We are in a scenario Nate Silver explicitly described:
But what’s tricky about this race is that — because of Trump’s Electoral College advantage, which he largely carries over from 2016 — it wouldn’t take that big of a polling error in Trump’s favor to make the election interesting. Importantly, interesting isn’t the same thing as a likely Trump win; instead, the probable result of a 2016-style polling error would be a Biden victory but one that took some time to resolve and which could imperil Democrats’ chances of taking over the Senate. On the flip side, it wouldn’t take much of a polling error in Biden’s favor to turn 2020 into a historic landslide against Trump.
As of writing this comment Biden has several paths to victory and is heavily favored to hit at least one. I think he is about 75% to win at this point, despite all the bad news. We are in a world where Biden might win despite losing all of PA FL OH NC. Very little had to go right for Biden to win. Neither myself nor Nate Silver made any statements saying the election would definitely be a landslide. I told people to bet on Biden to win not to bet on Biden winning in a landslide. I will say there were some people pushing more aggressive Bets (Rainbow Jeremy comes to mind) and we should definitely update against their point of view. But Nate remains credible.
FWIW I’m 99% sure RJ made money from this election, and I’m 50% sure he made over 90k. Why would you update against someone who has consistently made enormous amounts of money betting on his beliefs?
Edit: looks like I was a bit overoptimistic about his profits but he supposedly did make a decent amount
But he’s been a professional politics gambler for years now, which seems like much stronger evidence for evaluating his calibration than the results of one election cycle?
That does not seem like very strong evidence his bets on the 2020 election were good. He did better than people who refused to bet at all. But he did worse than people who just bet on Biden. Many people figured out the Biden bet in the poker and gambling communities. You should certainly downgrade your opinion of RJ relative to people who did a lot better.
We are in a scenario Nate Silver explicitly described:
As of writing this comment Biden has several paths to victory and is heavily favored to hit at least one. I think he is about 75% to win at this point, despite all the bad news. We are in a world where Biden might win despite losing all of PA FL OH NC. Very little had to go right for Biden to win. Neither myself nor Nate Silver made any statements saying the election would definitely be a landslide. I told people to bet on Biden to win not to bet on Biden winning in a landslide. I will say there were some people pushing more aggressive Bets (Rainbow Jeremy comes to mind) and we should definitely update against their point of view. But Nate remains credible.
FWIW I’m 99% sure RJ made money from this election, and I’m 50% sure he made over 90k. Why would you update against someone who has consistently made enormous amounts of money betting on his beliefs?
Edit: looks like I was a bit overoptimistic about his profits but he supposedly did make a decent amount
https://twitter.com/rainbow_jeremy_/status/1336815220061327363
(keep in mind he lies all the time so this is only noisy evidence)
Many people including myself got way better percentage and absolute returns on the election. He was way too optimistic.
But he’s been a professional politics gambler for years now, which seems like much stronger evidence for evaluating his calibration than the results of one election cycle?
That does not seem like very strong evidence his bets on the 2020 election were good. He did better than people who refused to bet at all. But he did worse than people who just bet on Biden. Many people figured out the Biden bet in the poker and gambling communities. You should certainly downgrade your opinion of RJ relative to people who did a lot better.