Betfair still hasn't paid out its 2020 Presidential Election market
betfair.com
betfair.com
> This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
My guess would be that even though they view faithless electors as 'subsequent events' they still view the outcome of Trump's legal challenges as part of the election proper.
Edit: Nevermind. Just read the rules and it does say it's based on the projected winner. This is very misleading and very bizarre.
> This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election.
So unrelated to the actual certification process.
Seems like an oddly vague phrasing for such bets.
In this case I suspect the only reason they haven't settled the market is to avoid causing a scene with people laying bets against Trump, not because they genuinely believe there is any chance of it going the other way.
Traditional bookmakers have already paid out, including Paddypower who are part of the same group "Paddypowerbetfair".
Not the way “projected electoral votes” has ever been used in the past in the context of US Presidential elections, but I will grant that the BetFair bets terms are imprecise enough that they could mean anything.
The rules are woefully ambiguous.
Why can I not access Betfair?
We are sorry to inform you that as of 14th January 2016, Betfair’s products are no longer be available to residents of Canada.
On 14th January 2016 Canadian residents are no longer be able to login to Betfair. Please note that all outstandingExchange & Sportsbook bets will remain in place, please contact us if you wish to gain details of these bets, or withdraw any winnings, by contacting our helpdesk here.
> Paddy Power, BF [Betfair] acquirer, handles the betting for the BC Lottery; and as such is specifically precluded from offering bookmaking on its own. But before this, BF had made the strategic decision of leaving all gray areas-- countries where it and/or betting wasn't specifically allowed. For one, jurisdictions where it was specifically allowed or applying to be-- could use such a violation as grounds for denial...US / NJ one example for sure. And in Canada sports betting is actually illegal, notwithstanding that the government will not go after individual players and hardly ever bothers any corporation.
https://www.sportsbookreview.com/forum/sportsbooks-industry/...
This is a completely different situation. Trump needs Pennsylvania AND Nevada AND Georgia AND Arizona to flip. All those states have margins of 10,000+ in Biden's favor. The election is over.
> Trump needs Pennsylvania AND Nevada AND Georgia AND Arizona to flip.
isn’t quite right. He needs PA and any two of NV/GA/AZ.
It seems hard to see how he's going to have more than 72k ballots disqualified, all of which happen to be for his opponent.
537 votes on butterfly ballots in Florida this is not.
0. In Nevada, Biden has a 36,186 vote lead and counting, greater than his lead in both Arizona and Georgia combined.
Effectively what this is, is yet another misinformation campaign by our President who refuses to accept what is happening. That said, he's technically in his right to ask for recounts and file lawsuits.
Betting is still opened and the odds are roughly 1 vs 10, meaning if you bet £1 on Trump and he makes it you will earn £10 back.
It's normal for betting to continue after the end of an event. Usually the odds are reaching 1 vs 98 toward the end, because the betting platform is limiting the multiplier to about that and because there's actually money to make there in the last few percents.
Things do happen in the last second and results do change after a match (goal in the last second in football, horse falling in horse racing, candidate disqualified, re-scoring). For this event it's relatively normal for the betting company to wait until the candidate is in the white house before redistributing the money.
What is unusual here is for the odds to be this close this late in the game. We're at a fairly late point in the election when the outcome is relatively settled, is there 10% chance for trump to win?
The money is real, indicating there are many people who think so. Yes you (and 9 other people) could bet £1 on Biden and hope to make £1.10 back, because there's one person on the other side willing to bet £1 on Trump hoping to make £10 back.
P.S. Betfair is not open to US users (not legal in the US). Don't try to open an account, you will be blocked when you try to open the account or when you try to credit it.
Betting exchanges have market makers and heavy automated trading, just like financial exchanges. The price is arbitraged and adjusted in real time between the different exchanges.
The two biggest exchanges after betfair are smarkets and bet365. The first closed the market and redistributed the money. The second didn't seem to accept betting on the US election.
It means that the betfair market is in free wheel, no more connected to the rest of the world, it can effectively show any price.
Smarkets: https://smarkets.com/event/886736/politics/us/us-presidentia...
The fine print will fuck you, but I expect a total shit-storm over this. IMHO I dont beleive the bets they are currently taking are in good faith, because I can't see any path for Trump to win, even if he wins the states still in play.
So they don't care about who actually ends up president. This is a pure bet on the voting results. I guess they think it prudent to wait and see if the Trump lawsuits hold any merit in the eyes of the courts.
Surely not?
That Biden does not get elected President, or that he gets elected by the EC but effectively not assumes the office of President (e.g. due to a putsch/other form of emergency law, a SC decision, being arrested, being assassinated, dying of coronavirus, the EC election being delayed/cancelled due to coronavirus...)?
