[gcanyon]

Wow, 97% that there will be elections. That's high, but if you handed me a gun with a 3% chance of being loaded and offered me a billion dollars to point it at my head and pull the trigger, I would not. My foot on the other hand...

[gbear605]

It's worth noting that Polymarket (and all other prediction markets using money) has some fundamental problems that cause inaccuracy. Most notably here, the elections are still several months out, so you're asking people to put up 97 cents to get a dollar back in three months. But for that time frame I could also put 97 cents in treasuries and get 98 cents back, so the market won't be accurate within 1% of reality, and treasuries are considered a good deal safer than Polymarket.

In addition, there can be issues related to fees, Kelly betting (if the correct bet is 98%, don't want to bet all the way to 98% or you have no returns and you definitely don't want to put all of your wallet in on it in case it goes against you), and so on.

So this isn't a "3% chance of the elections happening" it's "3%, plus or minus the rate of return over three months, plus or minus all the other related issues". I don't know if that gets you down to zero percent, but it definitely gets you closer.

(Yes Polymarket has tried to do some things to resolve these issue, no they don't work very well.)

[xboxnolifes]

Plus the percent chance that Polymarket doesn't accurately resolve the market. It'll never hit 100% odds because there's value in buying the the 1,000,000 to 1 odds and maybe turning $1 into $1,000,000 from an administrative issue on the market.

[addandsubtract]

You can sell your bet at any time, though. So if you put $100 on NO while it's at 3¢ and then sell them next week at 4¢, you're getting $133 back. You're not necessarily betting on the outcome, but on the sentiment over time.

[gbear605]

That's true, but then the people you're selling to have to want to buy the shares. And if you're buying YES at 97%, you're not going to be able to sell the YES shares to anyone at much higher - because eventually someone has to hold it to the end.

It's true that this isn't as true for NO, because a small change can give a huge return, but that's asymmetrical. So there's incentive for traders to buy NO, hoping that it moves down, but not an incentive for traders to buy YES, since it doesn't have any room to go up.

[gcanyon]

Good thoughts, thanks

[wat10000]

I don't think it's high at all. Elections are required for almost any legitimate government these days. Russia has elections. China has elections. North Korea has elections. The question is not whether there will be elections, but whether they will be free and fair.