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Intrade does fine. In 2008 McCain was making inroads until he started running around like a fool.

Did Intrade correctly predict the 2008 Presidential Election?

The answer is - without a doubt. The Intrade prediction market was forecasting a sizeable Obama victory for most of the election season, and correctly predicted the results of nearly every state in the Union.

Shown below is a graph which uses the state-by-state betting data from the Intrade prediction market. The graph shows the total number of electoral votes Barack Obama was predicted to win from late May until election day. States had to be trading above 55 on the prediction market to count toward the total number of forecasted electoral votes.

Barack Obama was predicted to win over 270 Electoral votes (the winning threshold) for most of the election season, except for a few weeks during the late summer. Once the sub-prime lending mess began to unravel on Wall Street, Intrade predicted an overwhelming victory for Senator Obama.

Shown below is the same chart for Senator McCain. At no time during the entire election season was John McCain forecasted to win 270 or more electoral votes. Immediately after naming Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate McCain saw a brief surge in his forecasted EV count, which quickly dissipated. Senator McCain consistently found himself in the position of needing to win every single swing state to be able to secure a winning 270 electoral votes.

There was only one point in mid-September when McCain was actually forecasted to win more electoral votes than Obama. Other than that, Obama enjoyed a sizeable lead for most of the election season. Shown below is a graph of Obama's lead over McCain during the election season.

Intrade was right because the media was right that Obama would win. See post 19.

Then there’s election day 2004. I’m no insider, didn’t see any internal polls, none of that. I knew Kerry was losing because he and Dubya were spending the last two weeks of the campaign in states Dubya lost in 2000. Dubya was trying to take new ground, Kerry was trying to defend it...there seemed to be no way both campaigns could have internals so far off. So, when the exit polls got it way, way wrong, I said, “Yeah, right!” and Intrade said “90% chance of a Kerry victory.”

This year, the polls and media are telling us something, and so is Intrade, but that something doesn’t match up with polling, candidate activities (Obama and Biden are winning in Wisconsin by 14%, but are holding rallies there to buck up the base? Really?), absentee ballot and early voting or what knowledge we have about ground game. So, instead of a 2008 year when the media pointed out the obvious, we have a 2004 year where the media is trying to achieve a result and Intrade believes them.

Intrade is the dumb money, and I will maintain that even if Obama wins, because it’s the truth.

It seems there is some very naive folks who simply cannot grasp that Intrade betting is based on MEDIA POLLS and nothing else what so ever... These fools who are betting at INTRADE have no special information and they only base their bets on MEDIA POLLS... If they are too stupid to make bets on BIASED MEDIA POLLS as it is happening in 2012 so let them and I want these morons to lose a lot of money...