Total Delegate Count:But what? Despite losses in California, Intrade thinks Obama emerged stronger than ever from last night's contests; he's now at 47% to win the nomination, while Clinton has dropped to 53%.
McCain = 613
Romney = 269
Huckabee = 190(1,191 needed)
Clinton = 845
Obama = 765(2,025 needed)
McCain Reaches Out:A state-by-state list of last night’s winners and losers.
Romney Gets Enought States to Keep Going:MCCAIN REACHES OUT to conservatives. He needs a full-scale charm offensive.
UPDATE: A good review from John Hinderaker.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here.
SO MCCAIN GOT MORE STATES AND BIGGER STATES, Huckabee picked up a few in the South but wasn't viable elsewhere, and Romney got . . . probably just enough to convince him to keep going, though he probably shouldn't. On the Democratic side, Hillary and Obama took different numbers of states, but because of proportional representation the fact that Hillary took the big ones won't matter as much as it would in a Republican primary, leaving them with about the same delegate counts.
The Anchoress predicts a brokered convention.
2 comments:
These "prediction" markets seem to react to events rather than predict them. They don't have a clue as to what is going to happen, just like the rest of us. Maybe that's because they simply represent the aggregate opinion of those investing, and in this election year no one seems to have very good information that allows for accurate predictions.
I would be more impressed if any of these "prediction" markets actually had predicted something that came true.
Like how many of these markets predicted that McCain would make his political comeback, when he was so down? How many predicted that Obama would challenge Hillary so effectively, when Hillary was so up in the polls 6 months ago? That's the sort of thing that would impress me.
Right now these markets are uncertain, which is why their indicators swing so much. In essence, they are no better than the polling or pundits these days.
Thinking, the fact that prediction markets change when news changes and can't predict events 6 months out doesn't mean they're not useful -- just that they aren't crystal balls. The work essentially like the stock market. When new news becomes available, it is incorporated into the "price".
They are not magic, but they are typically better predictors than polls because they measure not only opinion, but intensity of opinion as well.
Prediction markets didn't predict Obama's rise in the same way stock markets didn't predict the rise of Amazon or Google. Just as the stock market measures the health of the economy, prediction markets measure the health of a political candidate.
The best test of whether or not polling or prediction markets are better is to see when they conflict, which one has a better track record of being correct? My confidence would be on the prediction markets every time.
Prediction markets aren't perfect, but they are the best prediction mechanism out there. I place much more confidence in them than in polls or pundits.
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