Kamala will win easily: Change my mind…

put your mana where your mouth is

im all in

Make me brah

Longed Trump because the signal of markets where real money is at stake > play money markets.

I think Harris will likely keep going up in national polls for about a week as the honeymoon takes time to be fully reflected in the polling, but I could be wrong. I think she has already peaked in swing states where Trump is starting to run ads about how she is a San Francisco liberal.

Yea it's really hard for me to see harris being in a better position for a GE than a few years ago. Fundamentals really haven't changed there's just buzz for a new candidate. We shall see though.

If Harris tacks hard to the center after the convention, she can probably make up the dip and then some. But that requires both good strategy and good execution and it's unclear if she has either (she might; she's been doing better than I expected so far. But it'd still take a change in approach).

Why can't she tack hard to center during the convention? That seems like her best chance to define her message.

Real money markets are biased pro Trump according to @ScottAlexander
[PredictIt and Polymarket] are notoriously bad at partisan political questions. They usually overestimate Republicans’ chances, partly because Democrats’ opposition to online political betting has turned the pool of online political bettors disproportionately red. While a fluid and easily-accessible prediction market should be able to avoid biases like these, neither PredictIt nor Polymarket really qualifies. The CFTC, which regulates prediction markets, has crippled both - PredictIt has very low maximum investments per market, and Polymarket is crypto-only and banned for US citizens. These have prevented their biases from being corrected and made both of them perform relatively weakly in head-to-head contests.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing

I feel like that's what she's doing from what I've seen. Her recent statement on Israel/Palestine felt pretty centrist for the current climate; saying that the violence must stop but not actually condemning Israel.

@ShakedKoplewitz It’s not easy when you have a lot of public comments in the past suggesting you’re a radical. It just will look fake.

If it's just 1 or 2 off the cuff comments in the past, then she could easily flip-flop run away from it. But she has an extensive record supporting defund the police, comparing ICE to KKK, etc.

@MartinRandall It might be too late by the convention, as Trump will have defined her by then by her own past words.

"Not actually condemning Israel" is only centrist by the standards of the left wing of the democratic party. If she can't actually bring herself to condemn terrorism more strongly than that I doubt she can bring herself to moderate in any other notable way either.

I agree that this probably is her trying to be centrist. I suspect this means she's living in too much of a leftist bubble to pull it off.

@Shai if this were true, it would be a profit opportunity for anyone to correct. The PredictIt criticisms are plausible but the Polymarket ones aren't: we're talking about an opportunity worth at least a few hundred thousand dollars so it seems unlikely that an arbitrageur would be deterred by installing a VPN and setting up a Coinbase account.

Harris is very clearly the centrist candidate in this election. She doesn't even have to state policy positions and she will automatically be perceived as the more centrist candidate. This will happen even while being attacked as a "radical leftist" by conservative media because nobody other than Trump's base is tuned into conservative media. Those attacks are not meant to influence liberals and independents as they are meant to outrage and mobilize the right into voting. From this comments section, it's clear the obnoxious frenzy to spread 3rd and 4th level simulacrum is very real.

Counter: Trump is the candidate with the biggest alignment issues with independent voters in this election, worse than he's had in either of his two previous elections and worse than even RFK Jr. The RNC spent a significant amount of time pandering to independents with negligible gains in polling.

Real Money stinks imo. I thought Manifold was right pre debate to have 50/50 when market and Silver said >60/40.

Take 2020 as an example, I think the betting markets had Biden only 62%, but largely had the states correct. Silver had 89% because he overrelied on polls and had huge error bars. I think Economist having 95% was a better representation of the polls (Economist had better brier scores vs 538 which was better than Predictit)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/19NvyPRguCa9QYuuL2ayhxuZVgYqKmfDgix8TYWDdGKY/htmlview?pli=1

The best predictions were prediction markets which had Biden ~77% https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3476/how-many-electoral-college-votes-will-the-democratic-party-nominee-win-in-the-2020-presidential-election/

@becauseyoudo Harris’s radical positions are in her own words, and she was ranked most liberal out of all 100 Senators in 2019.

Summary

Prediction Markets: best, well calibrated, even though traders lean Dem, the higher IQ leads to better predictions

Betting Markets: solid, but leans Republican, overrates tail outcomes

538 (2020): Too much reliant on polls, too big error bars

538 (2024): too complicated to be interpretable, huge error bars

Economist (2020, 2024): summarizes polls well

Nate Silver (2024) , JHK (2020-2024): similar to economist

In 2016, the more naive models got exposed , Prediction and Nate silver models worked well.

Polymarket is overrepresented on betting "average" sites.

That site is inefficient, relying on cryptocurrencies that cost money to buy and sell, and which are volatile and subject to fraud and scams. Additionally, cryptocurrency supporters are largely in favor of Trump, because he wants to support the industry (whatever that means.)

Polymarket consistently ranks Trump as more likely than the Democratic candidate and has been right-leaning for some time. Other sites are closer to reality.

She will use language that makes it seem as if she is a centist.

The issue is that so-called "liberal" positions are, in general, pretty popular. Abortion rights are a winning issue, as are other things like a progressive tax code focused on the wealthy (rather than flat tariffs). The Supreme Court has consistently seen its popularity decline after each right-leaning ruling.

There are a lot more "conservative" issues that are challenging for Trump than there are "liberal" issues challenging for Harris.

@SteveSokolowski She took too many left wing positions in her past. It’s like AOC rebranding as a moderate. Nobody would believe her.

She's a lot less known for her positions than AOC was. If she tried to make a real moderate image for herself she might be able to (but I think she's genuinely not a moderate and would have a hard time with it).

The bills she co-sponsored are mostly center aligned. Republicans probably won't like her position on clean energy or her stance on rehabilitation for non-violent criminals. She appears to be a center-left moderate, like Biden.

Source: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/120012/kamala-harris/?p=1

So far it seems like she's pushing potential VP picks to take stances further left (e.g. pushing Shapiro to say pro-teachers union things and Kelly to go pro-union) and separate herself from Biden by running to his left. Not a good sign.