The Paradox of Political Polls

The more people learned about polling techniques and were exposed to the results, the more biased the results became. Why?

Despite their long history, pre-election polls have one major flaw: respondents have free will to lie, change their minds, and cheat on past ballots. Recent examples from the United Kingdom and the United States show that a large part of the population is either unrepresented in the surveyed sample and therefore difficult to correct, or changes their voting intentions at the last minute depending on factors direct or voluntary (a fact based on statistical sample surveys makes it difficult to track the cause of this change). Which is very clearly the case during this election, the number of voters is a record!

What if too many polls make them obsolete? And if we were faced with a paradox, which I would define as follows: The more people understand polling techniques and are exposed to the results, the more biased the results are” ?
Which is not the case for bookmakers for example Unibet, Bwin, Betclic…

Political polls versus opinions and information bubble

Furthermore, the continued publication and national exposure of public opinion research collides with two interacting psychological phenomena: confirmation bias means that one tends to prefer information in the direction of his thoughts and assumptions; at the same time, filtered information bubbles lead to preferring He has similar sources of information and therefore tends to agree with him (whether friends on social networks, or choosing sources of traditional information, known to the public with their editorial lines).

Faced with uncertainty and biased samples, forecasting tools other than Surveys can emerge, and I think that the most relevant is the one that seemed incongruous to me a year ago: online gambling with sites like Unibet, Bwin, Betclic.

Presidential Elections are like the PMU

The first betting on the election looks like what you see on a racetrack. Each candidate has a rank, which is constantly changing. This is calculated by experts using computers, who can integrate opinion polls, socio-economic factors, recent events, results of previous consultations and issues already recorded in their calculations.

For example, if a bettor bets the amount that night, he will be elected on the evening of April 10 and he will restore his initial stake, increasing his amount by approximately (from 5/6 to 11/10, depending on the site). Obviously, if he does not become president, he will definitely lose the initial bet. Given this table, if Nicolas Dupont-Aignan wins, a very lucky or very visionary person can win up to 1000 times their stake.

As a result, bookmakers will have to decide between increasing the odds to attract potential bettors to their sites and lowering the odds so as not to overpay the winner and keep their winnings. The mechanism therefore tends to self-regulate, which is why we see a consensus on the scores on this table, the gap between the three highest rated candidates is negligible, thus the bookmakers Unibet, Bwin, Betclic compete with advertising offers and promotional activities between them.

A good punter is a good trader

The second bet I found is similar to how the stock market works. The site is a marketplace for trading products that function like stocks. A Yes product will be paid 1 $ on election night if the candidate it represents wins the election, and otherwise 0. Conversely, a No product will be paid 1 $ if it loses and worthless if he wins. Therefore, its price can fluctuate between 0 $ and 1 $, expressed in cents. Here, it is up to the bettor to set the price himself. If an investor owns a candidate's shares and thinks they won't be elected, they can sell them to another person as long as their sale and purchase prices are comparable. But if all sellers want a price that buyers are not willing to pay, then the deal won't happen. Thus, the odds displayed are the price of the last trade, and therefore represent the market consensus on the probability of winning for this or that candidate.

As a result, bettors can record profits or losses well before the election. By purchasing this candidate's Yes shares on February 5 and selling them on February 21, I would get about twice as much initial participation, even ignoring the May 7 result. So we can play games either by predicting the end result or simply by predicting trends over a given period of time.

Better than the polls wanting to win your Paris allows you to find the final winner of the presidential election

In both cases, the psychological biases associated with the poll and its results were weighed out because participants were not interested in betting on the outcome they wanted, but on the outcome they thought would happen. Therefore, the prediction system based on greed seems to be less susceptible to manipulation, whether voluntary or involuntary, and bettors have no interest in playing the game. But this raises the difficult question ethical to pay for your opinion….

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