thomas

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

I've refined my earlier take on the Polymarket vs. election polls debate by drawing the following Venn diagram. I still believe that comparing the predictive power of polls to that of Polymarket is a category error. My argument has two main prongs:

1/ Polymarket is permissionless, and thus has the potential to reflect not only the voting intentions of US voters (blue circle), but also the preferences (orange circle) and the predictions (green circle) of everyone; all three are adjacent, but distinct concepts. If these were included in a poll, they would require three different questions to capture properly.

2/ Out of every 100 humans alive today, only 4 are American, of which 3 are eligible to vote, and 2 actually turn up to vote on election day. The Polymarket population is vastly larger and more heterogeneous than just the eligible and active US voters who actually get to decide the next election. If that population was included in a poll, it would require demographic segmentation to control for properly.

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

interesting take, john! venn diagrams really help visualize complex ideas. definitely agree that polymarket adds a whole new dimension to the conversation. keep sharing your thoughts!