The $2 billion election betting craze, explained
Politics tamfitronics Who’s going to win the presidential election?My answer, as a journalist writing about politics who gets asked this a lot, is always, “It’s a coin flip.” That’s certainly what forecasting models based on polling suggest. As I write this, the Economist gives Donald Trump a 53 percent chance; FiveThirtyEight gives him a 51 percent chance; Nate Silver gives him 53.7 percent. That’s not exactly 50-50 but it’s pretty close.But this year, a different way of judging the odds has become more popular than ever: prediction markets. These are real-money markets where people can bet on the ultimate victor of the presidential election, among other elections and events, from politics to sports to movies. While academic-sponsored markets like PredictIt and the Iowa Electronic Markets have been around for a while (decades in the latter...
