Betting on Politics: Odds and Influence

In this episode, we sit down with Maxim Lott to discuss the surprising recent political developments, including why Biden dropped out of the race, the influence of betting odds versus traditional polling, and the odds for Kamala Harris in the upcoming election. We also explore the evolution of prediction markets and their growing importance in political forecasting, as well as the potential impact of the new right on future elections. Tune in for a detailed and engaging conversation on the dynamics of election betting, political strategy, and the changing landscape of the Republican party.

Maxim Lott: [00:00:00] Yeah. I'm excited for this too. I really appreciate your natalism work that you guys do. So

Simone Collins: we really appreciate the work you do, man. You're on at a perfect time. Like we're probably going to run your interviews with us.

Like usually. Months for us to run these and now we're like, oh my God, we got to run it

Malcolm Collins: with all this election stuff that's going on. This is wild. Yeah. You had, you had disagreed with the betting odds recently.

Maxim Lott: Yes. Yes. I had a post about why Biden won't drop out and all this good reasoning, but the betting odds said he would and he did.

So the lesson is to listen to the betting odds, not any one analyst.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'd love to hear why you thought he wouldn't drop out.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, you know, I thought it wasn't in his interest. If he wanted to, he could have gone to the convention and got the nomination. Yes, thank

Simone Collins: you. That's, that's what I kept telling everyone.

I was like, he's not, like, all the way up through Saturday, it was like, he's not going to drop out. No one can technically force him to drop out. And he's no reason to want to, why would he do it? No one can stop him. He's not going to drop out. So I'm with you on that. And

Malcolm Collins: you also [00:01:00] have the problem that Jill hates Kamala.

And this is like publicly,

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: if she's making the decisions for Biden, she definitely wouldn't want him to drop out if she was a presumptive nominee.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, and it seemed like there was no way for them to truly force him out either, but I think I underestimated how much kind of soft power there is in the Democratic Party with Obama and Pelosi really running the show.

Simone Collins: Like, I don't know, man, they tried everything. I feel like they literally tried everything. Like people drove out to his house, you know, George Clooney, like just, they threw everything at him. And I think, and maybe in the end, because donations started drying up. That was it. You know, just like, yeah, I think it was probably

Malcolm Collins: donors that got him out.

Simone Collins: So

Maxim Lott: you'd think if you can make it to the convention, the donors would, who else are they going to donate to? They don't like Trump. So, but clearly he felt the pressure and he had COVID and a lot of things conspired and he dropped out. So [00:02:00]

Simone Collins: the

Maxim Lott: bettors were not surprised. They had, This at like 70% a couple days before he dropped out.

Simone Collins: Wow. So they,

Maxim Lott: they were right. I, I lost money betting on the other side, but . Wow. Yeah. You

Malcolm Collins: know, he, he got covid we'll see if there was any you know, there was a lot of people interested in something like that happening to him. I was, I was joking. There was a thing about Trump's assassination and people were like, well.

You know, Republicans would be cheering too if Biden was assassinated. I was like, not a single Republican I have ever met would be cheering if Biden was assassinated. They love it. It's a disappointing development

Simone Collins: for Republicans that Biden is no longer running. They were thrilled with Biden running.

Maxim Lott: Yeah. Now the polls have Kamala Harris up by like, maybe, or losing by one point less than Biden was losing by. So we'll see how that goes for them. The betting odds, yeah, the betting odds. It's interesting because you can look at these conditional odds. So you say, if this person's nominated, What are their odds of winning?

And Biden's odds were always [00:03:00] around 30 percent. Kamala Harris's were around 37 percent. So she's slightly more electable, but not much more electable. Oh

Malcolm Collins: gosh. Okay, so we have been talking generally right now. I'm going to introduce you

To anyone who is wondering why the election betting on numbers are a bit off in this. It is because this was filmed.

Around a week ago. And so sorry about that. It just took me a while to process it.

Malcolm Collins: but so people who don't know Maxim Lunt, I Grew up on your stuff, every election cycle.

Loading what's the URL here? Election betting. Election betting odds.com and then the, you had your own website because it is historically speaking, the most accurate predictor of who's going to win an election cycle. And I'd love it if you could talk a little bit about why it's such an accurate predictor of who's gonna win and, and, and it's advantages over traditional polling.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, absolutely. And great to be here with you guys. I love your natalism work. The so I created the site in 2015 and we've tracked [00:04:00] hundreds of races since then. And you can graph it out to see how accurate it is. And what we find is that in general, If the markets say there's a 20 percent chance that someone's going to win a race, that actually happens about 20 percent of the time.

