• by Ed DeNicola , Op-Ed Contributor, September 13, 2024

In the aftermath of the Sept. 10th presidential debate, it has become difficult to find any predictive analytics that still favor Donald Trump.

If not for what happened in 2016 -- when he won despite what the polls and prediction markets predicted -- I would have no doubt about the outcome on Nov. 5th.

Looking across all the meaningful signals -- including political polls, prediction markets, Allan Lichtman's 13 keys, Nielsen ratings, betting site odds, and even misery indices -- all point to Kamala Harris being the favorite to win the election.

Here's how they break down.

The Polls

There are too many to cite individually, so for the sake of time, let’s look at Five-Thirty-Eight’s polling average: As of Sept. 11, Harris was ahead of Trump by 2.6 points (47.0% vs. 44.4%, respectively).

The Markets

As of Sept. 12, prediction markets were reporting election outcomes as follows:

• Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) favor Democrats. Last prices for a Dem win are 0.811 vs. a Rep win at 0.217.

• PredictIt favors Harris with a 56 cents price vs. 48 cents for Trump.

• Polymarket favors Harris for a popular vote win at 74% vs. Trump at 26%. However, its election forecast market is much closer with Harris at 50% and Trump 49%. On the battleground state level, it favors Trump in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania vs. Harris taking Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The Keys

The 13 Keys prediction system doesn’t have a specific key for debates. Based on my extensive research, they’re not highly correlated with election outcomes. As of this month, Allan Lichtman went public with his prediction that Harris will win. Only three of the 13 Keys have turned false, and it takes six false keys to predict an incumbent party loss.

The Ratings

Nielsen TV ratings for the Democratic National Convention were 15% higher than for the Republican's. Not only was this true on a national level, but TV ratings were also higher in some key battleground states including Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

It's true that we don’t know how accurate TV ratings are at predicting outcomes, but we do know they reflect the popularity of TV shows and events including the people and content that comprise them.

The Betting

BetOnline, a privately held online betting company located in Panama, NY, had election odds the morning of the debate with Harris at +100 and Trump at -120. By the end of the debate, the odds changed to Harris at -120 and Trump at +100.

For anyone unfamiliar with betting, odds with a negative symbol represent the favorite. The number after the negative symbol is the amount of money you need to bet to win $100.

The Stock Market

The NASDAQ share price for Trump Media Technology Group (ticker symbol DJT) dropped from $19.42 at 7:30pm on Sept. 10 before the debate to a 52-week low of $15.75 at 9:30am Sept. 11 the morning after. This represents a 19% decline in value.

While not a prediction for who will win the election, the data points to another potential signal favoring Harris.

The Misery

The Misery Index is another method for predicting presidential election outcomes. It comes from an asset management and research firm called Stratagas. According to CNBC, the company reports that it has correctly predicted 15 of the past 16 presidential elections, including every one since 1980.

The way it works is that the company adds the current U.S. unemployment rate to the annualized U.S. inflation rate.

Based on its analysis, if the sum is below 7.353, the incumbent White House party will retain power.

The Misery Index is currently 7.02 indicating a Harris-led Democratic Party victory.

There are still 52 days until the election, and we’ve already seen several black swan events that have changed the predictions one way or the other including Biden’s campaign-ending debate performance and the Trump assassination attempt. There are likely more to come.

Who knows, maybe Steve Bannon will concoct a new scheme from prison -- possibly something along the lines of a political consultancy that uses TikTok-hearts data procured from the Chinese government for the purpose of segmenting the entire U.S. population based on a new groundbreaking psychological framework. The resulting audience segments would be used for data-driven-ad-targeting of America’s undecided voters.

This is completely hypothetical, of course, but I can imagine it happening and that it might even be called Harvard Analytica or HA for short.

The icing on the cake for HA would be that the TikTok data is owned by a Chinese company and modeled there, no U.S. regulations would apply.

Now that would be a story to set the media on fire and bump the one about pet-eating immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, off the front page.