“It’s not predictive. It’s reflective.”
Yet it PREDICTS outcomes better than polls do 3 out of 4 times. As the paper suggests, polls are subject to a lot of volatility based on breaking news, hence they won’t necessarily be an accurate indicator of what voters actually will do a few days later in the polls. The prediction markets, OTOH, can take such volatility into account based on past experience and do a better job of predicting a future vote (as opposed to predicting how people would vote on the day a Gallup poll is conducted etc.).
If you know of a superior prediction tool, please advise. But until you weigh in, I’ll regard political markets as superior to reliance on polls: they may not be perfect, but neither are they crap, IMHO.
It's not "predictive", period. It just reflects conventional wisdom made by others. No value added whatsoever, and major potential downside since it's not a well-functioning market.
Cook Political Report, FR's own Key House Races, FiveThirtyEight (whose race ratings are massively driven by inputs from Cook Political / Rothenberg), RealClearPolitics, even an idiot like Larry Sabato are all better than Intrade.
All those sources use a synthesis of information, without being subject to market manipulation.