So it's not exactly perfect. You can see the lines, they almost match up. But basically you can go to electionbettingodds. com, click track record, and it'll show you this. And it's been very accurate. It's the single best predictor. If you just want, tell me quickly, who's going to win. This is the best thing.

Thing to go to.

Malcolm Collins: So you're sort of the granddaddy of betting odds stuff. And the field has undergone, we met you at manifest. I think an enormous evolution in the past probably decade or so. Can you talk a little bit about how much, how prediction markets have evolved over the course of your life? Yeah.

Maxim Lott: And I don't know if it's quite accurate to say I'm the granddaddy, you know, there are people like Robin Hanson who might fit that role better.[00:05:00]

He goes to all this stuff. I guess for the general,

Malcolm Collins: you were my first, to this stuff. You made it accessible in a topic that I was passionate about. Right.

Maxim Lott: For, for, for popularizing it. I think. Election betting odds got more than 25 million unique views. So hopefully that's made a difference

And yeah, so prediction markets it has changed a lot over the years I first started looking at these in 2007 And at that time there was one big site It was based in ireland called intrade. com and it was great and people traded there and they accurately predicted things. They were shut down mostly by the U.

S. government. First, their founder died climbing Mount Everest, which is tragic. But then the government said, hey, you're taking American customers and you're not registered with our government. So they sued them and they shut down immediately after that. So there were a couple of years then where there was really almost no [00:06:00] prediction markets.

The best thing was Betfair, which was this UK based place where people bet 99 percent of it. People are betting on sports there and it's legal there. They had this 1 percent yeah, where they were betting on elections. And it was annoying for me as a reporter, cause we would want to report on these odds on the Stossel show on Fox news and they The Betfair site, cause it's these English gamblers there.

The odds are really hard to read. It's like, you know, 30 over 4. 5. So I'd have to manually convert all these in Excel sheet to like 55%. And then eventually I figured, Oh, let's, I can automate this and then I can put it on a website. So that's how election betting started. And since then, there've been a lot more entrance into the market.

Like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, you were at Fox. You said,

Maxim Lott: yeah, yeah. Fox news. I was working for John Stossel. So he's a big prediction market guy too, [00:07:00] and help popularize the site.

Malcolm Collins: What happened? So your site goes live because now, you know, there's whole conferences around betting odds and stuff like that. And there's like different ways of measuring them than there were historically, because it's not like sports betting.

Like it was historically now it's like status hierarchy games.

Maxim Lott: Interesting. Yeah. Well, there, people are betting on all sorts of things now. You know, people are betting on the Oscars on foreign elections. Yeah, Matt manifold has a lot of creative markets. But yeah, it's really a blooming area. You had

Malcolm Collins: and you were talking about conditional markets as well.

Where do you see those coming up?

Maxim Lott: Yeah, so on our site, what we do, we create we use the implied odds. So if you have people betting on the nomination and on who's going to win, you can divide them and get a pretty accurate estimate. Manifold, which is still play money for now is trying out literally just saying, okay, bet if you, if Kamala Harris is [00:08:00] the nominee.

How likely is she to win the general election? So that's this conditional odds. It means if something Then what's the odds and that helps you make decisions in life. So if you're a democratic voter you want to know that gavin newsom if he's the nominee it's close to 60 percent that he'll win But if it's harris, it's 37 percent.

So that's pretty important information that the Bettors tell us no, I did not know

Malcolm Collins: now. Let's talk about some of the existing odds right now. So they have a You Like what percent are you looking at? Like what, what are the interesting things you're seeing in the betting odds right now?

Maxim Lott: Yeah. So Trump is favored over Harris by about two to one.

So he's a big lead, but she could definitely win. Yeah. It's a little less than two to one right now. And yeah, the state map, you know, the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, they all lean. In Trump's column right now,

Malcolm Collins: Florida, which has Trump at 92. 5 percent to win. Yeah.

Maxim Lott: Used to be a swing state four years ago, but it's [00:09:00] deep red now.

