The CNN poll says that Obama's support is slipping, but the markets say much hasn't changed. As can be seen below, they clearly are putting Obama as the heads-on favorite to win the democratic primary:
The yellow line is sale price for "Obama Wins Primary" shares of a dollar, which is currently around $0.70, implying the market puts Obama's chances at becoming the Democratic Presidential candidate at 70%, and this is largely unchanged as of late.What about the Presidential race? That is a horse of a different color, and the gap is indeed closing:
The blue line represents the Democratic presidential candidate's shares, and the red line represents the Republicans. Over the month of April, there has been a closing of the gap as traders are giving the Democratic candidate a 53.3% chance of winning and the Republican candidate 47.6% as of April 30. This still is a wider margin than the polls suggest in either head-to-head match-up. I suspect traders think the undecided voters will swing Dem.
1 comment:
Nothing against the Iowa Market (or its cousins, Intrade.com and TradeSports.com). I love them, but a concern I have with them is the thickness of their markets. Here I don't think it is a problem, but for other forecasts it might be. Low volume could be detrimental to their forecasting accuracy. I prefer OddsChecker.com (or at least compare it to the abovementioned web sites). OddsChecker.com gives the odds at betting houses. In addition to volume being generally higher, I think, but I may be wrong, that these speculators are more diverse (another key element for forecasts based on prices to work).
That being said Obama indeed appears not to have suffered a set back in the Primary process. His odds are 3/10 versus 11/4 for Hillary and surprisingly 20/1 for former competitor Al Gore. For the presidental race he is a slight favorite at 13/10 versus 13/8 for McCain and 4/1 for Hillary.
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