Interesting Predictive Market Has Dem Candidate by 4% in General Election 08

[CorpGovActivist]

"Political markets see Clinton vs Giuliani contest"


By David Alexander
Reuters
Monday, October 29, 2007; 10:30 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Traders on the Iowa Electronic Markets, which have been predicting U.S. elections with surprising accuracy for 20 years, are expecting a tight presidential vote next year, with the Democrat narrowly defeating the Republican.

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"In just about 75 percent of the cases," Berg said, "the price in the market is closer to the actual outcome of the election than the polls were."

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Traders predicted the Democratic candidate would ultimately win the election by about 4 percentage points."

That's a neat predictive model (according to the article, the University received special permission to allow betting on political races).

It'd be fun to see some of the talking heads place bets or charity.

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102900777.html

- Dave