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The Almighty Buck The Internet United States Politics

Sportsbet Says It Will Pay Out Early On Biden As US President (bloomberg.com) 245

Anonymouse Cowtard writes: When you're holding millions in bets on the favorite, you don't take the decision to payout lightly. Betting agencies are often good barometers for political polls, but Sportsbet has been stung before. They incorrectly paid out on bets for the Labor Party in Australia to win two days before the election was held, assuming a victory would come to the polling leaders. That party lost.

According to Bloomberg, "Sportsbet has decided to pay out early on Joe Biden to be elected as the U.S President even with the official result still not known, according to a statement. The online bookmaker has deemed Biden's lead as 'unassailable' after CNN projected Michigan would go to the Democrats and that he holds the ascendancy in Nevada and Arizona. Sportsbet has paid out over 100,000 bets to punters who backed Biden."

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Sportsbet Says It Will Pay Out Early On Biden As US President

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  • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:07AM (#60686150)

    This one seems a bit safer, at this point it seems implausible that trump could make up a rather extensive list of recounts needed to be declared winner, and Biden appears to have AZ and Nevada in the hat and that would appear to win Biden the vote in its own right, and for some reason the pollsters seem to thing Pensylvania will flip (something to do with the demographics of uncounted votes).

    Admittedly the Australian vote was a bit of a 2016 'wtf' moment, but there had been some pretty serious changes to the electoral system (regarding how preferences are chosen), and it would appear the models just where not reading how they'd pan out properly.

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:57AM (#60686226)
      The guy working the electronic board on CNN is really good, despite the others who keep interrupting him trying to make irrelevant points. He has a very good grasp of the factors which are causing the tallies to shift one way, then the other after every update, causing the percentages to keep changing. Listen to what he's saying and you should start to understand why it's foolhardy to call this vote either way.
      • Most of the outstanding votes are in counties which on average vote heavily Democratic.
      • A large portion of them are also mail-in ballots, which on average have been heavily Democratic.

      That's what's cause most to conclude Biden has this in the hat. But on the flip side,

      • Several of these heavily Democratic-voting counties are rather large, with areas which vote heavily Republican. Maricopa County (where Phoenix AZ is) is one such county. Their overall tally is 52%/47% in favor of Biden. But the last couple batches of updated vote tallies they've reported have actually been in Trump's favor. So he's been closing the gap in Arizona.
      • Most of the remaining uncounted mail-in ballots are last-minute (dropped off Monday or Tuesday). Those seem to be breaking more Republican.

      Extrapolation and projections work when your sampling is completely random. So the votes left to count are statistically similar to the votes you've already counted. But that's not the way vote counting works. Votes from smaller precincts tend to be counted earlier (since you need to finish counting before you can report them). Votes which were mailed in earlier tend to be counted earlier. Precincts further from the counting stations may bring in their ballots later, and assuming a FIFO counting order these will be counted later.

      Pennsylvania and Nevada announced before the election that they probably won't receive and count all their mail-in ballots until Friday (they just have to be postmarked by election day). So if the tally in those two states remains close enough that those remaining mail-in votes could make a difference, there's a chance we won't know the outcome until this weekend. (Not to mention the several states which require a recount when the vote differential is less than a certain percentage, usually 1%.)

      One thing to note is that Biden seems to be holding at about 50.5% of the popular vote, which would make him the indisputable winner of the popular vote. In 2016 Clinton only won won a plurality - 48.2% of the popular vote vs Trump's 46.1%. But if you added in the votes of third parties based on whether they're conservative or liberal, the conservative popular vote actually exceeded the liberal popular vote 50.3% vs 49.7%. If Biden can remain over 50%, then it's indisputable that he won the popular vote (as was the case with Gore in 2000, and Bush probably lost to Clinton in 1992 because of conservative votes siphoned off by Perot).

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Such a good post and then you had to ruin it with saying someone did or will win the popular vote.

        The popular vote is a side metric only. A useful statistic. A coffee table talking point.

        In the US, there is no competition held on the popular vote such that anyone can win it. You can only "receive more" of the popular vote.

        • The popular vote is a side metric only. A useful statistic. A coffee table talking point.

