(prediction market probabilities of Clinton being the Democratic nominee for the past year)
Busybusybusybusybusy getting my classes ready. And yet I keep checking the prediction markets to see how the market-based probability estimates for who is going to win the Democratic nomination have changed. I think, “Really, how much can the chance of somebody being the Democratic nominee change over a twelve-hour period that doesn’t specifically overlap a caucus or primary?” And yet, Clinton keeps falling. My earlier post on prediction markets was only 38 hours ago. Then, I found it noteworthy just that Obama had pulled even with Clinton. Now he’s up by 24 percentage points (62-38).
Said Frank Rich this morning in the NYT:
After so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it’s like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. “They said this day would never come,” said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.
And why? Because of Iowa. I’ve had Dar Williams’s “Iowa” on iTunes repeat for much of the past two days. My offer to give over half my future earnings to make it Iowa’s official state song still stands. I wish I could buy it for y’all on iTunes. Is there a way I can buy it for everyone on iTunes? In the meanwhile, I’ll just restore the ephemeralink to the song from an earlier post about it, with the conditions indicated there applying once again. Anyway, this proud Iowan has never been prouder of his home state.
5 Comments
You can give a gift of a song to anyone whose email address you know (iTunes link–click again down at “give specific music”). I like to imagine that my suggestion instituted this feature, though I imagine other, more directly-linked people were probably thinking the same thing at the same time.
I thought Rich made another good point in that column about the post-Iowa effect: “We could allow ourselves a big what-if: What if we could have an election that was not a referendum on either the Clinton or Bush presidencies?”
According to the front page this morning, crowds in NH are giving BILL a lackluster response. He’s not filling rooms, and no one’s hootin’ and hollerin’ during his speeches. The rooms are just…quiet. I find this incredible, as though his own “stock” has declined with poor Hillary’s. I don’t know the man personally, but I suspect this will really bother him.
He’s adopted a low-key style so as not to outshine Hillary, so that could be part of it, but still. Isn’t whooping it up standard operating procedure for political rallies? Why does the room start with a baseline of silence and lethargy? Is no one motivated to whoop, or are would-be whoopers cowed into silence?
Alex Tabarrok at MR made an interesting point about the prediction markets in that the general election futures are completely decoupled from the nomination futures implying that the candidate doesn’t matter. I think this is going too far since in some ways McCain and Romney are more interchangeable than would be, say Huckabee or Paul, but nonetheless it’s an interesting data point for structure over charisma.
Gabriel: I don’t think that’s all that surprising. I think there is a lot of uncertainty about whether Clinton or Obama helps the Democrats more, and there is utter chaos on the Republican side, so I’m not surprised people aren’t jumping in to bet. The intrade graphs indicate there hasn’t been some spike in volume traded on that market either compared to on the nominee market.
There’s also the issue of the general election being 10 months away and so betting in that market requires being confident enough in your bet to forgo interest income that long (for people, unlike me, who properly manage their money). I think this is one of the biggest weaknesses of prediction markets for events in the non-near future.
I think the real fun in the prediction markets will be on the Republican side once SC comes in as a bellwether for the Bible belt. The prices seem to assume that an establishment candidate (now McCain [again]) must prevail.
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign strategy — which has been concerning in some ways (right-wing frames on some issues, oppo work on Paul Krugman, etc.) is looking Crazy Like Fox. Apart from the superficial matter that McCain is looking and sounding old on the stump, the efforts on that side of the candidates trying to contort themselves in positions of being both staunch conservatives *and* ‘agents of change’ comes across as an irreconcilable contradiction.