“These kinds of put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is polls are worrisome”
Worrisome that the bettors are correct? Because I think the “common wisdom” in this case is incorrect, hence my bet, and I’m not a betting man. I think the pro-Hillary bettors live in a delusional echo-chamber bubble, particularly the European bettors, which I suspect make up a big chunk of the bettors at predictit.com
I spend WAY more time than I should reading posts at FR, and not just bubble-chamber posts either, but many of the enemedia ones and uber-liberal ones at places like salon and slate, plus reddit, and pretty much just everything else across the spectrum.
Here’s my analysis:
1. It’s my belief that the polls are wrong because the methodology no longer works because most are land-line based, and pretty much anybody remaining with a land line has got every blocker known to mankind. For example, I use voip.ms with noborobo plus a filter for numbers not in my whitelist that hear a recording of my voice saying they must press 1 to reach me. All junk calls have ceased. I occasionally check to see who called, and yesterday one of these blocked calls was from the pollster Marist.
2. People are pissed! And across the political spectrum, too. Large numbers want to blow up D.C.’s insider, politics-as-usual machinations. Therefore 2016 is the ultimate year of the outsider candidate.
3. Not only is Hillary the ultimate insider candidate, she is THE WORST POSSIBLE candidate the Dems could have chosen because of her vast history of criminal conduct for personal enrichment, her inability to personally connect with people on an emotional level, her robotic-like performances, inability to deal with the media in any situation other than one that is nearly 100% controlled by her, and her flagging physical and mental health.
4. I also do feel there’s a groundswell of people who are gonna vote for Trump without talking a whole lot about it beforehand. These include a bunch of Democrats, ranging from pissed Bernie supporters to blue collar Reagan Democrats.
5. Trump supporters are intensely motivated whereas many Hillary supporters are voting for her by default and are simply not very enthusiastic, so voter turnout is likely to favor Trump.
6. While Trump has yet to spend a penny on TV ads, Hillary has spent tens of millions on TV ads already to no avail, has the ultra-rich elite from both sides of the aisle supporting her and opposing Trump, and has the entire enemedia slamming Trump in unprecedented fashion 24x7 in the most blatant and obviously dishonest fashion seen in at least a 100 years, and yet Trump is even in the polls at this point, far better than Reagan polled against Carter at this point in the election.
7. Trump is likely to wipe the floor with Hillary during the debates. I won’t be surprised if she physically collapses or simply refuses to debate.
8. The MANY Hillary scandals are simply not going away, and there’s a VERY high probability that Wikileaks and others will be releasing several more groups of damaging emails stolen from Hillary, the DNC, as well as many as 100 DNC staffers who were directly hacked as well.
9. Economically, this country is not doing well, and LARGE numbers of people have been hurt by Obama polices that have been adopted lock-stock-and-barrel by Hillary, including obamacare (which is a biggie because of the massive new expense for most people combined with the fact that they still cannot receive medical care), trade policies that shoved manufacturing and call-center jobs out of the U.S., and dozens of other job-killing and wage-depressing policies.
10. And speaking of wage-depressing policies, 50 million illegal immigrants are not only taking jobs that citizens could have had, but force the wages down for the remaining employed, as well as getting medical, social, and massive other benefits that even poor citizens cannot obtain.
11. And then there’s the security factor of actively colluding with the Muslim terrorist world instead of wiping them off the face of the planet, and insisting one bring hundreds of thousands of these savages into the U.S. and transplanting them into communities to colonize the U.S. with a savage and foreign religion.
Finally, given all of the above, if the voters of our country DO actually put Hillary in the White House, then our country is too far gone to save it, and losing a bit of money is minuscule compared to the horror that is going to happen to our country in the next four years.
But I am also concerned that a large enormous part of the electorate is ignorant and emotional, and that the dishonest media can create such a fog of lies and distortion that the voters will simply vote according to what's "cool," in the sense of the subtext created by media personalities.
Jon Stewart has more influence than any ten people talking sense. So I guess we agree on your last point: despite all the cogent points you make, Hillary might still be elected, and then the country will deserve what it gets.