          So was the number of slaves in the US at one point.

          • by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @04:36AM (#60686640) Homepage
            Actually, the number of slaves in the U.S. was directly influencing the outcome of elections. That's why the electoral districts are formed to have an equal numbers of inhabitants each, and not an equal number of citizens. Thus the states with a high number of slave population got more electoral districts even though they had less citizens.

            The sheer popular vote tally of the presidential elections does not have any importance in the outcome. As the grand parent poster said: It's just a talking point.

            • Fewer.
            • by ranton ( 36917 )

              The sheer popular vote tally of the presidential elections does not have any importance in the outcome. As the grand parent poster said: It's just a talking point.

              His point had nothing to do with the 3/5th compromise and the effect of slave population on electoral districts. It has to do with the importance of pointing out problems in our laws even while they are still the law of the land. At one point slavery was legal but people still fought against it, and spent time pointing out its evils. Today the electoral still exists, but people will still fight against it and point out its problems.

              That makes it far more than a coffee table statistic. Keeping the historical

              • by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @09:45AM (#60687304) Homepage
                The problem is inherent to any election system based on regional majorities. But if you don't use regional majorities, you lose regional representation, and almost all candidates will come from a single place, the capital. You get something like Czarist Russia at the begin of the 20ieth century, with a central power totally oblivious of all regional concerns.

                Regional representation might skew some results, but in turn you get another layer of checks and balances. It's a trade-off, but I think it's a worthwhile one.

                • Very well stated.

                  I think it's overdue to remind people that the US is *supposed* to be a federation of independent states. And, the*only* reason for the national part of the ballot, which seems to escape most people, is for the office of President only.

                  People from Nevada don't get to choose the Senators from Michigan.

                • by TheSunborn ( 68004 ) <mtilsted@@@gmail...com> on Thursday November 05, 2020 @11:30AM (#60687692)

                  No that is not true at all. What you do in a sane system if you want region representation is that you use the number of the votes for a party, to determine the total number of congress members for that party, and then you use the number of votes in each region to determine where exactly the members come from.

                  The math is rather more complicated in the real world, but most of EU(Except uk) is running on a variation of that system.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          Such a good post and then you had to ruin it with saying someone did or will win the popular vote.

          The popular vote is a side metric only. A useful statistic. A coffee table talking point.

          In the US, there is no competition held on the popular vote such that anyone can win it. You can only "receive more" of the popular vote.

          It's a moral victory in a shit electoral system that should have been scraped the day the telephone was invented.

          It's beyond belief that the system in place doesn't even bother to have an odd number of college votes, so we could end up with a tie!

          And what happens in a tie? Do we look at what people voted for? Fuck that! This is politics; we don't want people interfering with that - we'll send it to the House to decide! And that could be a tie too, because there's 50 votes there. This can theoretically go on

          • It could be worse. Just look to the election of 1800. It took 36 rounds of voting for the electoral college to decide upon a president.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidential_election

      • Nice analysis.
      • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:56AM (#60686358)
        All I know is someone needs to reboot North Carolina, it's been stuck at 95% since yesterday.
    • for some reason the pollsters seem to thing Pensylvania will flip (something to do with the demographics of uncounted votes).

      The pollsters are correct. The Pennsylvania mail-in ballots skew toward the blue urban areas. So once they are counted, the tally will very likely shift in favor of Biden.

      James Carville once described Pennsylvania as "Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle."

      But it doesn't matter. Biden wins with or without Pennsylvania.

      The only states still in play are NV, PA, NC, and GA. Biden can win with one. Even NV's 6 EC votes put him over the top.

      Trump has to win ALL of them.

      • by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @07:32AM (#60686926)

        Ideally, Biden wins NV, PA, and GA. There needs to be a clear message to the extremes (on both sides) that the statue quo of blaming & yelling across the fence needs to stop. If Biden wins with just NV, that just becomes fuel to continue the current temper tantrum's.

