Posted on 11/06/2012 11:21:03 AM PST by listenhillary
The race to the White House is neck-and-neck, according to the polls. But in the world of gambling and prediction markets, the outcome of Tuesday's election is plain as day.
President Obama has a 71.5% chance of winning the U.S. presidential election, according to Intrade, a website where users place bets on everything from politics to Academy Award winners.
That gives Republican challenger Mitt Romney a 28.5% chance of winning.
If you don't like those odds, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power said Monday that it was already paying out bets that Obama would win, a day before voters went to the polls.
(Excerpt) Read more at buzz.money.cnn.com ...
The way I understand intrade is a bettor can sell their shares at any time as soon as they find another user to take over their side of the bet.
Essentially intrade shares can be bought and sold at any time as long as a user finds someone to trade with at a given price. Intrade makes a percentage fee on every transaction (even if the shares change hands before the event takes place).
“Doesn’t loopie Howard have that backassward?”
Yes, it’s interesting how CERTAIN he is that the only way to win is through fraud. Methinks he has insider info on the Dem’s “secret sauce” in winning electoral campaigns....
Does anyone know Intrade’s success rate on these things?
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100% ... after the fact..
“Intrade has never been wrong ... yet.”
According to a poster at Investor Politics, Intrade
“also gave a better than 80% chance that the Supreme court would overturn Obamacare the day before the verdict.”
http://investorplace.com/investorpolitics/intrades-presidential-prediction-machine-politics-obama-romney-2012/
So you can’t say they’ve never been wrong, but they do have a pretty good track record in presidential elections.
There’s not a bookmaker in the world that pays out before the event.
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Intrade isn’t a bookmaker ... they don’t set odds ,, just collect monthly membership fees from users ... it is completely possible that people bought obama at a lower price and sold at a higher price ,, it’s really like a stock option that either settles at $0 or $10 ,, the difference is there is no marketmaker... it’s strictly between the members agreeing on prices .. in that way it’s a great place to make money on a far off eventuality when you expect the story-line to change. buy-sell-buy again-sell again ...
That sentence wasn’t about intrade, it was about Paddy Power.
All you have to do is sign up and send them a check and proof of identity. But it takes a while for your account to become active. So you have definately missed out on this election oportunity.
The amount of money that it would take to manipulate Intrade is less than what it would cost for normal advertising. So I don’t have any real confidence in its predictive value for a presidential election.
Save for tomorrow morning
Zero has dropped 3 points in the last few minutes. Watching this like a hawk. Schadenfreude!!!!
No parting opus?
“It’s almost impossible for a US citizen to make a wager on the election. It can be done but you have to Western Union the money to the Philippines first. “
Nope. You send the money, check or wire, to Ireland, where Intrade is.
I thought “paddy Irish” would know that. :-)
“The high odds on Romney is partly because of the staggering amount bet on Obama way back to the beginning of this year and the fact that all the people betting are from Europe and Russia.”
That’s what I thought. I thought the 30% odds for Romney was bogus. I thought the polls were slanted to Obama.
Ummmmmmmmm, maybe not.
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