Does anyone rely on polls anymore? Here in Vegas, life is a game, and so is politics. Instead of following the news, we follow the money - the smart money. VegasElectionOdds.com did just that on September 16. They juxtaposed the polls getting fluffed in the mainstream media, specifically The Guardian, with the wagering at three online sportsbooks: Bovada, BetOnline, and MyBookie.
Why look at gambling odds instead of polls? “First,” VegasElectionOdds writes, “the polls are often manipulated and manufactured in order to influence public perception and sway the masses. Secondly, political polls simply are not reliable due to the many variables involved.”
“To that end,” writes VegasElectionOdds, “The Guardian has attempted to clarify(X) obfuscate things by presenting its own unsound and arbitrary polling aggregator to show that Joe Biden is surely going to win the election.” The Guardian, like other mainstream news media, appears to omit recent polls showing The Donald leading in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and elsewhere. Orange Man Bad!
Rasmussen Reports called out this ”national poll suppression” at the end of August. This was right after the Republican National Convention seems to have wiped the floor with the DNC - if you include independent reviews, digital and C-SPAN ratings.
So why would a sportsbook’s odds be any better? “It is in their best interest to achieve a clear and concise understanding of how the voters are leaning,” the site states, “in order to ensure the integrity of the betting action and to minimize their risks.”
In other words, the smart money says, “Tell me what I need to hear - not what I want to hear.”
Critics allege mainstream polls over-sample Democrats and focus on registered voters versus likely voters, skewing the results. So does using push-poll questions to get a desired answer, and using opt-in polls that don’t attract a random sample.
Another major factor in 2020? The potential “shy Trump voter.” CNN calls shy Trump voters “likely a myth” - but does anyone still believe CNN about anything? According to surveys by Rasmussen Reports and CloudResearch, Trump voters are more than twice as likely to not tell others who they’re voting for. From my own conversations, I’d guess it’s more than that.
Why would CNN’s polling be any more accurate than their reporting?
Rasmussen also found that of the 42% of people who experienced violent protests in and around their Democrat-led cities, a strong majority favor Trump.
“I think it widens the silent majority,” said former Rep. Jason Lewis, a GOP candidate for the US Senate from riot-hit Minnesota. “So remember the silent majority from the Nixon era we were talking about, but now you really expand that because the riots are trying to intimidate people, right? Trying to get everybody to conform, which is the goal of the cancel culture and everything else.”
“But all that does is drive people underground,”Lewis said.” So these polls you mentioned are probably under accounting Trump supporters... by a wide margin.”
Legal disclaimer: Although it is illegal to gamble on politics in the US, according to VegasElectionOdds, it is “perfectly legal” to gamble at “legally licensed and regulated online sportsbooks located outside the United States.” That is unless you live in Washington State or Connecticut. They don’t allow online political gambling either. Got that? Then let’s hit it.
VegasElectionOdds.com looked at the same eight swing states The Guardian did: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the biggest - Florida. “The MSM says Biden is nearly two points up on Trump” in Florida, VegasElectionOdds writes. “Two of three Vegas election sportsbooks say that Trump is leading by about the same margin.” That’s a 3 to 4 point swing.
According to VegasElectionOdds, betters think Ohio “isn’t even remotely as close as the half-point lead the mainstream media are giving The Donald here. Not. Even. Remotely.”
VegasElectionOdds also predicts Trump will win bigly in North Carolina and Iowa, where The Guardian’s fluffed polls are still close.
So where’s a good place to wager some smart money? VegasElectionOdds likes Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest. “Those Mostly Peaceful Protests™ are mostly good for the Bad Orange Man,” VegasElectionOdds writes, “and other polls suggest a GOP surge is being suppressed by the network powers that be. Voters don’t like those Mostly Peaceful Protests™ in Wisconsin any more than they like them in Michigan.”
If you seek more of a longshot, look to the Sunbelt. “Arizona has long seemed pretty much in the bag for Biden (as it did for Hillary in 2016),” according to VegasElectionOdds, “but most national polling shows a tighter race than what’s being reported.”
Recent days have only reinforced concerns, masterfully amplified by the Trump Campaign, that poor Biden is just a cognitively-impaired puppet - a “flashlight with a dying battery,” as Joe Rogan put it, and Sen. Kamala Harris is the president-in-waiting. On Saturday, Harris referred to a “Harris administration together with Joe Biden” before correcting herself. Then on Tuesday, Biden himself referred to a “Harris-Biden” administration while speaking from a teleprompter during a veterans roundtable. He then mixed up Iran and Iraq - Iraq being where then-Senator Biden voted for war and his son served.
Many believe Biden has been relying on teleprompters and canned questions for interviews. His spokesman TJ Ducklo refused to answer the question, and shortly after a video surfaced that appears to show a reflected teleprompter during a softball TV interview.
Poll suppression plus partisan differences in voting by mail may lead to confusion on Election Day.
On the other hand, Trump had to deal with his usual storm of controversies, both self-inflicted and scheduled weekly by the mainstream media. But given how reviled the media is, might it actually help him? Besides, “Art of the Deal” Trump just got three peace treaties signed, the economy is recovering from the pandemic despite riots, and Big Ten football is back on schedule in the Midwest. Orange Man... Good?
The Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of national polls for September 16 has Biden leading Trump by six points. But on the same day, heretic Rasmussen’s weekly poll showed Trump leading for the first time - 47 to 46. And given Trump’s advantages in small states, the Electoral College favors him if it’s close.
Also on September 16, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll gave Trump the highest ratings of his presidency - 52 percent overall, with 52 percent on the economy and 49 percent on national security. These are all higher than President Obama’s ratings in the September before his 2012 re-election. Most people, it seems, want good jobs and world peace. Orange Man... Favored?
“Trump shows surprising strength among minority voters,” Rasmussen writes. The finding corroborates other polls showing his support strengthening among Hispanic and Black voters. It also explains the popularity of hashtag campaigns describing Democrat defections - like #walkaway, #demexit, and #blexit. Orange Man... Winning?
Smart gamblers saw this coming. A poll two weeks ago by the Democracy Institute, which correctly forecast Trump’s election and Brexit in 2016, showed Trump leading 48-45 overall, with a significant 49-42 lead in battleground states. Real Clear Politics and The Guardian both appear to have omitted that poll, and few media outlets other than the populist UK Sunday Express reported on it.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
