The Political Trader’s Guide to Super Tuesday
Introducing a one-stop shop with the latest market prices and live election results for every state — all on guesser.com
Election year had a surprising beginning. A disastrous kick off in Iowa, the consolidation of Bernie Sanders as Democratic national front-runner and President Trump acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial.
As we wait for a further early state result this weekend in South Carolina, the political trader community gets ready for a March madness that will grab attention not only from Democrats, but from the entire national political landscape. Traders should see this month as a golden opportunity to profit off their political predictions.
Super Tuesday — The Big Prize
On March 3rd, Super Tuesday, more than a third of all delegates for the Democratic National Convention are up for grabs on this single day.
Super Tuesday includes 14 states across the country, plus American Samoa and also Democrats Abroad, whose vote begins this day and extends until next week. This diverse set will include heavily Democratic states like Massachusetts, traditionally Republican ones such as Texas and divided states like Colorado or Virginia. The star guest this year will undoubtedly be California, which has moved from an early June primary up to March 3rd. The Golden State is the largest state in terms of pledged delegates, with 415 over a total of 3979. It takes 1991 delegates to win the party’s nomination, so you get an idea of the West Coast’s weight in this battle.
With the Democratic choice still being relatively undecided — 6 considerable candidates? — these states voting all at once will take the race to the next stage, probably leaving only two or three contenders fighting for the nomination after it. Get ready for some important dropouts on the days after the event.
Guesser.com — Track All The Action
The speed and sensitivity with which betting markets react to the first traces of new information provides insight that continues to beat polling — PredictIt charts showed Bernie as the national front runner 2 weeks before the RCP poll average.
But the landscape of tools for political traders still lacks the desirable quality, making operations much less efficient than they could be. A few weeks the blog Augur Edge wrote these thoughts about some needed improvements in tracking the Iowa caucuses:
A large part of the community saw themselves in this situation that night or during the New Hampshire and Nevada votes. It can only get worse when 14 states open their polls or precincts, each in their own time zone and with their own particular electoral procedures. With the tools used so far, keeping a pulse on this would be a headache.
Taking a view on the most decisive day in the presidential primary calendar, we’ve accepted the challenge of solving this fragmented experience problem by launching a brand new page focused on boosting efficiency when trading on political markets. From today you can find at guesser.com a special Super Tuesday dashboard that will be the only place to show you the latest PredictIt prices and trends along with election live data.
Each card represents a PredictIt Primaries market, with the state’s name above, containing inside, from left to right:
- 👤 Photo and name of the three favorite candidates in each market.
- 📉 The last hour price trend that each candidate is following: negative will be represented in blue color, while uptrend is green.
- 💸 The current trading price for each candidate.
- 🗳️ The votes share each candidate is getting in the respective state primary (data starts to be shown on Super Tuesday).
- 📝 The state delegates each candidate has won based on their vote share (data starts to be shown on Super Tuesday).
Both vote share and delegate count data will be updated in real time from our partners Decision Desk HQ, the lowest latency live Election day data out there. During March 3rd the percentage completed of each state’s reported results will be shown in pink color at the upper right of each card.
Additionally you will see a Twitter feed curated by @guesser where the most relevant information, polling data, projections and first electoral reports will be immediately listed.
At the top of the page you will also find a countdown timer for the start of the event coverage by most media outlets — Tuesday March 3, 7am ET — as well as a direct link to join the Prediction Markets Discord server, a newly created community in the political trading crowd.
Tuesday— 3 Things To Keep An Eye On
1) Sanders has momentum
Since the Iowa caucuses, Sanders has been leading almost every national poll. He had already taken a clear advantage in PredictIt’s Democratic Nomination market before, where as of Feb 28th, he’s trading around 57¢, 35 points above Joe Biden, in second place at 22¢.
A Morning Consult poll conducted the day after Nevada found a notable rise in the Vermont Senator’s support when facing Trump next fall, as well as in his popularity among black voters, a field that he now leads for the first time in the race. If we add this to Bernie’s campaign enormous effort around the Latino community, which will represent 30% of eligible voters in both California and Texas, it’s something that could end up significantly shaping the Democratic race.
Heading into March 3rd, Sanders is currently leading 10 of the 15 Super Tuesday state markets in PredictIt, trading over 90¢ in 6 of them.
2) Biden is alive
Probably the two biggest disappointments of the early states phase, both falling short of the threshold to win any delegate in Iowa and New Hampshire, were Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. Warren couldn’t reach it in Nevada either, where Biden did meet expectations ranking second, although he only amounts to 7 delegates so far in the race.
The former Vice President still has one shot in South Carolina, his supposed firewall before March 3rd. He’s widely leading the last early state’s market in PredictIt, currently trading around 90¢, and also the RCP poll average for the state with a +14 point spread.
While he now leads 4 markets out of 15 for Super Tuesday, the threat of a booming Bernie Sanders this late February could end up harming Joe Biden’s performance on Super Tuesday, where he must win at least the southeastern states — Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina. That’s if Biden doesn’t want to go from being national front-runner in January to falling out of the race in March.
3) Bloomberg debuts
Super Tuesday is the first time on the ballot for Bloomberg. March 3rd will be a first test for the billionaire, who had good momentum on the markets in early February, reaching second on both PredictIt and Betfair’s Democratic Nomination markets. Yet his rise has been recently spoiled by two poor debate performances and the constant accusations about his racially divisive policies in his times as New York City mayor.
Despite him trading in the top 3 of most Super Tuesday markets, Michael Bloomberg doesn’t lead any Super Tuesday state in PredictIt right now. He leads on some RCP Poll averages, concretely in Arkansas and Oklahoma, but none of the states has enough survey data to make this polling reliable.
All hope for Bloomberg next Tuesday will fall on the fruits of the media blitz his campaign has been doing in these states since the billionaire decided to bypass the early voting phase.
Having spent in Iowa a measly $160 in advertising while Sanders and Buttigieg devoted more than $10 million each, the Bloomberg campaign has already spent around $150m on the 14 states at stake on March 3rd. The other candidates had spent a combined less than $50m. Do ads buy actual votes? We’ll find out on Tuesday…
The fastest and most relevant data for PredictIt markets and live election results is available for you now. 15 primaries, 7 candidates, 1 website.
Thank you for reading! You can also:
🔮 Visit our website
🐤 Follow us on Twitter
🙌 Join our Discord chat
✉️ Get in touch
