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2020 Presidential Election -- Biden v Trump: Sleepy Joe vs Dopey Don [Results begin on page 409]

Patrick Bateman

By Patrick Bateman
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Bama Chick
Bama Chick

I am so thrilled tonight! I spoke with my mom and asked her how my dad was taking the election. She said after every network declared Biden the winner, he turned off Fox News and said “Well, glad t

HenryJames
HenryJames
Thatguy
Thatguy

This was my experience in Galveston County, except for one thing. I came in and presented my ID to the geriatric at the front who printed out my pin number. I took my pin number to a table where two B

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Michael Knight

Michael Knight 12995

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

 

"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont"

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Js1

Js1 85583

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19 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont"

That's a lot of words for FRAUD. 

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bolverk

bolverk 29727

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1 hour ago, Michael Knight said:

"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont"

And each one of those audiences are virtually ignored (and neutered) because of our winner-take-all Electoral College system.

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Tom

Tom 2959

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont"

 

Yeah but their dumb votes don't count. 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45742

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3 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:


Why bother?That is straight popular vote with costs and delay.

Because then you can keep the electoral college, which for some reason people think is necessary, and still get the benefits of a popular vote.  It's the best of both worlds!  I heat up the ice cubes!

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Michael Knight

Michael Knight 12995

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The issue isn't the electoral college, the issue is Reapportionment Act of 1929 that capped the number of members to 435. Remove that and instead base it on % of population and most of this shit fixes itself. The U.S. ranks 192nd of 193 countries in ratio of citizens to representative with only India being worse.

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46152

Posted
Posted (edited)
36 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

The issue isn't the electoral college, the issue is Reapportionment Act of 1929 that capped the number of members to 435. Remove that and instead base it on % of population and most of this shit fixes itself. The U.S. ranks 192nd of 193 countries in ratio of citizens to representative with only India being worse.

We do reapportion based on population.  As you hinted, we need to grow that 435 number as population grows.  As it stands now, the 2 senator edge grows for small states as time (and overall population) increases.

The US population is now ~ 2.7X what it was in 1929.  The House should have 1,174 members, not 435 members.  Wyoming would have something like 7 electors instead of 3, which would mute the effect contradicting "one man, one vote".

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bolverk

bolverk 29727

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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

With or without reapportioning, how would it look if each district voted on its EC vote, and statewide vote was used for the 2 senate EC votes?

I assume that would currently slant red based on the number of red states and the relative even split of the US house. 

While that would make some sense for a hybrid-type of model that would be slightly more representative, it could still be easily corrupted by the continued gerrymandering of districts which is almost completely up to the individual states - especially now that the Civil Rights Act has been gutted.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32430

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/trump-betting-markets-sportsbooks-offshore-2020-election-gambling.html

 

Quote

On Dec. 9, Donald Trump tweeted something incorrect but at least closer to the ballpark of the truth than most of what he’s posted since losing his reelection campaign.

“At 10 p.m. on Election Evening, we were at 97% [to] win with the so-called ‘bookies,’ ” Trump wrote. The “so-called ‘bookies’ ” never had Trump as a 97 percent favorite, but late on the night of Nov. 3, many online sportsbooks did indeed favor him to win the presidency. At points between 10 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Eastern, many of these bookmakers—all of which are offshore, because election betting is not legal in the United States—posted odds that gave Trump around a 70 percent chance of victory. At 10:30 p.m., one of the most popular offshore books for U.S. bettors, Costa Rica–based Bovada, had Trump at -775, meaning a successful $775 bet would return $100 in profit. It implied an 89 percent chance that Trump would win.

 

Quote

If you were cursed enough to be following betting markets on election night, those numbers might have hit you like the New York Times’ 2016 needle on megasteroids. Political analysts had warned that delays in counting mail-in ballots could create a “red mirage,” where Republicans would look good based on the Election Day vote before Democrats made up ground. But the betting odds were not buying that theory of the race. They moved hard toward Trump when it became clear he would win Florida and looked good in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.

