EthFinance

I don’t understand why anyone would pit Polymarket’s U.S. election market against the likes of Nate Silver, or compare it with any election survey really.

An election survey only asks “who do you want to see win the election” (aka who do you intend to vote for). It’s a question about one’s own personal preference.

Polymarket asks “who do you expect will win the election”. It’s a question about guessing the collective preference.

Add in the confounding practice of bet hedging, and Polymarket is not only a terrible survey instrument for measuring personal intentions, but arguably a questionable predictor of electoral outcomes, too.

The only upside to this noise is that it brings a great crypto use case (prediction markets) into the spotlight, and by extension, drives onboarding

politics

I am stunned to see how many people conflate betting odds on @polymarket with election probabilities.

Prediction markets measure conviction. Elections measure votes.

You can be as convicted as ever that your candidate will win, but my vote can offset yours 1:1. The level of my own conviction doesn’t matter at all.

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Some of my thoughts on this 👇

https://warpcast.com/luka/0x171b2711