There's no chance of Biden. When Trump's a Florida man,

Malcolm Collins: you know, he

Maxim Lott: is now officially. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That is fascinating. What do you think has changed there? Like what, what are your sort of calculations going into this? What would you be doing if you were a Democrat right now in terms of the VP candidate, et cetera?

Maxim Lott: I. Yeah, well, I'm in Florida right now, actually, and it it seems like the Santas made a big difference there in terms of having a coven response that was so diametrically different from New York, et cetera. People said this is the alternate model. Pretty much everyone here liked that alternate model.

Yeah. And. So I think people shifted their politics there. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: so you think he's literally shifted Democrats to believe that the, like, Republicans work?

Maxim Lott: In Florida, I think, yeah, that's how, that's why it's deep red on the election betting odds map.

Malcolm Collins: I think it also shows how unpopular Harris is that DeSantis is, is predicted to win.

And she, [00:10:00] she's at only one third odds.

Maxim Lott: Trump is, yeah. And yeah it, it, It does show that if the Democrats did run a normal candidate like Newsom or Whitmer, the bettors think that that candidate would win. Even though the polls currently have them down a lot, that's likely just because they don't have name recognition.

So the bettors are forecasting that. That's why bettors are better than just looking at polls, because they model all sorts of things.

Malcolm Collins: So what do you think the odds are of a contested convention these days?

Maxim Lott: They're low. It looks like Kamala Harris has wrapped it up. She's at 87 percent to get the nomination.

And Pelosi just endorsed her, so I think that's right. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: the Democratic voters are not going to like this. It's actually been pretty interesting from our perspective. We're going to fill in an episode on this. Is watching the Democratic commentators response to the Kamala Harris candidacy. It's just like holistically positive.

It doesn't even include the plausibility of changing her for a different candidate, which I think is going to [00:11:00] really bite them in the butt.

Maxim Lott: You know, it's really interesting because it reminds you of what they were doing with Biden one year ago, two years ago. It's like, Oh, he's not senile. This is a conspiracy theory.

Simone Collins: And

Maxim Lott: then, you know. Yeah, same thing with Harris as soon as she starts going off on her maniacal lap or her, the future of tomorrow is what tomorrow is. I love that

Simone Collins: so much. Her catchphrases are,

Malcolm Collins: I've got to add the SNL skit about Oh, no, no, it was a daily show skit about that, where she has like a guru speechwriter, like in the sand or something.

Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time. Seems like maybe it's a small issue. It's a big issue. You need to get to go. I need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work [00:12:00] and get home.

 She's come so far since our first session

My name is Dahlia Rose hibiscus and I am vice president Kamala Harris's holistic thought advisor I lead the vice president on not so much sentences as idea voyages. It's a process I call speaking without thinking. That's on top of everything else that we know and don't know yet. Based on what we've just been able to see and because we've seen it or not doesn't mean it hasn't happened

the first thing I do is cut out all the words, individually. And then I take those words to my word cave.

That's where I wait to learn what order the universe wants them to be in. Have vibrations. The feeling they give you is so much more powerful than what they mean. We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible possible. Actually happen. Hi, I'm Oliver [00:13:00] Bartholomew, and I'm 16 and a half years old, and I'm the speechwriter for Columba Harris. Since I was little, I liked words. Writing words is fun, so I made writing words my job.

Space is exciting. Space, it affects us all. And it connects us all. It's not all fun though. Sometimes I have to write about bad stuff, like war. Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia.

Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that's wrong. Once, I thought it would be neat if Karma wore a blue suit.

And told people she was wearing it. Because I like it. I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit. I can't take all the credit though. Me and Mr. [00:14:00] Kamala are a team.

But she kind of is crazy or something, and she kind of scares me, and you can't fake that kind of influence.

You're either born with it, or you're either not. it is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: so I have, I have a broader question about Betting rather than polling for accurate election data. I'm running for state rep, no one in the political sphere, you know, among people running for office, PACs, et cetera discuss betting odds when they're looking at things, they're like, Oh, well, what does the polling say?

Well, you know, like, Oh, you should run a poll. And I think a lot of that's because. They're very incestuous. Like there's a lot of like, Oh, well, everyone hires each other's companies. And this is almost like an MLM scheme. Like people are just trying to get politicians to come in and raise money so that everyone can just hire the same people and keep the industry running.