“This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2020. If more than one election takes place in 2020, then this market will apply to the first election that is held.
10/03/2020 10:30am – Once voting (whether postal, electronic or at the ballot box) begins in the year 2020 for the US Presidential Election 2020, the election will be deemed to have taken place for the purposes of this market. We will then settle the market as per our rules regardless of whether the election process is fully completed in 2020 or beyond.
If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.
Betfair expressly reserves the right to suspend and/or void any and all bets on this market at any time if Betfair is not satisfied (in its absolute discretion) with the certainty of the outcome.
Additional candidates may be added to this market on request.
Please note that candidates in this market will not be partially settled and will remain in the market until it is fully settled. This is to allow customers to continue trading candidates that they have positions on and because each candidate is still a valid runner in this market.
Customers should be aware that:
Transmissions described as “live” by some broadcasters may actually be delayed.
The extent of any such delay may vary, depending on the set-up through which they are receiving pictures or data.
Please note, due to internal administrative procedures, the indicated start date/time of this market is subject to change. This will have no impact on settlement as detailed in our market specific rules. Any changes to the start time/date will be recorded in the market rules. 16:00 17/06/2020 –Market rules have been updated to reflect new information above..
If any candidate withdraws for any reason, including death, all bets on the market will stand and be settled as per the defined rules (Updated - 20/06/2020)
The start time has been changed to reflect the first polls opening on Election Day Updated 02/11/2020
In this case, there are clearly people who are still willing to bet against (lay) a Biden Presidency, at very long odds. This is presumably either because they believe that the price adequately compensates for the low probability of it not happening, or to hedge risk that they have accumulated taking other positions while trading in this market (more likely IMHO).
One other factor is the cost of carry - while money is tied up in a bet it can't be used for anything else, including other betting strategies that might have a higher expected profit. In this case, if one has already made a profit betting for a Biden Presidency at longer odds than 1.07, it might now be worthwhile to pay someone else the slight risk premium to take up ones position until settlement, so that one can lock in the profit and move onto other things.
No communication from them either. Took a few days to get my money back.
https://www.wettforum.info/forum/bookie-section/buchmacherte...
(Source: the U.S. Constitution.)
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/05/george-gal...
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election.
These two leaders are Trump buddies. Their intelligence services are top of the world. They wouldn’t make the call unless their intelligence was crystal clear that Trump doesn’t have a chance.
Rats leaving the sinking ship, I'm guessing. They know it's over, and that the lawsuits are formalities at best (often dealing concretely with just dozens of lost ballots and the like, although Pennsylvania's lawsuit could still be interesting (they want the mail-in ballots received after the 3rd (but postmarked at or before the 3rd) to be dismissed. It won't change the election results at all though, those votes have already been kept separate and not yet considered, pending the lawsuit.
But at least frustrated Trumpists can process their fragile emotions by downvoting us and wasting their money on hopeless bets.
That does not work in a criminal court. You kind of need an actual crime. And proof of that crime. More than "I believe this to be true." No court in this land will take a case where the charge is "Can you see if they committed crime?"
No, that's your job as the person bringing the case.
But, for betting purposes, I too would hold off with paying out until everything is properly finalized. What if one of the candidates suddenly keels or withdraws before the changeover? If the betting company has to reverse course, they could end up in court and end up paying tons.
That leads me to the second question. In europe we learn history at school and in books but most of my encounters with educated americans led them to recommend me some hollywood movies to learn about some specific events of their history.
I feel the television has a huge importance in this country and the fact that millions of americans consider it the source of truth even to declare who is the winner of the most important event of their lives strikes me as unbelievable.
The arrogance of this comment is simply breathtaking.
I was chatting to someone the other day and asked if she'd been to America. No, she said, I can't stand Americans.
Do you know any Americans, I asked. Of course she didn't but she has been to Canada and asked if I had.
No, said I, I can't stand Canadians. She looked at me as if that was a ridiculous statement before realising I was being sarcastic. Go figure?
Also I was not implying that you do not have books in america... But you can just see in this comment section (where most of the people are educated) that most of the replies hints that they do not understand the election process hence backing my statement.
The movies are obviously PC-Washing all history just like you removed your statues you are removing from your intellect everything that is not consensually approved and history has a lot that this new horde of censors of the good will not like. and the proof is that most the people reading this will downvote me using those censoring tools to destroy an opinion that they do not approve.
What is breathtaking is to read comments like "wasnt the election done?" purely because you want to win and hate the system when it doesn't play in your favor.
That's different from the argument that "Americans don't understand civics because they watch movies instead of reading history books" which is frankly absurd and offensive.
