Intrade is dominated by European leftists. I just got out of lunch with a nice chap form London who is a macroeconomic strategist for a major global financial firm. Supposedly this guy is brilliant, which is why he gets paid millions of dollars a year. But he hadn't a clue about American politics and was completely clueless on why the House members don't want to vote for this. I was like, "Ahh, duh. They face re-election in a month. They have to vote on this and then jump on the plane back to their district, and they'll hear nothing but a month of complaining about the deal from their constituents."
Europe is truly clueless about how American politics works. They always look at things from the perspective of parliamentary democracy rather than a representative republic.
Making decisions based on intrade trends is worse than making decisions based on polls.
A leader leads.