But. I'm just so confused as to why [00:15:00] the discussion hasn't already shifted to looking only at betting odds because it's just one, it's way cheaper to it's way more accurate. It's very confusing. Where are you seeing things going in terms of adoption? Because I think that the media is starting to look at it more and cover betting odds more.

But it's very lumpy in terms of like, the establishment in the political realm, like actual operatives, actual donors making decisions based on betting odds rather than pulling, which is bizarre.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, absolutely. Well, one thing to notice is that better is do need polls. So we're never going to a hundred percent switch, but they need to have some basis for what's going on.

And then, you know, But the other thing why, why don't the political class look at these betting odds, which are better than just polls? And Robin Hanson, brilliant guy who actually kind of coined this prediction market idea, he's thought a lot about this, and I think The reason that he's come up with is [00:16:00] that decision makers don't like their power being taken away.

So if you are a political decision maker, you can say, Oh, this poll, you know, it's up 12 percent among black Americans and down four, you know, and therefore we should do this. If it's just the betting odds saying, Oh, you should pick Newsome. They lose their power. Power to weigh in. And it's just, okay, this is what it was.

You know, you didn't really need me to tell you that you could have looked at the betting on it. So that might be a reason for the slow uptake among political consultants. The good news is, yeah, the media seems to be picking up on it more and more. Nate Silver is citing them all the time now. I do think I do think they played some slight role in the Biden stepping down, like.

The fact that they had his stepping down at such high odds made Silver very widely read, reciting that a lot. I think, I think that may have made some difference or self reinforcing cycle there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I often thought if we were running for a [00:17:00] slightly higher position than when you're running for Simone, that I put big bets on myself, then use that to raise money from donors.

Yeah. Look at how high up in the odds I am. Yeah, you see the odds. Cause nobody,

Maxim Lott: I mean, fewer people bet on the local stuff. And this is why the CFTC wants to ban them, might be a good segway to that. But yeah,

Malcolm Collins: let's talk about the battle about banning or unbanning. Like what's the public utility of these systems?

Maxim Lott: Yeah, I mean, the public utility is huge. Like, you know, if you're a voter, it tells you who's most electable. It's if you have a business and you're going to be regulated out of business by one president, but not the other, that's really important to know to plan for. So the public utility, I think, and also just intellectually interesting and All of us are spending many hours following the news.

Why not make it efficient? I know you can get all that information by looking at the odds in minutes. The public utility is huge. The government regulators don't care that much is the [00:18:00] latest from them.

Malcolm Collins: It's it's so are you, Oh, so they've been disinterested recently, or have you seen interest? Oh, well,

Maxim Lott: the yellow.

Yeah. They're, they're planning on banning. So a couple of years, what's the

Malcolm Collins: argument for that?

Maxim Lott: Yeah. So, so a couple of months ago, they announced, they put together this formal proposal of regulation, which would ban political betting in the U. S. and also betting on Oscar winners, all this stuff. Yeah, so, yeah.

Wait,

Malcolm Collins: what's the logic for banning Oscar winner betting?

Simone Collins: Yeah, and we have sports betting is now pervasive here. It's so odd to me that, That we've now seen this giant rollout of sports betting in the U. S. And yet now we're seeing suppression of the cool, like the substance, substance. I don't know why I'm saying it's substantive betting, but I, I don't know.

I just feel like, you know,

Maxim Lott: It is more substantive than, you know, blackjack. So why they, they say, they say manipulation, like we were [00:19:00] joking about earlier, but in practice, you know, that's, that's pretty hard to do. Like if you have money on Trump, like you're not actually going to be able to swing the election to Trump, for example.

So, and no one person can really do that. So I think it's. very good reason to ban them. You asked about the Oscar thing. Yeah, I guess you could have manipulation there too. Some Oscar judge throws it. But it's, it's, it pales in comparison to the benefits and it just, So rarely happens. I don't, I

Malcolm Collins: love this complaint.

Like, Oh, politically interest people could manipulate this. And it's like, well then, so are you punishing the pollsters that manipulated the odds in the Hillary Trump election?

Maxim Lott: Right. Great point.

Malcolm Collins: You're not. So that's not really what you're worried about.

Maxim Lott: Right. Yeah. People manipulate polls all the time.