I'm not convinced that the number of civically-uninformed people is particularly higher in America when compared to elsewhere in the world. If you have data to that effect, please share it.
For all intents and purposes the election is done. The votes have been cast and with most of them counted, Biden has won by a wide enough margin that sporadic concerns about voter fraud is not going to change it.
Americans who are pushing back against Trump's reticence to concede are not doing so not because they believe that TV decides who is elected, but because it's a bald-faced attempt at a coup. Trump has every right to challenge the results in court, but if there was actual evidence of widespread election irregularities, it would have been presented by now.
I was watching US election at the same time on a french channel vs an US channel. I was pretty sure the level of understanding and debate would be higher on the US channel (and I checked a few of them) but was astonished to see that actually there wasn't any real concrete and intelligent political analysis (ok just one on numbers using stats) or even one ounce of debate while on the french channel the debate invited experts, was intelligent, one side was conceiding things to trump and the others one fighting it using arguments rather than emotions.
It is just mindblowing as an outsider to see that you totally removed debate from the equation and that any kind of debate/analysis is perceived as criticism or even worse racism/[add any bad word there] if it concedes things to trump.
We can both agree that there should be more healthy debate, both in general and in the media. So far though your argument has been that Americans are less civically-minded, and your supporting evidence has been a few people you talked to who mentioned movies and watching American infotainment television.
This isn't a particularly useful or interesting conversation for me at this point, so I'm going to go back to work. Thanks!
This whole thing with lawsuits is just Trump throwing a tantrum that he lost.
Both are necessary, our education system heavily leans to the historical side.
Huh? What's the preferred european medium? Smoke signal?
Waiting for TV networks to call elections is not the same as having people watch TV in Europe. Getting angry at Fox News for calling Arizona is, for example, quite strange for me, because in my opinion, news networks shouldn't "call" the elections.
I think you're misunderstanding what it means to "call" the election. Fox News calling Arizona for Biden didn't make Biden the winner of Arizona. It merely meant that Fox News was confident that Biden won the election in Arizona.
And yes, getting angry at Fox News for calling Arizona was strange.
In case you don't believe me here is the BBC calling the general election for Boris before the votes were done counting:
I also learned history from books and not movies. I would still recommend some movies to someone who wants to learn the basics in a couple hours, but movies always take liberties with the truth in order to tell a story.
Right but this is a fairly convoluted way to do elections, no?
The priority was for the member states to have control over parts of the elections process.
What “problem” are you referring to?
American media will only project the winner of an election once a sufficient number of votes are tallied that the outcome is clear. The alternative would be to wait for weeks until all ballots (absentee/mail-in, overseas/military, provisional, etc.) are counted.
Is this actually not done in other nations?
For what it's worth, most of the "long tail" time in counting votes in the US is due to special circumstances, like mail-in ballots which were damaged during delivery and need to be transcribed onto a new form before they can be run through the counting machines.
Either way, projections are a fairly simple statistical exercise. Once enough votes from a district have been tallied such that you are confident that the statistical error wouldn't change the outcome, you can project a winner for that district. That is, if you collect a statistically significant sample such that your error is +/-X%, and a given candidate is winning by more than X%, you can project them as the winner.
Although, the median American learned those facts ~25 years ago at a time in their lives when they were too young to vote and politics was probably not an important part of their lives.
By comparison, movies are a lot more accessible, recent, and engaging.
The only actual decision the news outlets have to make is to decide when to call the win when they judge that the winner is statistically almost impossible to change.
In France for instance we get the first projections at 8PM sharp, once the last voting places close. Nobody, including the politicians involved, wait until the the final count to concede or celebrate their results.
The only "americanism" I can see here is this odd electoral college system that leads to absurd situations where ~100k people effectively decide the elections for everybody else, while hundreds of millions in non-swing-states effectively don't count. If there's something worthy of scorn and foreign arrogance, it's probably that.
And no in france no media will declare a winner before being sure of it or they will withdraw it as soon as they see that the race isnt finished. again history should have taught them to be more prudent (gore/bush) but as they are partisan media they are just entitled to win.
I would just like to point out that in 2000 Bush won Florida by 537 votes, currently Biden is ahead by over 10k votes in all the contested states, and even if the projections were wrong for any single one of them he would still win the electoral college. I do think the news outlets learned from 2000, otherwise they'd have called the race as soon as Pennsylvania and Georgia flipped. The situation is really not comparable to 2000 where the news networks called Florida for Gore before the last polling stations had even closed in the state[1].
