Bet Out the Vote: Prediction Markets as a Tool to Promote Undergraduate Political Engagement

ABSTRACT

Over the course of three semesters spanning the 2016 primary and general elections, we conducted a series of quasi-experiments to evaluate the effects of prediction markets on undergraduate interest in the political process. We gave several classes in our institution’s core American politics course the opportunity to collectively invest in election-related markets on PredictIt.org, and over two-thirds of our students reported that the exercise stimulated their interest in the elections and political process. Roughly half also reported reading more news articles because of their participation in the market. While our treatment group did not demonstrate statistically-significant improvement in tangential political awareness, knowledge, or engagement, our findings do challenge previous conclusions that prediction markets have limited capacity to motivate students in an introductory learning context.

KEYWORDS:

• Awareness
• engagement
• market
• political
• prediction

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to James Levinsohn for suggesting prediction markets as a way to engage the students. The authors are also indebted to Devlin Winkelstein, Charles Faint, Kaine Meshkin, Brandon Colas, Elizabeth Verardo, and John Rohn for assisting with data collection and analysis. This work was examined by the Institutional Review Board of the United States Military Academy at West Point. The views expressed in this article represent those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the United States Army, or the United States Military Academy.

Notes

Average classes consisted of 14–16 randomly-assigned students and reflected a high degree of geographic diversity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lukas Berg

Major Lukas Berg is an Assistant Professor of American Politics and Foreign Policy in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. He holds a BS in American Politics from the United States Military Academy and an MA in Global Affairs from Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He is also an aviation officer with two deployments to Afghanistan.

John Chambers

Major John Chambers is an Instructor of American Politics and Political Thought in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy, an MS in Engineering Management from Missouri University of Science and Technology, and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is an engineer officer with deployments to Iraq and Haiti.