Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Hillary and McCain Win in New Hampshire

Hillary won in New Hampshire today. Looks like the prediction markets called it wrong for the Democrats. They did get it right on McCain however. This continues to be an interesting election season in many respects.

In potential defense of the prediction markets, it looks like Hillary and Obama are tied for the number of delegate votes they will take from New Hampshire.

After I get past my field exam tomorrow, I'll try to look more into what question was tied to this contract on Tradesports.com and what the prediction market was saying prior to today. (With all the studying I've been doing and law school starting today, I forgot to check Tradesports yesterday.)

If thought Tradesports got it wrong today, I'd still put far more trust in their predictions than any pundit I know.

More coverage on New Hampshire here.

P.S. -- Some interesting thoughts from Brendan Loy:
Did New Hampshire's independents outsmart themselves, believing that McCain needed them more than Obama did, and thus deciding to vote Republican in greater-than-expected numbers... producing a McCain landslide and a Clinton-Obama squeaker?

2 comments:

Jason said...

The Intrade prices have simply echoed the polling data in this cycle; tonight they were every bit as wrong as the polls. I don't think the prediction markets have a record in elections that suggests they are ever any more than a tiny improvement in accuracy over polling data. So...your oft-stated belief in prediction markets in the context of these mass elections is really just a belief in poll data, and, then, no offense, but, so what?

Angela Nazworth said...

I was surprised by the results. I thought that more independents were going to swing to Obama's camp giving him the victory and then subsequently McCain coming in second to Romney...