Like there are politically affiliated consultants that it's well known that they do. It's

Malcolm Collins: part of the industry. It's shocking to me that that would be the [00:20:00] core argument that they're using. But I guess the bureaucrats are going to bureaucrat. It

Maxim Lott: is, yeah. The other reason is that they don't want to It would be too much work for them.

To Well,

Malcolm Collins: which department actually has the ability to make these laws? Because, you

Maxim Lott: know CFTC, one of the many alphabet soup agencies out there. Commodity Futures and Trading Commission.

Malcolm Collins: If Trump wins and we get in the administration, we'll push to get those guys, just get rid of them.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If Trump wins, it's interesting.

I mean, the election actually has implications for the betting markets. If Trump wins, likely this regulation, even though it's been formally proposed, won't go through. But if Biden wins, it's pretty much on track to do that, though people are trying to stop it by threatening legal action and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Well, okay. So, what do you think of, and this is something we've been talking a lot about on the show recently, is this of the rise of the new right as somebody who's been like a political watcher for a long time. [00:21:00] By that, what I mean is there seems to be a shift, as we said, like in the nineties, the big, big corp.

Interest was Republican and tech entrepreneur was Democrat, and now it's tech entrepreneur, Republican, big corp, Democrat. How, how do you see this shift playing out in sort of the, the likelihood of different people winning, et cetera?

Maxim Lott: Yeah, well, yeah, there's absolutely been this huge shift and realignment going on.

And I think JD Vance, Trump's new VP pick really exemplifies that. Yeah. Where he's, he's a populist through and through, you know, he supports tariffs, he supports more redistributive economic things. But then culturally, he's very much like, we need to revive the culture that we used to have, which was healthier.

And I, that, that, I, I think the pick of Vance was actually very, will be very important in cementing that whether you agree with it or not in the future, because he's going [00:22:00] to be leading if Trump wins this election. Whereas if you had picked Burgum or more of a business Republican, I think in 2028 you could see this reverting.

So, you know, it's very, this only happens like, I don't know, once or twice a century that you get a realignment, but it seems like we're living through one of those.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, do you think that the business Republicans could ever come back at this point? Yeah. Absolutely. I,

Maxim Lott: if Trump loses, maybe, yeah. But if he wins, I think Vance is a pretty big shoe in for 2028.

And I think the populists have a big edge there.

Malcolm Collins: And what are your thoughts on the theocratic faction of the base? Because they seem to have a lot less power in this election than I've seen them have historically.

Maxim Lott: Yeah. Although I guess they already won in some ways by getting Roe v. Wade repealed. Yeah.

So I think there is a bit of a. pendulum swinging back now where Trump got on the platform now saying we don't, he removed the part saying we want a national federal legislative [00:23:00] ban on abortion. And so yeah, they're definitely, oh, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I think that was really astute of him. I mean, I think

Maxim Lott: he's right.

Agreed, agreed, agreed. I

Malcolm Collins: got you guys the win of the century now. I don't have to do anything else for you.

Maxim Lott: Yeah. And it should be a state by state issue. And yeah, so I agree. I think that's smart politically and policy wise, but yeah, you're right. The religious faction is losing power. I mean, people in the U S are less religious now, including conservatives.

So just the trends line up with that.

Simone Collins: I mean, Catholics are getting tons of abortions and using birth control. So what's up with that? One thing I really wanted to ask you though, just, As we, as we wrap up discussion of like, political betting and betting odds I I'm really interested in the effect when it comes to education and learning with kids that pre testing has on knowledge acquisition, you know, like when you test yourself on a subject before and you're like, well, I don't know the answer, maybe it's this, then later when you're learning it, you're like really paying attention.

And now that you've been, you know, like you said, he lost money on like, you know, [00:24:00] Biden. Dropping out of the race, you know, you are involved in making these predictions, you know, you're playing the game. I'm really curious over time how this has changed your consumption of knowledge. Like, have you, have you changed the way that you're looking at information?

What are your new sources and how are you making these calculations in your head? Like, has your process changed? I guess, cause it's kind of hard to like explain how you're internally thinking and how it's different, but. I'm curious.

Maxim Lott: I do check my own website. So when there's something big going on, that's the first thing I go to.

I still also look at the polls to then make my own judgment about whether I think the betters are right. Which polls

Simone Collins: do you like? Which do you trust?

