Kerry Tanking in Iowa Electronic Market

http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm ^

[freespirited]

Take a look at graph from Iowa Electronic Market.

[jocon307]

Now that's a BEAUTIFUL picture!

[austinaero]

I love tanks!
They can roll right over John FRAUD Kerry for all I care.

[mlbford2]

What's the view like up there W?

[Straight Vermonter]

Don't get too excited they changed the contracts they are tracking but kept the same graph. I'm not sure why they did this but that explains the sharp change in the graph.

[QQQQQ]

[Hank All-American]

Does anybody know what the track record of this is? Have they been accurate in the past? Entry in the market is pretty cheap ($1.00 a share), so it could be like an internet poll.

Just wondering, because I have no idea if this has proved accurate or not.

[Area51]

Oklay but hte real quesiton is where oh where had Tom Harkin gone. Since the evidence has come out that the documents were forgeries Tom has disappeared.

Did he get abducted by aliens, Or did the Powers to be send him back to cleaning hog lots back home?

Perhaps he is busy cleaing up all the fake stories he planted about his War stories...

[AaronInCarolina]

Be careful interpreting the move in the graph over the past day or two because IEM has changed what they are graphing and beginning to use different contracts than what they used 2 days ago. That explains the apparent jump Bush gets from about a 60 percent probability to about a 68 percent probability. IEM should show some marker indicating they began using different contracts. They now show an aggregate of people who buy contracts based upon whether the candidate wins the election with greater than 52 percent of the popular vote, or whether the candidate wins with less than 52 percent. The less than 52 and greater than 52 are then added together to emulate the previous contracts which just were based upon whether one candidate would win versus the other.

Its still good news, just a little bit misleading. For some reason when people began buying the new contracts, more people bought one of the 2 Bush contracts than people who were buying the old Bush contract that was just based upon winning the popular vote.

[Straight Vermonter]

Are you on the right thread?

[Rutles4Ever]

From what I understand, it was very accurate in the last election. Essentially, it's predictive because the end result is (normally) absolute - Kerry or Bush wins. Anyone trying to "run-up" or "sell short" would be out of luck on Nov. 3rd and out a lot of money.

[Merry]

I thought the Iowa Electronic Market and Tradesports have been accurate predictors for as long as they have been around.

[AaronInCarolina]

From what I understand, it was very accurate in the last election. Essentially, it's predictive because the end result is (normally) absolute - Kerry or Bush wins. Anyone trying to "run-up" or "sell short" would be out of luck on Nov. 3rd and out a lot of money.

It can't be disputed that the IEM is the most accurate barometer of the likely results. I have a theory that many of the investors in the political futures markets have access to internal polling data from the two campaigns.

[rebel_yell2]

Now the Iowa futures is on the same page as the Tradesports futures (www.tradesports.com), which has been showing Bush trading around 68 cents - 70 cents for more than a week.

[mdefranc]

"Don't get too excited they changed the contracts they are tracking but kept the same graph. I'm not sure why they did this..."

I think there was extreme price instability at the very end of the 2000 race. IEM may be trying to avoid a repeat.

"...that explains the sharp change in the graph."

As rebel_yell2 noted, IEM's graph pretty much resembles TradeSports|com's graph; the change may be real.

[AaronInCarolina]

They split the contracts which is very confusing to the casual viewer.

It confused me until I realized that they were replacing the previous contracts. Does anyone know if they do this switch during every presidential election in the weeks leading up to the elections?

[section9]

If this has happened in the past 48 hours, it may be the result of real, experienced Democratic players selling Kerry and buying Bush positions.

Kerry has adopted the proposition that the Iraq War is lost and we must get out.

He is saying that we will lose the war.

That will not be accepted by Americans who know, objectively, that it is not true.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[jtsbrown]

They have done presidential elections since 1988. I believe I read on their site that they have only missed by 1.1% of nailing the popular vote.

[Hank All-American]

Whoo doggie. That's incredible.

Let's hope they remain consistent.