Charting Bush (Continued)
Tim commented on my last Charting Bush post that futures markets generally provide the best forecasts. In principal, I agree. Tim pointed me to a futures market run by the University of Iowa Business School.
This is pretty cool, but I'd like a price chart instead of just current prices. Trend is as important to me as absolute value.
If I read the quotes correctly, these markets are forecasting a very very narrow Bush victory right now.
Here is the Tradesports chart, you can clearly see the big events so far. The big jump up is the capture of Saddam etc.
www.tradesports.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=11738&z=1091186212979
Posted by: Jeremiah | August 24, 2004 at 09:56 PM
You are correct in reading the current prices as a very narrow Bush victory. A price of 51 can be interperteted as a 51% chance Bush will win.
Posted by: Jeremiah | August 24, 2004 at 10:02 PM
There is a daily price chart linked to from the quote page:
http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm
Posted by: billm | August 24, 2004 at 11:33 PM
I believe these markets are better indicators of where this election is going than any poll. IEW is consistently right in predicting the winner. Tradesports is interesting since there is real market liquidity: over 400k contracts traded/trading. Hard to tell how liquid IEW is, despite their track record.
IEW shows a close race, Tradesports shows Dubya with a 7 "point" lead.
Posted by: Ed | August 25, 2004 at 03:07 AM
these all reflect popular vote. For a take on the electoral college results, check out electoral-vote.com. The input data is poll-based though - it'd be interesting to use the IEM data on a per state basis to forecast Electoral College results.
Posted by: Rick Gregory | August 26, 2004 at 11:32 PM