The betting markets were not good predictors, but they weren’t trying to be. The online bookmakers that fielded bets on the election saw their largest single-event windfall ever. To understand why, you need to understand election betting and Donald Trump supporters.

 

Quote

Offshore sportsbooks do not share detailed financials, but the 2020 election appears to have been the biggest online betting event in at least American history, to say nothing of what licensed bookmakers in Europe might have made.

Bovada’s head oddsmaker, Pat Morrow, said that his site handled “eight figures” in election bets, 95 percent of them coming from Americans, and that 30 percent more cash had been wagered on the race than the site’s previous biggest event, the Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl in February. At Panama-based BetOnline, the election also brought the largest sum of total wagers in history: “mid–eight figures,” according to sportsbook brand manager Dave Mason.

 

Spoiler

Whether the global online betting industry took in tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars in election bets will probably never be known. But to get an idea, imagine how much money is wagered on the biggest sports events, and then go much higher.

“Everybody knows that the Super Bowl is the biggest bet event of the year by far, and this doubled the last two combined,” Mason says. “It was absolutely insane. Not only the amount of people betting it, but the big bets that were coming in. Five figures and even six-figure bets coming in on both sides. We’d never seen anything like it.”

The odds-shifting bonanza on election night, with all that money on the line, was not a sign that the oddsmakers knew something the mainstream media did not. Instead, the Trump spike was the peak of a phenomenon that had been unfolding all year. Many Trump supporters were certain he could not lose, and they plowed so much money into betting on him that they distorted markets in his (and ultimately, the sportsbooks’) favor.

“It’s the most irrational market I ever saw,” says Collin Sherwin, a Tampa, Florida–based gambling writer who covers the industry for Vox Media’s DraftKings Nation.

Early in 2020, Trump was a steady if not overwhelming favorite at the sportsbooks. It made sense; the campaign had yet to start in earnest, but incumbents usually win and “the economy” was in good shape.

On Feb. 27, Bovada had Trump at -180 to win. That meant a $180 bet would return a $100 profit, implying a 64 percent chance he’d win. Joe Biden, struggling in the Democratic primary, was +2000, meaning a $100 bet would return $2,000 in profit if he won the general election. But then Biden—whom odds tended to portray as a likelier victor than primary rival Bernie Sanders—began to rebound.

Then the pandemic hit the U.S. In election betting terms, COVID-19 meant three things:

1) Most of the world saw Trump’s catastrophic handling of the virus for what it was, and his betting odds got longer as his approval rating sank.

2) People were cooped up inside, with fewer places to spend their money. And just as the gamified investment app Robinhood saw massive user growth during the pandemic’s early months, so did election betting markets.

3) The pandemic left people devoid of bettable events. “One of the few things that still seemed to be happening in the world, while very little was happening, were the primaries were still under way,” Morrow says.

As the pandemic wore on and Trump’s disinterest in managing it became clear, Biden’s odds got better and better. On June 4, Biden became the favorite for the first time at Bovada, moving to -110 while Trump was even money.

All this while, Trump’s odds were miles ahead of what election number crunchers suggested they should be. At the beginning of June, the betting odds said a Biden win was slightly likelier than a coin flip. At the same time, FiveThirtyEight’s polls-based model had Biden around 70 percent to win. (Nate Silver repeatedly noted this discrepancy and said in August that betting markets had become “so dumb as to perhaps be a contrarian indicator at this point.”) The Economist’s model had Biden closer to 80 percent.

Whether you believe in the virtues of polling and election modeling at this point or not, it was a weird split. When oddsmakers set the line for a Big Ten football game, analytical models heavily inform the point spread. If Ohio State is favored to beat Rutgers by 43, it’s because a computer predicted a result in that neighborhood. Then, the spread moves a bit based on injuries, betting patterns, and any useful information oddsmakers receive.

Here, the computers and the betting odds kept a wide gap. Oddsmakers don’t set odds based on what they think will happen. They aim to limit their risk and to create the best chance of “the house”—the bookmaker—making a profit. Too much money bet on one side is a liability. And in this case, there was so much money on one side: Trump’s.

“We needed Biden big,” Mason of BetOnline says. “We needed him huge.”

