Who can you believe when it comes to forecasting who will win the midterms?
The final New York Times polls before the 2022 midterms give Democrats a slight edge to maintain control of the Senate. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Stephen Colbert last month she believes Democrats will “hold the House by winning more seats.”
However, Republicans believe they are gaining momentum and will win both chambers — and there are polls to back them up. “This is our year,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CNN, as he cited polls that show voters prefer GOP candidates.
With each party saying the polls are on their side, who can we trust to accurately forecast the elections? Some are looking to the betting markets, where gamblers are placing their (potentially risky) bets on who will win in next week’s midterms.
Over the past seven days, traders on PredictIt have placed bets that Senate nominee Herschel Walker will defeat incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, and give the odds to Republican Mehmet Oz edging out Democrat John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
There are numerous websites that allow betting on the U.S. midterm elections but Americans are banned from participating in all but PredictIt, which is why we’re using it for this article.
I am not a gambler, but these betting odds are simple enough to understand. Hypothetically, if my friend, let’s call him Collin, buys the 60 cent odds on Walker, and he ends up winning in Georgia, then Collin will receive $1 for every 60 cent “share” he bought. Conveniently, this setup allows for an easy translation of cents to a likelihood-percentage of forecasted outcomes.
As of today, a week before Election Day, Republicans are favored to take control of the Senate 73 cents to the Democratic odds of 32 cents in seven-day running averages. The betting market didn’t clearly favor one party over another until after Oct. 17, when Republicans pulled ahead.
Traders expect the House to flip to Republican control 90 cents to the Democrats 12 cents, a forecast that has held for at least the past three months.
Political polls and betting markets show a tight race for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, but while polls give Democrat incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly the advantage, gamblers today prefer Republican nominee Blake Masters, 53 cents to Kelly’s 48 cents. Presumably, this is because of the news that the Libertarian nominee in the Arizona Senate race announced he is dropping out and endorsing Masters.
Markets appear to show running momentum trends better than polls or surveys, which are more like snapshots of voter preferences. They display near instantaneous reactions to breaking news or campaign events like debates.
After the Pennsylvania Senate debate on Oct. 25, when Fetterman’s health condition became more apparent, over 250,000 trades increased Oz’s betting odds to win the election from 53 cents to 65 cents.
In other races, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is favored to win at 78 cents, while the Oregon Republican gubernatorial nominee Christine Drazan is in a tight race but is the favorite at 54 cents.
In Utah’s Senate race, PredictIt forecasts Republican Sen. Mike Lee to win at 92 cents. But the race between Lee and Evan McMullin hasn’t attracted many gamblers, and it’s not clear how many Utahns are participating in the betting market. The average volume per day for the Utah race is less than 6,000 trades, compared to an average of over 50,000 trades per day in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
