While the media and polling institutions have shown major fluctuations in this Presidential Race, going way back to the Summer of 2011, the gambling establishments have had this race pegged as Romney’s to lose to Obama the entire time.
Odds have never really shifted out of Obama’s favor.
When the Republican nomination process began back in the summer of 2011, many predicted a showdown between Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty’s campaign fizzled out and he was overtaken by Michelle Bachman, who then fizzled out when people saw how crazy she and her gay husband are and Rick Perry got into the race, who fizzled out when he opened his mouth and people heard how stupid he was, and was overtaken by Herman Cain, who fizzled out when he was caught having an affair and people saw how stupid he was, and was over taken by Newt Gingrich, who fizzled out because he’s Newt Gingrich, and was overtaken by Rick Santorum, who fizzled out because the righties got scared that having an extremist on the ballot would be a disaster, and was overtaken by Mitt Romney, who in all fairness, was the obvious choice the entire time.
What this illustrates, other than a media and Republican base that really doesn’t like Ron Paul, is that all this hype around these candidates was nothing more than, well hype. The one poll that never drifted far from Romney was the odds makers charts for betting on the election, which, yes, is legal in other countries like England and Ireland. They rarely strayed from Romney’s overwhelming odds at winning the contest. I remember reading the odds in December, the height of “anyone but Mitt” fever. It still showed Mitt pegged as champion. You know what else it showed? That Obama had even better odds at being reelected.
How did the media and polling institutions get it so wrong? Well for starters, the media and pollsters are paid to produce something interesting and noteworthy. If the election coverage still reports “Romney in lead for Republican nomination, yet losing to Obama”, then how likely are you going to be to watch it? Why would the media pay for a poll that says “nothing has changed”? Less likely than they would be to pay for a poll that reports something to talk about, something tangible that produces ratings. I’m not saying that these institutions are dishonest, I’m just saying that the business model is rewards dishonesty, which increases the odds of dishonesty dramatically.
The gambling institutions are rewarded by telling the truth and often regulated by governments to do so. If a bookie who tells you the odds of a football team winning are good, it’s not to entice you to plop your money down, it’s to discourage you from doing so. The payoffs are low in such cases, yet if you bet against the odds, you can get a nice juicy reward. Why is it so juicy? Because it most likely isn’t going to happen and the bookie gets to keep your money!
That is why the gamblers of the world are rarely wrong on the odds. To them, it’s business. The cardinal rule of running a gambling establishment is that the house always wins. The odds in any game of chance are rigged in favor of the house. The odds of Obama winning are set high because they don’t want to lose money, it really is quite simple. Odds are odds for a reason and they aren’t always right, though odds are, they are right 99 times out of 100. If the odds were not right, there would be no casinos, no bookies, no horse tracks.
The accuracy of such odds is now being included at Real Clear Politics’ charts on Presidential predictions.
That doesn’t mean that odds are always right. As I mentioned, they are simply odds. If a football team is pegged to win and the quarterback breaks his ankle, that would radically alter the odds. Recently, in the election, there were several factors that changed the odds: Obama’s post-convention bounce and the post-first debate debacle, the Mitt-Storm, if you will. This sent polls reeling and Republicans who were ready to give up one week and called the polls rigged, then touted the polls the next week and tried to talk about reality and how Obama was finished, and are now clinging to the few remaining polls that show Romney with a National lead, and bracing for an Obama rebound.
How did the odds change, well, Obama’s odds dropped from a money line of -250 to -210, which is almost 1 to 2 odds of winning election, still largely the favorite with Mitt only getting as high as +170. If you can’t read money lines, just think of it this way: a negative money line means you will make less than a 1 for 1 bet, so you will get a percentage of 1 unit, however a positive money line is a juicier, riskier bet, showing you what you win (+170 means you win 170 plus your bet). So Obama, still largely the favorite, yet things were looking good for ol’ Mittens.
Then the 2nd debate happened. Romney lost according to everyone outside of the right-wing bubble. The odds makers overnight put Obama right back to where he was before, his money line jumped to -260 and Romney slipped to +200, roughly 2 to 1 odds. Bookmakers across the board put their confidence in Obama, or should I say their good financial sense.
The polls will likely follow. So what happened?
Well, there is a theory among pollsters like Nate Silver of Five-Thirty-Eight, that Obama’s lead was over blown. Honestly, it never seemed accurate to me, nor did Romney’s sudden momentum. They did however generate record ratings for the debates. Isn’t that interesting?!
In the end, we are right back to where we started before the conventions, with Romney trailing in almost all of the swing states, unable to get anywhere close to the 270 electoral votes he needs and Obama poised to win reelection.
Isn’t that interesting as well.
How far away is the GOP attack on gambling odds as having a liberal bias? Any day now I suppose. Once you’ve condemned reality for having a liberal bias, anything is up for grabs.