Throughout the year at Bovada, Morrow says, the money coming in was around 2-to-1 for Trump. At BetOnline, around 60 percent of bettors were on Trump, though the total money was closer to 50-50, meaning Biden backers placed some large bets.

For most of the year, Trump’s short odds to win (requiring bettors to risk more money for smaller winnings) were not a reflection of inside political knowledge, or of the oddsmakers being MAGA guys. Bookmakers were taking on so many Trump bets that they consistently tried to discourage people from betting on him.

“The Trump guys were just out in full force,” Mason says. “According to the true odds, they probably could’ve got a better price, but us and probably every other book kept it lower than it should, just because we were all so exposed on it.”

Time and again, the effort to get Trump bettors to chill out failed.

For Trump fans, it seems possible that the betting odds acted as “proof” that the polls were wrong, the smart people knew it, and their man would win.

A few factors might explain the yearlong surge in pro-Trump bets. First, think about the median person who regularly engages in online betting. The stereotype that popped into your brain is probably correct.

“Trump supporters are loud,” Morrow says. “They love Trump in a way that most candidates are not beloved, but they also represent the demographic of a lot of sports bettors. These are people that are 18 to 45, generally white male.”

Also, consider that Trump maintained that he could not lose this election, at least not legally. If he lost, he signaled, he would lean on Republican underlings and judges to flip the result. (He then did the leaning, if not the flipping.) Only a quarter of Republicans, even by December, believed Biden’s win was legitimate. On Tuesday, a day after the Electoral College voted for Biden, people were still backing Trump on PredictIt, a predictions market, meaning anyone who wanted to could make free money betting on Biden.

“If you watched OANN [around or after the election], you’re watching something that you and I would never recognize,” Sherwin says. “It’s just a whole completely different world out there. And there is enough money amongst old, rich, white people that live in that bubble that take advantage of this betting opportunity for two reasons. One, what they feel and what they believe, but two, it’s also a way to kind of stick it to the ‘lamestream media.’ You know what I mean? I think they can be like, Oh, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about, and I think I can profit off of this because you don’t understand the Real America.”

Sherwin’s theory of older, moneyed bettors contradicts Morrow’s view of bettors as mostly young guys. But the two agree that MAGA rhetoric influenced betting market behavior.

Here’s another clue that Trump’s cult of personality inspired abundant irrational betting. For the first few months of the general election, Bovada bettors could toss their money into two different general election markets. One was “Biden against Trump,” the other “the Democratic Party against the Republican Party.”

While Trump got the overwhelming share of the money against Biden, those who bet on a party put more money on the Democrats.

“People wanted to have a Trump [betting] ticket,” Morrow says. “They didn’t wanna have a ‘Republican Party to win the presidential election’ ticket.”

“People bet on their favorite team, right?” adds Mason. “If you’re a Yankees fan, you’re betting the dang Yankees every night. It helps that they’re great, but there’s a lot of favoritism there. And you see that in political betting, too. You really do. You see people that are betting with their heart.”

On Election Day, FiveThirtyEight’s model gave Biden an 89 percent chance to win. Betting markets, on the other hand, generally placed Biden between 60 and 70 percent.

Usually, portraying one side as more likely to win than they should be (and thus lowering the payout if they win) sends bettors in the other direction. But for Trump fans, it seems possible that the betting odds acted as “proof” that the polls were wrong, the smart people knew it, and their man would win.

“Maybe we were signaling to Trump supporters, ‘Hey, keep the faith, it’s a lot closer than the polls are suggesting,’ ” Morrow says. “But all we were really doing was reacting to a liability.”

As election night progressed, it wasn’t unusual even for politically engaged liberals to see the returns in Florida and North Carolina and have considerable worries about a 2016-esque disaster. The odds’ heavy moves toward Trump that night—when he spent an hour or two as a 70 percent or better favorite on many websites—reflected some of that. Oddsmakers were considering their Trump liability but also reacting in real time, and it wasn’t yet a fait accompli that Biden would carry Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

“There was that déjà vu thing watching that red and blue map on CNN or Fox or whatever we were watching it on, and the early count had all these swing states going to Trump,” Mason says.

