Election Betting Recap

Election betting - especially a close election - is an interesting exercise. In this day and age, gamblers and forecasters lean on models and ratings for horse racing, sports betting and otherwise that are tested and retested empirically. An election is sometimes like that, but oftentimes not. Last night was clearly the latter.

Here are some thoughts on the wagering, and data.

In preparing for wagering, the traditional polls, plus exits are informative. In this case, the exits confirmed the polls, which is usually good news. Pre-betting, I had a Clinton plus 3, 308 electoral vote projection. That, at the time, looked sound.

There were two clues I uncovered in the exits though, which I filed away. Trump was doing much better (than comprehensive polls from Wapo-ABC and others which I dug up suggested) with college educated whites, and the working class voter numbers were also quite good for him. The union vote was coming out for him, which most did not have pegged. There's a chance the plus 3 projection was high.

That data, to me, said Iowa looked like a lock. Taking 2-5 odds there seemed wise. Longshot fliers in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota with these numbers seemed unlikely, but value.

At 6PM only parts of Indiana and Kentucky close and these micro-votes (that the networks tell you not to look at) questioned my pre-results bias, further.

Viggo county in Indiana was solid Trump and it should not have been.

Elliott County (well known to my friends in Kentucky) was not only a solid Obama country the last election, it has been a solid blue county for 136 years. After two polls, he was up 69-29.

Trump, a half hour after these early states, was 8-1 to win the election, and in hindsight, there were signs he should be half that, if not less. I, at that point, mentioned to my betting partner that maybe the polls were wrong and he was going to have a good night.

Why election betting can continually give us edges -- and in my view it's one of the only betting mediums left that can allow monster edges -- is because things are confusing. Throwing a wrench into the plans was the early vote. This year's was a record, so when cities came in Hillary was doing very well with that data dump. Was this data a trend, or simply her edge on the early vote and Viggo and Elliot counties were the real story?

The last issue that was needed to be factored, was inner city turnout. If it was much lower, you could feel good being long Trump, if it was in 2012 numbers, you'd go the other way. We had very little of that data at around 7PM.

We all have biases in betting, and mine was to be cautious, because it was confusing. I also had an internal bias  -- I apologize to my Trump friends reading this; I was not a fan, so picturing him winning was difficult.

Later on, this bias slipped away. Counties in Virginia were coming more like 2012, not like the 2016 polls suggested. She looked like she'd win Virginia (and I took a couple of positions) but she was running very soft.

At that point, Trump was still a strong underdog to win, and he should not have been. There was the value, at over +300.

North Carolina represented a true swing market, and again, it was confusing. Around Raleigh she was overperforming him - widely and above President Obama in 2012 - but there's that early vote phenomenon again. Regardless, we took some positions at about 4-1 on Trump (mainly because of the Virginia data and trends), which was a good trade.

Finally in Florida -- which I lost severely in 2012 because of Broward County numbers that came in late, and well above what anyone projected they'd be --  we had our answer about the inner city vote. It was not there. I still think - just like 2012 - taking HRC positions near the end (when she was over 10-1) was smart. It was close, and there was a shot (just like the late numbers came in, in MI)

Election betting - despite the craziness of the race, which at times for me was impossible to follow -  once again proved a challenging mental exercise. And if we dug far enough, and stuck with convictions of what we were seeing, (not what others told us we should be seeing) there was some money to be made. 

The Post Breeders' Cup Pop Quiz

We saw, we came, Arrogate conquered.

Test your memory of the happenings on the weekend with the 9th Annual Post-Breeders' Cup Pop Quiz!

