This is the piece I submitted to Daily Caller on Election Night reporting that a political market was spiking for Donald Trump, but which the editor didn’t see until it was overtaken by events:
Donald Trump’s likelihood of winning on one political market has spiked 43 percentage points today to a 65% likelihood of winning.
This market, known as PredictIt, has shown Hillary Clinton with a substantial lead throughout the presidential race as punters looked to make a buck off of her inevitable victory at the polls. Trump’s percentage likelihood to win according to this market peaked in the high thirties, and had been dropping in recent days.
However, as news begins to flow in showing Trump has done better than expected in some key battleground states, markets have begun to shift suddenly.
In such polls, investors buy a security that is worth one dollar if the outcome purchased pays off. For instance, if you buy TRUMP.USPREZ16 and Trump does in fact win the 2016 presidential election, the security pays you one dollar.
The price of the security thus tends to translate directly into a percentage likelihood of winning according to the whole group of investors participating in the market. If the investors as a group believe that Trump has a 25% likelihood of winning the presidency, the Trump security would settle at 25 cents.
Instead, the security has soared this evening as news has begin to come in, indicating that Trump is outperforming expectations of those who had participated in the market to this point.