    • My math may be off, but if Arizona and Nevada go to Biden, he still needs at least one more state. I'm used to disappointment, and I'll be happy if I am wrong, but the most likely bet is Wisconsin and it doesn't seem like a sure thing. Everyone seems to be hoping that a vast majority of mail in ballots are all Democratic, and the vast majority of Republicans voted in person, but there's got to be some non trivial fraction of Republicans who realize that covid is a real thing and would prefer mailing in the

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:51AM (#60686346) Homepage Journal

        Your math is off, unless you don't believe that some of the states/districts that have already been called are, in fact, truly definite. CNN is showing 253 for Biden. Add to that Arizona's 11 and Nevada's 6, and that's exactly 270.

        • I was looking at BBC who are a bit more conservative before calling states. Wisconsin does look a lot safer than Nevada which is very tight at the moment.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Wow. They haven't called Wisconsin yet. Assuming that 99% number is accurate, President Trump would have to get more than 81.3% of the remaining votes to win. It's not quite impossible, but it would raise a *lot* of eyebrows if it happened.

            • I wish they wouldn't call a yes/no answer until remaining votes could not change the election.

              It invites civil disorder to tell people "that's it- it's done" and then 8 hours later say, "Oh wait- we didn't expect at 70/30 split so now it's not done."

              Just say, "We are counting the vote- we'll give you a total every 4 hours. Next update is at 7pm."

              • by Sneftel ( 15416 )

                And in states that are subject to a recount, should they refrain until the recount is done? If a legal challenge is pending, should they wait for that? News organizations aren't picking a winner, they're reporting the situation. They should just make their thresholds clear ("we believe that the chance of this going the other way is below 3%") and follow them.

              • It almost seems like the people’s best interests are not the #1 priority of the media.

                I mean, if you didn’t know better.

    • , and for some reason the pollsters seem to thing Pensylvania will flip (something to do with the demographics of uncounted votes).

      The votes from Philadelphia and surrounding areas have not yet been fully counted. That is a huge Democratic area. Also, the mail-in ballots are not yet counted. There were 1.4 million mail-ins and for those which have been counted so far, 78% were for Biden. Assuming the remaining ballots have the same percentage, Biden will overcome the 176,000 vote deficit he currently ha

  • Darn. (Score:5, Funny)

    by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:15AM (#60686160)
    I had $20 on Kanye at 500:1
    • Only 500:1? I wouldn't take that at 30000:1.

      • Only 500:1? I wouldn't take that at 30000:1.

        Hey, that's what I got at the UK bookie Ladbrokes for Kim!

        I figured that with all other variables having been thoroughly dissected, ass size would be a driving factor in voters' expectations of the next POTUS.

        I'm disappointed that Wolf Blitzer has not been addressing ass size in his election coverage.

      • I'm pretty sure Kanye will release his electors to vote for Trump. So Trump fans, keep your fingers crossed!

    • Well, it wasn't impossible. He would have won if Biden dropped out from Alzeimers, Trump got disqualified for being arrested for tax evasion, and Jo Jorgensen withdrew because she didn't want to be told what to do.

    • you got ripped off, they would not be good odds at 5000:1
  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:16AM (#60686164) Homepage

    Even if they are sure, why take the risk of losing the payout money? I don't get it.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:25AM (#60686178)

    It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.

    • It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.

      Indeed, the people who voted were pretty clearly in favour of Biden, 50.4% to 48%. The people who count the votes have made this much tighter.

  • You're fired!

  • by Capt'n C. Runch ( 5389337 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:30AM (#60686182)
    I'm sure they've done the math and think the publicity they'll get from this stunt outweighs the risk of being wrong.
    • Are you saying that they're gambling? Who would've thought that a gambling site might be run by gamblers :)

      I am sure that the publicity combined with the likely chance of losing (low but not 0) and (as another poster said) extra bets made with the winnings - many people will just bet on something else with their winnings which is profitable - will be a net win for the site.

  • by SlithyMagister ( 822218 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:32AM (#60686188)
    before they chicken
  • It's over, (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )

    Twitler is finally OUT. Hallelujah! Go ahead give me a -1, I'm so happy I don't fucking care now.

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:14PM (#60687888) Journal
    Enjoy your victory dance. You'll all be back to whining about H1Bs tomorrow, blindly seeing no connection between your actions and your woes.

C for yourself.

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