Now if it turns out that there was indeed fraud then of course it could overturn everything, but not having any conclusive evidence of anything it makes sense for news outlets to proceed as usual I think. I mean even Fox News called the race at this point...
But even if we ignore these current events I still maintain that it's silly to expect the media (and all observers, including internationally) not to call the race when the numbers show that there's a clear winner. Maybe sometimes they'll get it wrong, but what's the alternative? Pretend that there's no winner for weeks waiting for the official count and you don't see the writing on the wall and precluding all analysis of the results? That would be rather silly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
It would be tempting to suggest that European schools fail to teach critical thinking, but I'll resist that urge, as it's obviously unfair. Your comment doesn't suggest to me a failure of European schools, the problem is likely much more specific.
Then they rely on media to tell them everything. Usually that's fine when it's straight factual news, but there's been a lot of spin in the news recently.
Two of the swing states, have key ridings with a history of corrupt and stupid leadership. Its a bad combination that gives Trump a betting chance.
Example, former Mayor Kilpatrick in Detroit was sentenced to 28 years for blatantly obvious self enrichment schemes.
People betting on Trump now are, are hedging on the "count all votes" mantra, even if good intentioned, led to ballots counted, that should not have been, and he can prove that in court.
See here:
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president?iid=poli...
No, it didn't.
> He's on pace to win Arizona.
He's been consistently behind the needed pace, which is why the needed pace keeps increasing.
> And has a non zero chance to have some of the late ballots thrown out in Pennsylvania.
Perhaps technically non-zero, but close enough, and he lost without the late ballots anyway, so getting some of them thrown out won't help him.
See here:
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president?iid=poli...
“Flip” is a state called in 2020 for the opposite party that won it in 2016; it's an indicator of changes in the electoral map. Wisconsin has been marked that way from when it was first called.
From the page you cited:
"Flipped seat" denotes a race where the 2020 projected winner is from a different party than the previous winner or incumbent.
No, 1% of 3.2 million is 32,000 not ~300,000.
So, to make up a 20K deficit, the remaining ballots would need to break about 4:1 for Trump. (And the realistic shift for a recount is small enough, that it isn't meaningfully different if you were only concerned with what it would take for it to be within that range, either.)
> And still conceivable it could flip on recount if its close.
Sure, if it was within a couple hundred votes, it might. But it isn't, and it won't be.
No, no it will not. Here is the REPUBLICAN former governor of Wisconsin explaining why a recount won't change anything. The last two recounts changed the margin by 300 and 131 votes respectively. Nowhere close to the 20k required.
I fully expect to be downvoted into oblivion, as usual on HN, where pointing out facts contrary to the desired narrative are unwelcome. Even dispassionately describing the political process is apparently partisan now.
Enough have finished to give Biden 270 electoral votes.
> there will be recounts in others,
Those aren't going to change results. At a state presidential level, a recount might adjust a margin of victory by ~1,000 votes. The margins in those states that have been called are above that level.
> a few lawsuits alleging improprieties have been filed
And several of them have failed summary judgement because the Republicans couldn't build enough of a case to sustain them.
Now, you can just stick your fingers in your ears and call 71 million people stupid, or you can recognize that for the health of the democratic system, it’s best to investigate any anomalies. This shouldn’t be a controversial opinion, but apparently in these hyper partisan times, it is.
And those claims have no merit.
Any valid claims of anomalies will be investigated.
Claims without proof should be dismissed. This shouldn't be a controversial opinion, but apparently when one side is hyper partisan, it is.
If I were confident that a month of preemptive investigations would lead to greater confidence, I'd be all in favor. But this seems unlikely, because so many of the people pushing for investigations have already declared the only result they'll accept. What seems much more likely is a repeat of 2000, where trust in the electoral system is shattered, and a huge chunk of the losing party starts to argue that any election which didn't go their way was corruptly stolen from them.
To allege that there was sufficient fraud to overturn the results of this election requires fraud to exist at over 1000× the rate it has normally existed. Consequently, the evidence needed to sustain this allegation should be 1000× as prevalent. However, the claimed evidence is no better than it usually is. You get the same, tired complaints about things like out-of-state mail ballots from people who forget that students and military (and indeed the sitting president!) are legal residents of states they do not presently physically reside in.
[1] The number of allegedly fraudulent ballots in that race is close to the margin of victory for the Republican candidate, but my guesstimate is that if the fraud hadn't happened, then the Republican still would have won, just by a very close margin.
Also, finding errors has already overturned numerous representative races. This is a factual thing. It’s not Donald Trump throwing a fit.
The people saying there are no legitimate issues to investigate are delusional and it’s dangerous for democracy.
Source?
