Did we tell you or did we tell you?
In just about every Vegas election article from here to heaven knows when in the backlog, we’ve told you that this one would not be decided on or even remotely near November 3.
The best political betting sites – and most of their bettors – also knew this would be the case, and the odds on concession props reflected that.
On October 29, we published the last batch of odds on this issue, which are reproduced below (as they have been taken off the betting boards at the time of publication). Losing bets are crossed out:
2020 Election Concession Odds
What day will the losing candidate concede the 2020 Presidential election?
- Nov. 13 or later -145
Nov. 4 +225Nov. 3 +400Nov. 5 +500Nov. 6 +650Nov. 7 +800- Nov. 10 +800
- Nov. 11 +800
Nov. 8 +900Nov. 9 +900- Nov. 12 +1200
In our coverage of this betting line, we implored you to bet accordingly. Our words, from the above-linked article:
“Earlier in the cycle, we liked the favorite (Nov. 13). Now, we like it even better… Given the massive potential for several state election outcomes to be legally contested, we can’t see either candidate conceding until well after the 11th hour.”
It’s nice to be right once in a while, especially as a bettor. (It’d be even nicer to be right more often than that, but such is the nature of the game.)
Of course, these were just the final set of lines on this particular political prop bet.
Previously, other books had published odds of the same sort, some with dramatically different dates. A few of them – for a brief time – even had “December 1 or later” trending near the bottom of the list, commanding a substantial payout in the four digits.
That bet looks better than ever, because it’s clear that the above favorite – Nov. 13 or later – is going to win easily.
The reason for this is simple: The Trump campaign technically has until December 9 to challenge all election results in any state.
After that, on December 14, the various state legislatures will order their electors to cast their ballots. Only then will Trump either win reelection or Joe Biden will become the “President-elect.”
Any news organization that calls Biden the President-elect before December 14 is peddling blatant disinformation. Which is – and this is just a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation – approximately all of them.
Obviously, if you went along with the favorite and took “Nov. 13 or later” on the candidate concession line, you’re sitting pretty. Hopefully, given those -145 odds, you put more than a few dollars on that dead cert.
In related news – and adding a substantial wrinkle (and days or weeks) to the proceedings – several outlets, including RealClearPolitics and the Associated Press – have now removed Pennsylvania from the win column for Joe Biden, meaning that the state remains too close to call.
Additionally, the full vote still isn’t in for both Nevada and Arizona, and Wisconsin’s election participation rate is hovering around 90%, which is a dramatic historical outlier and completely unprecedented in the region.
Free elections rarely see participation rates that high, and such rates – if the BBC believes its own reporting – are considered a “tell-tale sign” of “vote rigging.”
To hammer home the point, in nations like Australia where voting is mandatory and not voting is punishable by fines and jail time, turnout is only about 90%.
Any numbers that drastically defy previous trends are suspect and warrant closer scrutiny. Wisconsin will be so scrutinized. That also takes time.
Meanwhile, a third-party ballot-counting software in Michigan recently had a “glitch” discovered that – once corrected – flipped one county from Biden to Trump (and one House seat from the Democrats to the GOP), reflecting a 5500-vote swing.
This same software, presumably affected by the same glitch, was deployed in 47 counties in the state.
A manual audit and recount/certification is pending for those counties – and possibly the whole of Michigan.
This is officially a cluster…thing.
All that said, it seems unlikely that Trump will be declared the winner in the courts. It’s more likely that regional or state-wide re-votes will be announced, albeit that’s still an uphill battle.
There is a decided interest in the Supreme Court not to set a precedent whereby all future elections will follow this same pattern of contestation.
However, if the evidence of fraud is veracious or compelling enough, something dramatic will have to happen to ensure that at least 71 million Americans aren’t completely and utterly disenfranchised by the democratic process in the United States.
If such a vast quantity of voters no longer have faith in the machinations of that vote, the “American Experiment” will be relegated the dustbin of history.
That would be a shame.
Whichever candidate wins, it’s imperative that the nation isn’t fundamentally split on the legitimacy of the process.
And as an aside, because it seems relevant given the narratives in the MSM: If Russia really has so much dirt on Trump and propelled him to victory in 2016, where were they in 2020?
All of a sudden, the media agrees that voter fraud – that election-altering manipulations by bad actors – are a preposterous impossibility. How convenient!
More and more, America seems like a house of cards.
And if that’s the case, we’d rather just play ours at an online casino.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, BBC