What should happen if the CNE declares Maduro the winner, but Venezuela’s National Assembly refuses to acknowledge Maduro’s win and appoints someone else to the presidency? [...] Do we need to wait on resolving the market until we see whether that happens again?
But the market isn’t “who will eventually become president”, it’s “who will win the election (according to official sources)”. Like how “who will win the US election (according to AP, Fox and NBC)” and “who will be president on inaugeration day” are different questions.
The standard of “what if the result changes” would make almost any market impossible to resolve. Like what if AP/Fox/NBC call the election for Harris, but then Trump does a coup and threatens them until they announce that actually he won? What if Trump wins but the person who actually gets sworn in is an actor who looks like Trump? Do we need to wait to see if that happens before we resolve the question?
Making most questions not resolve at all is worse than weird edge cases where they resolve in ways people don’t like, so I think in the absence of clear rules that the question won’t resolve until some standard is met, resolving as soon as possible seems like the best default.
I agree that that would probably be the reasonable thing to do at this point. However, that’s not actually what the Polymarket market has done—it’s still Disputed, and in fact Maduro has traded down to 81%.
And I think a large portion of the reason why this has happened is poor decision-making in how the question was initially worded.
Edited to add: Maduro is now down to 63% in the market, probably because the US government announced that it thinks his opponent won? No, that’s not an official Venezuelan source. But it seems to have moved the market anyway.
But the market isn’t “who will eventually become president”, it’s “who will win the election (according to official sources)”. Like how “who will win the US election (according to AP, Fox and NBC)” and “who will be president on inaugeration day” are different questions.
The standard of “what if the result changes” would make almost any market impossible to resolve. Like what if AP/Fox/NBC call the election for Harris, but then Trump does a coup and threatens them until they announce that actually he won? What if Trump wins but the person who actually gets sworn in is an actor who looks like Trump? Do we need to wait to see if that happens before we resolve the question?
Making most questions not resolve at all is worse than weird edge cases where they resolve in ways people don’t like, so I think in the absence of clear rules that the question won’t resolve until some standard is met, resolving as soon as possible seems like the best default.
I agree that that would probably be the reasonable thing to do at this point. However, that’s not actually what the Polymarket market has done—it’s still Disputed, and in fact Maduro has traded down to 81%.
And I think a large portion of the reason why this has happened is poor decision-making in how the question was initially worded.
Edited to add: Maduro is now down to 63% in the market, probably because the US government announced that it thinks his opponent won? No, that’s not an official Venezuelan source. But it seems to have moved the market anyway.