And, that's not a story detailing fraud. A Republican put in the results incorrectly, a Democrat noticed the error, and it was corrected, changing the results of a local election from a Democrat winning to a Republican winning.
If the Democrats were really looking to perpetuate fraud, they could have just turned a blind eye to the error. But they didn't. Because this is America, and here, right matters.
And as I mentioned, historical fraud rates for mail-in votes is on the order of 1 in 10s of millions. This includes states that conduct their entire election by mail, e.g., Oregon.
> Also, finding errors has already overturned numerous representative races. This is a factual thing. It’s not Donald Trump throwing a fit.
Which ones? You're saying it so authoritatively, you should be be able to provide a precise, verifiable list to back up your claims.
One such example:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2020...
“A Republican city clerk supervised a vote count that wrongly gave victory to a Democrat, after which a Democratic county clerk's staff caught the error and requested a correction from the Republican city clerk, handing the win to a Republican.”
This kind of thing happens every election and it’s rare that it has even this much impact at the local level. It’s never been anywhere near the level of impacting a lead like Biden has in multiple states.
Trump needs to invalidate a city’s worth of people in PA AND tens of thousands of AZ, GA, and NV votes to win. There’s not even the slightest evidence of fraud on that scale and the stuff they’re doing trying to invalidate military ballots might get them into triple digits but they need 5-6 digit changes.
Edit: here’s a great example - they’re litigating in Maricopa county over at most a couple hundred votes, and there’s no expectation that all of them will go their way. Trump is behind by 14k votes in Arizona so even if they got a total win they’d need to do this many dozens of times.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/1...
The _vast_ majority of those 71 million aren't claiming that there's a problem. Certainly, there are some conspiracy theorists amongst them, and I'd be comfortable calling them stupid, yes.
Nothing is official-official until December 13, so he has the right to pursue whatever remedies he wishes in the meantime, but the lack of trust he is fomenting right now, today, is harmful to America, and that's running counter to long-established norms.
The reason his cases keep getting dismissed is there isn't any evidence of election fraud.
Expecting anything other than the counts as they are at the end of canvassing to be certified is basically declaring sedition at this point.
It is possible that the preliminary counts will be changed before the official counts are declared, but ever since the mass adoption of optical scan ballots after the debacle of 2000, recounts just haven't moved the dial enough to affect the presidential election.
The losing side this year is extremely butthurt about having lost the election, and is filing lawsuits to contest it. However, these lawsuits are so without merit that they aren't even surviving summary judgement, which is an amazingly low legal bar to clear. Saying you had video evidence of a poll worker brutally murdering anyone who voted for Trump would be sufficient justification to survive summary judgement, to give you an idea of just how low a bar it is.
> “The role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the U.S. falls to the news media. The broadcast networks and cable news outlets have vowed to be prudent. He’s how it will work,”
[1]: https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-deletes-tweet-r...
https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3698/Who-will-win-t...
Reasons (regardless of whether you agree):
there about 6 more weeks of the election. Pennsylvania’s process is currently being requested for review by multiple states, because of the following:
“Pennsylvana's high court ruled Thursday that election officials cannot discard mail ballots solely because of questions about the authenticity of a voter's signature; that ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday, Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. will be counted; that third parties cannot deliver people's ballots; and that counties can use dropboxes or other official addresses for voters to return ballots to, among other decisions."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-pr...
Multiple Attorney Generals: https://www.dailywire.com/news/multiple-republican-ags-join-...
Basic argument is the house sets the rules. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court had no right to extend the deadline.
Barr also authorized local governments to investigate voting irregularities BEFORE validation/certification ends: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/live-blog/202...
Such as statistical abnormalities: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1325592112428163072.html
Or Michigan’s mail in ballots: https://austingwalters.com/the-dead-vote-in-michigan/
So the author turned up a grand total of... 5 "dead" voters, in a state where biden has a lead of 148,635 votes. That's unlikely to make a difference. The comments to that post also said it was likely a data-entry/clerical error, which makes the story even worse.
>Basic argument is the house sets the rules. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court had not right to extend the deadline.
I find this argument unconvincing. Laws set by the state legislature is normally bound by the courts. If we go with the literal interpretation, it would also mean that the legislature can enact a law saying "only white men can vote" and the courts wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
The issue is the PA house didn’t break any laws with their voting laws. The PA Supreme Court did however change the intent of a law. Again, not arguing. Before the election the Supreme Court Requested separating the ballots so they could later reverse if necessary. They were split 4-4 on the issue last time, presumably it could be 5-4 this time. Hence betting markets are still up in the air.
Regarding “convincing” the Michigan data. point is it doesn’t need to be convincing to overturn an election, but should be reviewed. And it likely will.