in some really awful ways.
@mongo Ah, but the problem here is that you don't actually care about that unless you average out over all possibilities.
The market is supposed to equilibrate to the probability of an event happening, right? But immediately before Nov 6th, if people are being irrational, the market will just be irrational, and you'll lose untold money, no matter how much better of an understanding you have of the actual probabilities. If the real probability is 60%, and people think it's 70%, unless you repeat this over and over there's just no way to meaningfully get an advantage.
Now, if we continue this experiment over the years and Silver doesn't change his methodology, yeah, that would be a meaningful test.
@Najawin Your logic would work if we were talking about options trading where your outcome is based on market sentiment, not objective observations. Luckily for you, election markets resolve based on objective observations. If Kamala wins, no irrational person can take your money away from you!
@FoxKHTML Once more, this only works if we average over all possibilities. Even if it's rational to believe that Kamala wins in 80% of scenarios, she could lose with 20% probability! That wouldn't justify people's (potentially) irrational belief that she wins in <80% of scenarios.
@Najawin Go back to kindergarten lil bro. If there is a coin that is heads 8 times out of 10, but idiot will sell you heads for even odds, you take it every time. That’s the world’s best investment. Warren Buffet would shit himself. Go put your money where your mouth is.
@FoxKHTML Yes. If you can do this multiple times. If you can only do this once, no, it's not the world's best investment. Because of the 20% chance when you lose and you lose everything. It requires averaging out over multiple probabilities to get rid of that risk.
@Najawin So that’s a completely different point than the market rationality point you were trying to make earlier. You’re confused lil bro
@FoxKHTML That's precisely the same point? You can only take advantage of the irrationality I described, the odds you mentioned, when you average out over all possible worlds.
@Najawin “That’s precisely the same point?” You are either 14 years old or a 26 year old who wandered in from Reddit.
@FoxKHTML Neither. Do you want to address the very next sentence where I describe how the two points are one and the same? Or do you want to just insist you're correct despite all evidence to the contrary? I can understand the second, you seem the type.