Tomorrow, I will teach my class about prediction markets. With the presidential election just over a month away, below is my best estimate for how the election will go. This is based 100% off of today's trading on Intrade.
To be clear, I am not only forecasting that Obama will be the winner, but that he will receive 332 electoral votes vs. 206 for Romney.
Prediction markets did a phenomenal job forecasting the election in 2004 and 2008, and I have every confidence they will do well this year too.
To be honest, between teaching, keeping up with other responsibilities at Marymount, and trying to finish up my dissertation, I haven't been keeping up with the election news. But as I will teach my class tomorrow, prices do such a great job economizing on information that I don't have to.
For more on prediction markets:
- See my previous posts on prediction markets.
- Read A Market Approach to Politics -- a nice New York Times article by Hal Varian
- Read The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki for a great, intuitive introduction to why prediction markets work.
- Visit the Iowa Electronic Markets, a political prediction market run by the University of Iowa. More on them here.
hi there,
ReplyDeleteabsolutely fascinated with your blog, especially this Presidential prediction. wondering if you are going to give us an update. i am firmly on the left and curious to know if your assessments have changed over the last few weeks as i and a lot of other people are now sweating a romney term.
cheers,
mark
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments and kind words. I just posted the latest forecast.
Brian