Some bettors backed Biden when his odds became long enough, and they made significant profits. But Morrow said the Biden money, which was subject to live betting limits, barely made a dent in Bovada’s financial picture. The money still favored Trump.

“Anyone that got Biden live, I mean, great bet,” Morrow says, “but it didn’t hurt us at all. It was not even a flesh wound. We still cleaned up.”

Late that night, Fox News called Arizona for Biden, and Nevada started looking good for him, too. Overnight, new batches of mail ballots made Biden the clear favorite in Wisconsin and Michigan and suggested he was on a good pace in Pennsylvania. By the morning, Biden was a heavy favorite all over the market. And by 2:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, two days after the vote, Biden was -1100 and Trump was +575 at Bovada.

Through it all, Morrow said a huge majority of the money bet at his site remained on Trump—including “3- or 4-to-1” on Trump after the election.

“I think part of that was again the idea that ‘he might lose the traditional election at this rate, but we still have our ace in the hole: this potentially going through legislatures or the courts,’ which again, if you take Donald Trump seriously—this is the route he always said he was going to go,” Morrow says.

It took most of the bookmakers weeks to settle bets on the election. Mason and Morrow heard frequently from Biden bettors impatiently waiting on their payouts and from Trump bettors thanking them for not rushing to rash decisions. When they did eventually settle state and national bets, waiting until contested states certified results, the public faces of the big offshore sportsbooks got a different response from Trump bettors.

“ ‘You’re gonna regret this,’ ” Morrow recalls hearing from angry Trump bettors. “ ‘You’re gonna rue the day. This is gonna be the end of you. You’re gonna be working at McDonald’s.’ ” (Morrow sets odds from Antigua, where there does appear to be at least one McDonald’s.)

It is sometimes hard to tell which alleged Trump bettors are real and which are not. One screenshot surfaced of a bettor claiming to have bet $27,000 on Trump and demanding a refund but offering to have half of his bet returned to him as a compromise.

“We’ve got people living in two different realities politically, and we’ve got people betting in two different realities,” Sherwin says.

Are the bookmakers totally innocent? Were they baiting Trump supporters all along, milking gullible gamblers for all they were willing to bet?

Not in the beginning. The oddsmakers were living in the same simulation as the rest of us, unable to get Trump supporters to stop betting on their hero (and to stop adding to the sportsbooks’ liability). Both Bovada and BetOnline felt they were conservative with Trump’s odds, trying to slow down his backers.

“If anything, we were baiting Biden bettors,” Mason says. “We were giving them the discount.”

Only after the election did bookmakers reach the “taking candy from a baby” portion of the proceedings. Mason tweeted the day after the election, when Trump’s odds at BetOnline were +525 and 80 percent of the bets were still coming in on Trump, “Our massive liability continues to grow.”

That, to me, reads like baiting the gullible. But even then: Trump supporters were doing it to themselves. It’s not the sportsbooks’ fault if someone doesn’t realize that businesspeople aspire to separate customers from their money.

The sportsbooks won untold millions off a political movement’s refusal to accept reality. It wasn’t the oddsmakers’ plan to win by such large margins, and doing so despite making Trump a relative favorite was largely good fortune.

The 2020 election had many losers: Trump, his supporters, and American democracy chief among them. But almost by accident, the race created huge winners beyond Joe Biden. The biggest, arguably, were based not in Washington but in places like Panama City, and entirely unregulated by the government Biden was elected to lead

 

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Huckleberry

Huckleberry 33100

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On 12/17/2020 at 3:44 PM, Biff Tannen said:

Because then you can keep the electoral college, which for some reason people think is necessary, and still get the benefits of a popular vote.  It's the best of both worlds!  I heat up the ice cubes!

For some reason?

It's like you haven't been paying attention to the potentially disastrous consequences of having the entire election run solely by the the current administration of the federal government.

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 52608

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8 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

For some reason?

It's like you haven't been paying attention to the potentially disastrous consequences of having the entire election run solely by the the current administration of the federal government.

