[washingtonismoney]

I think there's a big difference in the odds for a game and the odds of the vote -- the amount and quality of the information. With the Voldemort trust stamping out people discussing their votes, there's much less to go on. Henry, Watson, and McCaffrey are all plausible Voldemort winners. So there's really not much to go on in a prognostication sense. That's different with respect to a game.

That said, the cliche that Vegas doesn't care about the result of the game, only the amount of money being bet on each side, doesn't really think through the issues at all. It's like claiming quoting a market capitalization is useless because the New York Stock Exchange doesn't care what the valuation of individual companies are. That's true, but the aggregated opinions of people with money is valuable signal, even if it isn't always correct.

[washingtonismoney]

I think there's a big difference in the odds for a game and the odds of the vote -- the amount and quality of the information. With the Voldemort trust stamping out people discussing their votes, there's much less to go on. Henry, Watson, and McCaffrey are all plausible Voldemort winners. So there's really not much to go on in a prognostication sense. That's different with respect to a game.

That said, the cliche that Vegas doesn't care about the result of the game, only the amount of money being bet on each side, doesn't really think through the issues at all. It's like claiming quoting a market capitalization is useless because the New York Stock Exchange doesn't care what the valuation of individual companies are. That's true, but the aggregated opinions of people with money is valuable signal, even if it isn't always correct.