Maxim Lott: Well, I, I use the real clear average for the most part. And then I also, I look within the polls. So if you have a New York Times poll. One week that has Trump up two and the next week they have Trump up five, that probably says something because the New York Times didn't change internally.

Oh, so directionality.

Simone Collins: [00:25:00] Yes. Oh, interesting. Very smart.

Maxim Lott: So that's my personal strategy, reading the polls. But yeah, the betters are doing the same thing and adding even more fancy and intelligent stuff sometimes.

Simone Collins: Hmm. What's an example of something slightly more fancy that they do now? I'm very curious.

Maxim Lott: Well, I mean, the models get very complex.

So Nate Silver has his public model. Yeah. But people who are trading like big money on these things definitely have their own private models. It's, you know, regression analysis. Oh,

Simone Collins: wow. Different

Maxim Lott: variables, all, all this stuff.

Simone Collins: Getting super mathy on it. Wow. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: love

Malcolm Collins: how slow some of the polls could be.

Hold on. I just checked out where 538 to win is right now, and it just says forecast suspended. The final question I wanted to ask you on this stuff is you used to be a Fox News like worker in the days of the old Republican party. Can you describe sort of [00:26:00] culturally what it's been like in terms of the people, you know, to see the shift in the Republican party that has happened since that period?

Maxim Lott: I think definitely a lot of people have shifted and I think people. I think the big thing is Republicans at some point were kind of the party of the establishment, like protecting the institutions and all this. And I think in the 2010s, they really did, the institutions really kind of turned against them.

They started, you know, banning Republicans from social media, the university started firing them, all this stuff, and they kind of felt okay, so we're, we're not defending the institutions anymore, what are we doing? And I think a lot of people had this kind of reconversion to, okay, we're going to either take this over, as you know, DeSantis is trying to do in Florida with the universities, or, but some kind of more pop, more interventionist, more populist [00:27:00] thing.

And so that's the big shift I've seen, and I think that's the cause of the shift. And yeah, not really anything.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and so you hang out with like a lot of techie crowds and stuff like that. Have you seen their attitudes shifting recently? I mean, I would say personally, I have like, it used to be that Republican would like keep you from getting hired.

And now it's like avant garde.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, definitely. In the last two years, my personal theory is that must buying Twitter caused a lot of this vibe shift as it's referred to, because, you know, So many tech CEOs and journalists are on there. They're getting your information there. And we like to think of ourselves as above algorithms, but we're not.

So they're suddenly getting fed all this viral content and articles that they weren't seeing before, before they were getting, you know, only the Jack Dorsey approved hashtags and they don't even notice this, but suddenly their information diets, totally different. And yeah, you have. Tech people endorsing Trump.

And it's a very different [00:28:00] vibe.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I that's a, yeah, that's a good way to put it. I mean, I, I'd say that, that now was in tech circles, like being Republicans, the new trans it's like out there and weird, but like accepted which was not in tech circles. Five, six years ago when I was, you know, first in this stuff.

Well, this is fantastic. It's been any, any final thoughts that you wanted to have on betting odds or anything like that, or the election cycle right now?

Maxim Lott: I guess the last thing I'll say, there's a lot of money on these markets. There's over 200 million on poly market. Yeah. Yeah. Just on the presidential election, there is over 50 million on predicted tens of millions on that fair.

It's a big. Industry and

Simone Collins: bigger than ever, right? Presumably this is a lot more than last cycle.

Maxim Lott: The last cycle is big too. I think by the time the cycle wraps up, it'll be bigger than ever. But yeah, these are efficient markets with these kinds of markets and. They give good information.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, [00:29:00] that'd be very hard market to manipulate.

Maxim Lott: Yeah, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Why are they legal? Like, how have these companies, did they need to register as betting markets? Or how'd they get away with that?

Maxim Lott: It's a whole mishmash. So some of them are in the UK, predicted got grandfathered in, which the government is trying to take away that status. They're fighting it in court.

Polly Market doesn't accept Americans. And yeah, but they're crypto based. So anyone in the world can kind of use that. So there's yeah, so there are all sorts of ways these places are still running without completely running afoul of the regulators.

Malcolm Collins: That's really cool. Well, it's been great having you on.

We'd love to have you on again. And thank you for your time.

Maxim Lott: Thank you. This has been great. Great talking to you.