You can have state run elections and then just sum up all the state certified vote totals. 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31538

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 12/17/2020 at 3:43 PM, Gatorubet said:


Why bother?That is straight popular vote with costs and delay.

 

On 12/17/2020 at 3:44 PM, Biff Tannen said:

Because then you can keep the electoral college, which for some reason people think is necessary, and still get the benefits of a popular vote.  It's the best of both worlds!  I heat up the ice cubes!

More practially, proportional electoral voting can be accomplished by a state legislature.

A popular vote cannot be accomplished without constitutional amendment.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46152

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Posted

I haven't gotten too deep into the electoral college argument, because headache, but it seems to me that the "need" to have minority state representation in the legislature (Senate) is not the same as a 'need" to have equal say in the electorate.  

Increase the size of the House by 2.7X, to account for the US population increase since 1929, and apprortion electors by census.  The "small state" advantage will be largely diminished, and they will still have their say in the Senate.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31538

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Posted
On 12/17/2020 at 4:50 PM, Michael Knight said:

The issue isn't the electoral college, the issue is Reapportionment Act of 1929 that capped the number of members to 435. Remove that and instead base it on % of population and most of this shit fixes itself. The U.S. ranks 192nd of 193 countries in ratio of citizens to representative with only India being worse.

That is A problem, yes.  But having "winner take all" state elector allocation poses a different problem.

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Sawbonz

Sawbonz 27589

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On 12/17/2020 at 9:54 AM, Michael Knight said:

"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont"

image.gif.6549e4604296db51205739f329e362ef.gif

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SKJ

SKJ 1311

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Posted
On 12/16/2020 at 1:16 PM, Brisketexan said:

Mother......FUCKER.  I had forgotten that.  Jesus, it was absolutely a kajillion dollar idea.  And we would have been MUCH more hilariously inept than the Duck Dynasty crew -- would have made for TV gold.

My ideas of dignity and ethics have cost me multiple fortunes at this point.  Idiot.

I think it would behoove you to transmit those ideas to me,  and others like me,  who are not weighed down by such unreasonable definitions. 

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Longhorn_Fan68

Longhorn_Fan68 33900

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I believe she could, but that would open the floodgates for the Rs to scream “see?  Even SHE knows the election wasn’t legit!”

um, who a gives a shit about that right now? once everyone is sworn in we have 2 years to get some shit done. those traitorous fucks deserve no part in that exercise. 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45742

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

um, who a gives a shit about that right now? once everyone is sworn in we have 2 years to get some shit done. those traitorous fucks deserve no part in that exercise. 

Have to get the senate or the only shit getting done will be via EO. 
 

I agree with you that we shouldn’t give a shit about these traitors. I would be fine if Pelosi refused to seat them, but prepare for the onslaught of temper tantrums/violence from the right. 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45742

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Posted
9 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's nothing but a waste of everyone's time.  It needs to be called out as such and as political theater that is dangerous and seditious.

This. Dems can’t stop it so they need to call them out viciously. No more kid gloves and decorum. Call them children. Call them traitors. Call them on their shit. The only reason they keep doing it is they know Dems don’t hold them to account. 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46152

Posted
Posted
Just now, Biff Tannen said:

This. Dems can’t stop it so they need to call them out viciously. No more kid gloves and decorum. Call them children. Call them traitors. Call them on their shit. The only reason they keep doing it is they know Dems don’t hold them to account. 

No, that won't do anything.  This is dangerous territory.

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46152

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

So what do you suggest?  Gibbets?  Cause I’m down for that too. 

I don't have a suggestion.  I hope Tapper is off . . . way off . . . because that sounds like pure lunacy.

Not seating them is one way, I suppose, but "shaming" the shameless is a fool's errand.  It just won't matter.

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26474

Posted
Posted
50 minutes ago, immamac said:

They absolutely need to be refused their seats. Who cares if it's political suicide. They are treasonous pieces of shit. They cannot serve in congress. 

There could have been a Civil War in 1850, ten years earlier than it happened. But it didn't happen. Hmm.

[quote]In February 1850 President Taylor had held a stormy conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons “taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang … with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.”[/quote]

Source: all-knowing internet.

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