Four Reasons to Ignore Conventional Wisdom in Georgia
Happy Election Day from the most glorious land of Georgia!
Today, Peach State voters will decide who controls the Senate. And I personally find it hilarious that the State of Georgia is looking more like the Soviet Republican of Georgia, due to the fact that USA Premiere Donald Trump has sent his Red army there to crush the defectors & regime enemies, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who have denied him his most heroic victory in November!
…While at the time same time, revolutionaries Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are poised to overthrow Trump’s Red Party and bring about a Cultural Revolution to this backwards land, where locals still hold outdated beliefs that BOTH gender and God are real.
WHAT’S AT STAKE:
If Warnock and Ossoff win, the Democrats will be able to keep Mitch McConnell from Stalin’ Joe Biden’s agenda for the next 2-years, and will be one step closer to completing their 5-year plan to turn the Sunbelt into a Democratic stronghold.
But to be honest, I do not really put much stock in what I am hearing from the party organs on either side. No one seems to have any clue who will win these elections, both of which are polling within the margin of error with a slight edge to the Democrats. This creates a very difficult situation for bettors due to the fact that when we get into “too close to call” territory, a lot of people like to lean on “conventional wisdom” to justify their bets the way that Justin Bieber likes to lean on his celebrity to justify his drunk driving.
In both cases, it’s just a bad idea.
So here is why I am ignoring conventional wisdom in Georgia:
Everything is different with Trump. Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot but he’s dominating the news as if it is. And after 2016 and 2020, I honestly think it is a worse idea to trust the polls in any Trump-related contest than it is to trust random dudes standing outside of a 7-Eleven asking you to lend them 20 bucks for beer.
But maybe it isn’t. Lots of political hardos say that Trump won in 2016 due to the “Never Hillary” vote in places like Wisconsin and Michigan. Well, Biden probably owes a lot of his 12,000 vote victory in GA last November to moderates and Republicans who went full “Never Trump” in 2020 but would sooner admit to being a PAC-12 football fan than a Democrat. This creates a case for split-ticket voting that is going to be impossible to predict.
It’s not clear who high-turnout favors. As we saw in November, conventional wisdom about high-turnout favoring one party or the other was completely bogus and produced baffling results.
Fundraising numbers are total BS. Technically, Ossoff and Warnock outraised their Republican opponents by more than $50 million combined, but once again, in the last election we saw plenty of examples of how there is a point where voters just don’t care any more and will literally rip their eyeballs out if they have to watch one more add about how Trump is basically Hitler (but worse) or that if the Dems get the Senate, they will round up white people and send them to racial guilt re-education camp aka Coachella weekend #2.
With that in mind, there are only 3 defensible betting strategies today:
- You bought Dems cheap in November when people said these two races would be a total cupckakes for the Republicans with Trump off the ballot. Now sell ’em while they’re high!
- You did your homework and know how to read the election returns, and will trade as precincts report.
- You’re going to skip this election entirely and try to squeeze some value out of its consequences
Obviously it’s already too late for strategy #1.
But if you are going to take approach #2, then keep in mind that there are probably at least 20 hardos on PredictIt who have a highly advanced understanding of how the Georgia electorate works, which they gained by jamming Adderrall up their noses for all of November and December while they traded every last move on the GA Margin of Victory and total vote count markets.
Unfortunately, I personally spent that time working like a motherf*cker for the man and accumulated none of that money-making knowledge, so this one is out for me.
Which leaves…
#3 – Skip the election and bet on the consequences
If the Democrats sweep the Georgia Senate, then Biden’s nominee for OMB Director, Neera Tanden, will be free and clear from a confirmation that looked bleak AF under Mitch McConnell’s rule. The market is already pricing this possibility in but with a Dem win, I would feel comfortable buying this up to 75c.
Secondly, Biden’s second-tier cabinet picks (VA Secretary, EPA, etc.) are all depressed in value because some traders think he can’t get them confirmed by March 1. But a Democratic Senate will remove procedural road blocks to slow that down.
TBH I think they’d get confirmed by March 1 anyway. But a Dem sweep in GA would assure it, unless there are some surprise scandals lurking (look for a blog post on these noms soon).
Where is my money?
TBH, I bought the top of this market back in November and am holding bags on both Perdue and Loeffler. I’m hedging those by buying Dems for the Clean Sweep. We’ll see how it goes.
But you still want to know who will win GA?
Listen, comrade, I’m not risking a trip to the Gulag for backing the wrong horse here. But our friends at Old Bull TV put out an interesting podcast that goes into this question with a lot of granularity.
Give them a listen and bet wisely.
KEENDAWG.
