The Orange County {Betting} Matrix is Here
Animals,
Some preamble first: this piece is about betting on Orange County’s election results in California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recall, but to understand where we’re going, it is absolutely critical to review the national treasure of a film known as The Matrix.
The Matrix is about an extremely boring tech worker named Neo (Keanu Reeves). There are actually a lot of very boring tech workers in Orange County too, but do not be deceived, that is not what matters here. What matters to this betting market is that Neo has super powers that help him defeat evil robots who have locked all of humanity inside a digital prison called “The Matrix.”
Neo defeats these evil robots (who are almost identical to the the autistic bros betting on politics) by spotting “glitches” in the Matrix. Exploiting these glitches in reality’s coding allows him to do some serious damage and basically become a god, like me.
So, what is the glitch in California’s recall Matrix, and what does it have to do with Orange County?
Every time STATE-LEVEL ballot counts come out, massive boneheads rush in to bet that COUNTY-LEVEL results will move in the same direction.
FOR ORANGE COUNTY, WHICH HAS BEEN MOVING FROM 80/20 “YES” TO 60/40 “YES” ON RECALL…
This means that there is a freaky amount of dumb money flooding in to bet that a region most famous for ska music, surf bros, COVID denial, and Mischa Barton’s eating disorder will choose to keep keep Gavin Newsom in office during an election where polls are predicting that the whole state might shift from D+29… to a potential Republican win.
Honestly this mistake is so boneheaded that I can only assume it is just lazy degens trying to get a better return than the main market is currently offering.
Let’s look at why this is a bad idea.
Yesterday, another bad batch of STATEWIDE ballots came in for the GOP.
And here is how the boneheads reacted in Orange County’s market. Keep in mind that this chart only spans 24-hours, aka 1 cycle of ballots:
In the last 24 hours, the price of OC voting YES on the recall dipped from ~80c to ~60c. WTF!!???
Again, we are talking about Orange County, which every Republican presidential nominee from WWII until Trump has won. Its beaches are pretty much the holy land for white boy frat stars worldwide.
WARNING: I am not going to tell you that Orange County is a LOCK to recall Newsom. That would be a bonehead prediction. The OC is MUCH more Democratic that it used to be and people have good reasons to think it might vote that way in 2021..
However, I am going to tell you why it’s an absolute steal to take the YES side of this bet up to the low 70s.
- Though weakened, Orange County is still the GOP’s West Coast stronghold
- Trump got nuked here in 2020, but the GOP re-took 2 House seats in that same cycle
- Newsom only carried OC by 0.2% in 2018 — and every piece of polling suggests that in this election, the State of California will be 10+ points to the right of where it’s been lately
TRANSLATION: Republicans are way more excited to vote than Democrats and there are a ton of Republicans in Orange County. In an election year where the state is predicted to shift from D+29 to potentially D+5 — the fact that Newsom barely won here in 2018 tells me that the pre-panic odds of 80% for YES to the RECALL were probably about right.
And that’s how I’m betting.
Aren’t you glad you’ve got some help ducking these bullets?
KEENDAWG.
