A data scientist from Northwestern University has gained attention for his unconventional election predictions by using betting markets rather than traditional polls.
Thomas Miller accurately forecast the 2020 presidential election. Now, he’s back with a new forecast: that Vice President Kamala Harris will win against Donald Trump with a landslide.
“Polls are a snapshot of the past,” Miller told Fortune. “The odds on betting sites are a map of the future.”
Miller believes that because polls typically survey small samples of the population and take several days to publish results, they don’t capture shifting voter sentiments accurately.
In contrast, betting markets update in real-time as participants wager their own money on who they believe will win, which could make it a more dynamic and timely predictor.
In 2020, Miller used PredictIt, the largest U.S. political betting site, …