Betting on Hillary - 11/15/16

Even though I thought I had blown my wad on Hillary's loss, somehow I managed to come through about $3 ahead. It was because PredictIt gave you $15 if you put up $15, so I bet $30 but only half was my money. I ended up only betting around $15 of the $30 so I didn't lose anything, and even made a couple bucks on Maduro in Venezuela. I'm a careful gambler and although I was lulled into thinking Hillary would win from looking at the polls, at the same time I didn't believe everything was great with the state of Obama's nation either. I saw at least one Hillary supporter that went on how great Obama had made everything, how the economy was hunky-dory thanks to the Democrats, and I didn't believe that.

I've bet twice on presidential elections and lost both times. However after losing on Carter (I bet that he would beat Reagan) I wasn't about to bet everything on Hillary winning. Oh I mouthed off on Facebook saying that The Donald would lose ("You're encouraging people to be complacent!") and some people unfriended me over that, but I was never really completely confident of a Hillary win. I thought Michael Moore made a good case as to why the DOnald could win. In retrospect I would say that the reason he won- even though Hillary outspent him- is that the media gave him a lot of free airtime. It seemed that every time you turned on the radio there was a Donald speech being aired. The only time you saw Hillary was when she stumbled into her van like some sort of kidnap victim. I watched a couple of the debates and I didn't think there was any clear loser or winner there. Hillary made a big mistake by insulting Trump supporters, calling them "deplorable". You don't win elections by insulting voters. It sounded condescending but at the same time echoed a lot of what I saw on FB.
Anyway the idea that a prediction market is a better prognosticator than the polls was proved wrong, as the odds on PredictIt vastly favored Hillary. If you had the stomach for a contrarian bet you could have made out like a bandit. That's the problem with PredictIt for me, I think. In order to make any money on it you have to be a contrarian- you have to be willing to bet against the odds. If you bet with the odds, you're not going to make much compared to what you are risking. You have to be a contrarian to make money on it. I'm just glad I broke even.