Election Betting: Why Gamblers Keep Beating Pollsters with Maxim Lott

In this episode, we sit down with Maxim Lott to discuss the surprising recent political developments, including why Biden dropped out of the race, the influence of betting odds versus traditional polling, and the odds for Kamala Harris in the upcoming election. We also explore the evolution of prediction markets and their growing importance in political forecasting, as well as the potential impact of the new right on future elections. Tune in for a detailed and engaging conversation on the dynamics of election betting, political strategy, and the changing landscape of the Republican party.

Maxim Lott: [00:00:00] Yeah. I'm excited for this too. I really appreciate your natalism work that you guys do. So

Simone Collins: we really appreciate the work you do, man. You're on at a perfect time. Like we're probably going to run your interviews with us.

Like usually. Months for us to run these and now we're like, oh my God, we got to run it

Malcolm Collins: with all this election stuff that's going on. This is wild. Yeah. You had, you had disagreed with the betting odds recently.

Maxim Lott: Yes. Yes. I had a post about why Biden won't drop out and all this good reasoning, but the betting odds said he would and he did.

So the lesson is to listen to the betting odds, not any one analyst.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'd love to hear why you thought he wouldn't drop out.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, you know, I thought it wasn't in his interest. If he wanted to, he could have gone to the convention and got the nomination. Yes, thank

Simone Collins: you. That's, that's what I kept telling everyone.

I was like, he's not, like, all the way up through Saturday, it was like, he's not going to drop out. No one can technically force him to drop out. And he's no reason to want to, why would he do it? No one can stop him. He's not going to drop out. So I'm with you on that. And

Malcolm Collins: you also [00:01:00] have the problem that Jill hates Kamala.

And this is like publicly,

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: if she's making the decisions for Biden, she definitely wouldn't want him to drop out if she was a presumptive nominee.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, and it seemed like there was no way for them to truly force him out either, but I think I underestimated how much kind of soft power there is in the Democratic Party with Obama and Pelosi really running the show.

Simone Collins: Like, I don't know, man, they tried everything. I feel like they literally tried everything. Like people drove out to his house, you know, George Clooney, like just, they threw everything at him. And I think, and maybe in the end, because donations started drying up. That was it. You know, just like, yeah, I think it was probably

Malcolm Collins: donors that got him out.

Simone Collins: So

Maxim Lott: you'd think if you can make it to the convention, the donors would, who else are they going to donate to? They don't like Trump. So, but clearly he felt the pressure and he had COVID and a lot of things conspired and he dropped out. So [00:02:00]

Simone Collins: the

Maxim Lott: bettors were not surprised. They had, This at like 70% a couple days before he dropped out.

Simone Collins: Wow. So they,

Maxim Lott: they were right. I, I lost money betting on the other side, but . Wow. Yeah. You

Malcolm Collins: know, he, he got covid we'll see if there was any you know, there was a lot of people interested in something like that happening to him. I was, I was joking. There was a thing about Trump's assassination and people were like, well.

You know, Republicans would be cheering too if Biden was assassinated. I was like, not a single Republican I have ever met would be cheering if Biden was assassinated. They love it. It's a disappointing development

Simone Collins: for Republicans that Biden is no longer running. They were thrilled with Biden running.

Maxim Lott: Yeah. Now the polls have Kamala Harris up by like, maybe, or losing by one point less than Biden was losing by. So we'll see how that goes for them. The betting odds, yeah, the betting odds. It's interesting because you can look at these conditional odds. So you say, if this person's nominated, What are their odds of winning?

And Biden's odds were always [00:03:00] around 30 percent. Kamala Harris's were around 37 percent. So she's slightly more electable, but not much more electable. Oh

Malcolm Collins: gosh. Okay, so we have been talking generally right now. I'm going to introduce you

To anyone who is wondering why the election betting on numbers are a bit off in this. It is because this was filmed.

Around a week ago. And so sorry about that. It just took me a while to process it.

Malcolm Collins: but so people who don't know Maxim Lunt, I Grew up on your stuff, every election cycle.

Loading what's the URL here? Election betting. Election betting odds.com and then the, you had your own website because it is historically speaking, the most accurate predictor of who's going to win an election cycle. And I'd love it if you could talk a little bit about why it's such an accurate predictor of who's gonna win and, and, and it's advantages over traditional polling.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, absolutely. And great to be here with you guys. I love your natalism work. The so I created the site in 2015 and we've tracked [00:04:00] hundreds of races since then. And you can graph it out to see how accurate it is. And what we find is that in general, If the markets say there's a 20 percent chance that someone's going to win a race, that actually happens about 20 percent of the time.

So it's not exactly perfect. You can see the lines, they almost match up. But basically you can go to electionbettingodds. com, click track record, and it'll show you this. And it's been very accurate. It's the single best predictor. If you just want, tell me quickly, who's going to win. This is the best thing.

Thing to go to.

Malcolm Collins: So you're sort of the granddaddy of betting odds stuff. And the field has undergone, we met you at manifest. I think an enormous evolution in the past probably decade or so. Can you talk a little bit about how much, how prediction markets have evolved over the course of your life? Yeah.

Maxim Lott: And I don't know if it's quite accurate to say I'm the granddaddy, you know, there are people like Robin Hanson who might fit that role better.[00:05:00]

He goes to all this stuff. I guess for the general,

Malcolm Collins: you were my first, to this stuff. You made it accessible in a topic that I was passionate about. Right.

Maxim Lott: For, for, for popularizing it. I think. Election betting odds got more than 25 million unique views. So hopefully that's made a difference

And yeah, so prediction markets it has changed a lot over the years I first started looking at these in 2007 And at that time there was one big site It was based in ireland called intrade. com and it was great and people traded there and they accurately predicted things. They were shut down mostly by the U.

S. government. First, their founder died climbing Mount Everest, which is tragic. But then the government said, hey, you're taking American customers and you're not registered with our government. So they sued them and they shut down immediately after t