[Momaw Nadon]

I went to TradeSports.com which is a futures market in which people bet on the outcomes of various things.

According to the current trading prices of the futures contracts, an estimate can be found of what traders are betting will be the outcome of 2004 Presidential Election.

If the traders are correct, President Bush would receive 304 Electoral Votes and John Kerry would receive 234 Electoral Votes.

If the weighted probabilities of President Bush winning in the states are added up, and then divided by 538, and multiplied by 100, then President Bush should get 288.08 Electoral Votes.

270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the Presidency.

Opinions and commentary are welcome.

[Momaw Nadon]

Previous projections:

2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 4/12/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 4/5/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/29/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/22/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/15/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/8/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/1/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/23/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/16/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/9/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/2/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 1/26/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 1/21/2004

[Momaw Nadon]

Wisconsin is at 50.0% today.

The bid price is 48.0 and the ask price is 52.0. These average to 50.0.

The tie goes to John Kerry due to Democrat vote fraud.

[Momaw Nadon]

[MarkT]

Candidly, I think needs to be an Electoral College Commission to investigate this...ummm, the Chair might oughta be a non-politician such as James Carville, co-chair, Al Franken and one independent politician such as Jim Jeffords...I trust they will be able to attract good and objective people to look into the matter.

[CatOwner]

I can't believe that Kerry gets 90% of the Electoral votes that Al Gore received in 2000. But then again, I live in California, and I fully expect Kerry to win the state in a landslide. Sigh. :(

[irish guard]

I am going to guess that you have seen this......the free market at work and a competitor's product vis a vis yours...........

[ken5050]

Very informative post, and links....many thanks...may I suggest that you ping this thread to Dales..he does the weekly surveryof poling data, and while technically NOT a poll, the futures markets have proved to me more accurate than many polls. He might deside to see how his data, and his projections, coorelates with the futures

[upchuck]

If the traders are correct, President Bush would receive 304 Electoral Votes and John Kerry would receive 234 Electoral Votes.

Let's hope they are. If President Bush can win in a landslide like this hopefully the RATS will give up and not start a lot of "vote contesting" trouble. If they do, what with electronic voting machines, et al, the mess may spill over into January.

[upchuck]

What, if anything, do the futures traders have to say about a contest between President Bush and The All Seeing, All Mighty, All Lardass HILDABEASTE?

[GEC]

I think a better measure of the current stance of the race is to take the number of electoral votes in each state and then multiply that by the probability of winning for each candidate when it is >50%, except Wisconsin for Kerry as you noted.

Summing the totals yields the following:

Bush
242.71

Kerry
188.63

Obviously, this does not yield 538 electoral votes, but it is an indication that W is a LOT closer to sealing the deal than J F'in K.

[jla]

This is incorrect.
Dubya will take no less than 400 Electoral votes.