Who will win the election? Leading Data Scientist Launches Election Counter That Shows Race Progress in Real-Time

Warning to election watchers: On Oct. 29, Miller unveiled a new website that continuously displays voter counts that PredictIt odds suggest each candidate will win. PredictIt updates its prices once per minute. Miller immediately translates these odds into a prediction for the number of electoral votes (EVs) each candidate will win. “We show where the election is going in almost real time,” he says. “It’s like having your own personal presidential election ticker tape.”

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As I've described in previous stories, Miller used PredictIt in 2020 to make highly accurate decisions on both the presidential race and the two subsequent Georgia Senate runoffs. Miller likes PredictIt because, he says, it's extremely responsive to campaign events. By carefully studying how PredictIt works, Miller developed a model that converts the prices posted on the site into the population vote shares each candidate receives on a moment-to-moment basis. To get there, Miller makes a number of adjustments. For example, he noted that prices have a slight Republican bias because most PredictIt bettors are men who also frequently bet on sports. So his frame corrects the rightward tilt. Likewise, the data scientist found that when a participant is far ahead in PredictIt, the odds change far too abruptly in his favor. Reason: When the race looks like a sure thing, bettors flock to back the “winner,” creating a bandwagon effect that drives prices to “landslide” extremes well beyond the likely margin of victory.

Miller also examined all elections since 1960 and found a close relationship between a candidate's share of the total number of votes cast nationwide and his share of the 538 EVs that decide the winner. He has developed a proprietary framework that converts popular vote counts derived from PredictIt prices into electoral votes.

Miller's real-time number now shows a shift towards Harris

As of Oct. 29 at 3 p.m., Miller's “ticker tape” showed this: Trump/Vance 345, Harris/Walz 193. Next to the totals for each candidate, you'll always find a red or green arrow showing where you stand compared to their count at midnight and the amount of the change. In our snapshot, Harris/Walz is at +1 and Trump/Vance is at -1. “Trump is still way ahead,” says Miller. “But prices are moving in the vice president's favor.” He points out that Trump hit his all-time high of 367 on October 26, versus 171 EVs for Harris, marking a huge turnaround from late September, when the former president was by a wide margin remained behind.

Suddenly, Trump's momentum waned and the race tightened. The tightening has been small so far, but several factors suggest Harris may be making a major comeback. “It has already gained 22 EVs, and on October 29th its gains were several EVs higher at times,” explains Miller. The turning point, he says, was the raucous, six-hour Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on the evening of October 27, during which an insult comic branded Puerto Rico “a floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean.” This rift may have undermined Trump's growing support among Hispanic voters or simply pushed Americans into the Harris column.

“We are seeing a significant increase in American interest in the campaign on PredictIt,” says Miller. “At the moment there are as many people taking part as there are betting on the site. Current bettors are changing their views and new entrants may have different views than the population that has dominated betting to date.”

Miller points out that trading volume on PredictIt has increased from an average of 37,000 per day to 41,000 over the past week. Stronger trading, he says, means more volatility. “And more volatility makes it harder to predict what will happen on November 5th.”

Miller cites another reason why the race remains fluid despite Trump's large lead. He notes that betting providers appear to be advertising for customers on social media. “It’s targeted advertising,” he says. “Like all advertisers, they target the sites where people are most likely to buy their product, in other words, where viewers are most likely to bet on the election. And it's the Republicans who are betting the most.” As a result, he posits, the sites are attracting an inordinate number of Republican-leaning bettors, which could be far more than he has already accounted for. This phenomenon could at least partially explain Trump's gigantic surge in October, whereas we haven't seen the kind of milestones that generally trigger such a surge. Bettors on PredictIt could see big odds for Trump on the sites that run a lot of advertising and adjust their own bets towards Trump to follow the trend.

Or PredictIt might be just right. In fact, the place has long been Miller's North Star. “I’m not changing my assessment that Trump is likely to win,” Miller said. “But the numbers are changing. The volatility, the entry of new people into the betting markets and the impact of advertising are making the outcome increasingly unpredictable.” For possibly the best predictions now being released minute by minute, tune in to Miller's new ticker tape.

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