Irish Presidential Election - Final Thoughts Before Election Day

Well now, a lot has happened since I last posted about this. Catherine Connolly is now trading all the way up at 96c to win tomorrow's Irish presidential election. Although I believe she is still undervalued, there isn't really much point in entering at this point if you haven't already been following the action. A crucial component of any kind of betting is estimation of uncertainty and factoring the variance due to this uncertainty into account. In my case, I have a very high degree of certainty over who will win this election, so I have placed my highest stake ever on it. If you've been following from afar, this is very much a good to hold or sell if you want peace of mind kind of territory.

Following directly on from this, I was considering giving out a couple of extra picks, on both turnout and margin of victory. I've decided not to because I can truly get a good read on it and part of financial discipline is passing up an opportunity if you are not quite confident in the edge. Right now, based on the latest polling and betting odds, Connolly is looking most likely to win by over 20%.

A few reasons I would urge caution before taking such a market: first, you would want to be careful of what constitutes margin of victory. Since Irish voting uses proportional representation, you may not know the winner at the end of the first count. Candidates are successively eliminated until someone reaches the quota. Any margin of victory market would want to be clear on whether this would apply to the first count or the final count (though in this case it would be most likely be immaterial as Connolly is anticipated to win on the first count).

Second reason I would be cautious is that Irish polls can have undercurrents that they don't quite catch. Notably, seven years ago, Peter Casey did considerably better than any poll before election day had suggested and even then he still did better than the exit polls implied (he still fell way short of the incumbent Michael D Higgins, though). The media implied his surge was due to comments he made about travellers which had resonated with the Irish dissident right. I don't know how much weight I give that. I would note that there is a soundbite going around of current candidate Heather Humphreys saying "a man is a man and a woman is a woman". Even though she backpedals immediately after, there are a lot more people in Ireland than you would think who take men in women's spaces very seriously and they'll hold their nose and vote for an uninspiring government candidate if she appears to align with them on just one social issue.

Thirdly, Irish politics doesn't really have blowouts. The political spectrum here clusters around the centre with a tendency for small c conservatism across the board. Even Michael D Higgins, a historically popular president, did not receive a majority of the vote on a first count the first time he ran for president and he was seen a considerably less divisive figure than Connolly is now. Connolly's base is energised and Humphreys is not but when election day comes around, some people who don't like Humphreys will hold their nose and vote for her because they don't like Connolly and thus it won't be close but it may be closer than expected. I can see the margin of victory for Connolly approaching the 20% mark but then settling around 18%.

The other market I was looking at was turnout. This one is another potential betting risk as even though spoiled votes are not counted in the valid poll used for computing quotas and margins, they are included in the turnout on Polymarket's turnout market. Some who observe the popular spoil the vote campaign on social media might go for a lower turnout in the 30s but I believe this would be a mistake as it may not account for spoiled votes being included in the turnout.

It's also somewhat difficult to get a decent estimate for turnout as we are in uncharted territory here somewhat. In addition to the spoil the vote campaign, Connolly has had an amount of grassroots support that many found unexpected, which is an upward pressure on turnout. Jim Gavin withdrew but his name is still on the ballot and it appears that many people will still vote for him rather than spoil their ballot or not vote at all. It's a downward pressure but potentially not by as much as expected.

Another thing which I believe will affect turnout is the ongoing riots in Citywest that started after a migrant who had been issued with a deportation order was apprehended on crimes of a serious sexual nature against a minor. Immigration is a powder keg topic over here at the moment and it's not the first time that migrant crime has led to rioting. I don't see Citywest falling over itself to vote for the government candidate nor for the socialist candidate who although she hasn't come out pro open borders, she hasn't come out against open borders either. My personal estimate is that turnout ends up being around the 40% mark give or take a few percent as even 2018's turnout got to 43% despite it being a popular incumbent against a handful of dissidents. I think sub 36% is quite bearish considering spoiled votes count for turnout and one campaign has a lot of energy behind it.

So yeah, this post is a little more about trigger discipline and taking into account as many factors as possible before playing what you view to be an edge. I won't be recommending my estimates above as picks though feel free to act on them if they make sense. I may play them personally if I get any reliable last minute data but I wouldn't really be doing so otherwise.