The attendance numbers at the Breeders Cup were tabulated by:

a) Paid attendance numbers
b) Paid attendance numbers + an error variable for fence jumpers
c) Hot dogs sold extrapolation formulas
d) Finding the estimate of how many showed up to the Cubs World Series parade, and doubling it

English jockey Ryan Moore walked the Santa Anita turf course on Thursday and had trouble finding:

a) The best path
b) A good angle to take for the apex for the first turn
c) A single blade of grass

The Beholder-Songbird photo was taken by:

a) The Santa Anita photo computer, accurate to one one trillionth of a millimetre
b) A high speed canon, with frame speed used to photograph Usain Bolt.
c) A barn cat

Arrogate's top-shelf Classic run is being compared to:

a) Sunday Silence's takedown of Easy Goer
b) Alysheba-Ferdinand
c) Zenyatta's thrilling 2009 Classic win
d) Allison Janney's Academy Award winning performance in Seabiscuit

This is a photo of the press:

a) Watching the Olympics
b) In the New York Times lunchroom, cheering the new Hillary polls
c) Seeing the free donut man come up the stairs
d) None of the above. If you are writing about horse racing, you like horse racing

Watching Arrogate and 'Chrome' come to the wire in the #BC16 Classic stretch. Who says there's no cheering in the press box? ;-) pic.twitter.com/dIPfQctA3X

— Jessica Chapel (@railbird) November 6, 2016

The new turf maintenance man at Santa Anita came over from:

a) Belmont
b) Laurel
c) Kentucky Downs
d) Sam's Billiards

The saddest news to come out of the Classic was:

a) Chrome lost
b) The handle was down from last year
c) Keen Ice ruined many people's trifectas
d) Arrogate has been retired to stud because "he's done enough"

The Turf course was so hard that:

a) Other hard objects orbited around it
b) Donald Trump called it soft, but actually issued a press release saying he was wrong
c) Andy Asaro protested because there's apparently another synthetic surface in California
d) Highland Reel went 2:23

Frank Stronach called the Classic:

a) One of the best races he's ever seen
b) Better than the Kentucky Derby
c) A world class event Santa Anita should be proud of
d) Not bad, considering it has half the purse of the Pegasus World Cup

Steve Coburn's prediction that California Chrome was a lock were made :

a) in haste
b) in homage to the great horse he once owned
c) by his imposter that Charlie Davis found

Enjoy your Monday everyone!

When Does Existing Pain Become Too Much? That's the Purchase Decision

There's been a lot of crazy stuff happen this election cycle in the US, and frankly, I have never seen similar in my lifetime. Because there's been so much craziness, nonsense, and sometimes horror, the race has become on the surface, very muddy.

But, as I scan things this morning, the polls are where they were three months ago; pretty close.

For all the retweets and tweets, stories about how bad someone is, or was, or will be, I have believed from the start, the race is a perfect example of behavioral economics and a simple buying or not buying decision.

"How bad off am I where I will choose to cast a vote for someone who I know is a flawed candidate?"

This is the same decision most people make when they purchase.

• Pointing out what a buyer stands to potentially gain from buying your product requires a leap of imagination on their part – they have to picture themselves in a new and better place by having bought from you. This type of imaginative and creative leap isn’t always easy to take, and can be tenuous.
  However, claiming that they will no longer suffer the existing pains that they currently do is much more grounded in reality, based on the very human notion of fleeing losses. They already have this very real pain point, something they live with on a day-to-day basis. Once they have the conviction that you relate to and understand this pain point, and that you have the power to remove it, they will be much more convinced.

I'm certainly no expert on what people outside of my immediate sphere think, but with 70% in polls saying the system is not working for them (or despise the status quo), you probably have a good idea why things are close. This pain point shifts in a maybe 8% range, and Bob's your uncle.

Yesterday we looked at exactly the same thing with horse racing. Pain points.

Another item cropped up that illustrated this point yesterday -- The marketing deal which blocks TVG from showing any races on the Breeders' Cup undercard.

The comments are pretty scary. Both fans and horseplayers are slowly having enough of this.

This is why, in my view, horse racing is very tough to sell, to both new people and existing customers, and it explains why existing customers, like Lenny Moon recently, simply get up and leave.

If you leave you "will no longer suffer the existing pains that you currently do" - no more high juice, marketing deals, having five accounts to bet all tracks, post drags and all the rest.

That's been trumping (no pun intended) the positive aspects of the sport.  It's enhanced because (for regular customers) it's a 300 day a year vocation. It's not a twice a month restaurant, or a vote in an election.

During this election cycle, most people are tweeting and retweeting and facebooking their choice on in a sometimes agonizing, cathartic exercise. Horse racing customers go through similar feelings each day, but they don't do that; they just quietly leave.