With only a few days left before the end of what James Joyner referred to earlier today as the Electoral pre-season, it’s as good a time as any to take a look at where the race stands before things get serious.
I started looking at the closing prices on the Intrade Prediction Market back in June, and then again in July. During that period, there wasn’t really that much movement for either Obama or McCain. Obama’s stock went up slightly, but not by that much, and McCain slipped a little bit. On the whole, though, things were about the same.
It’s safe to say there’s been a lot more movement over the past 40 days.
First, here’s Obama’s chart since July 10th:
And here’s McCain:
Clearly, the traders on Intrade have concluded McCain has had a fairly good five weeks, while Obama has stumbled and allowed the McCain campaign to set the tone and agenda of the campaign, something that is also reflected in the current state of the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Starting this week with an expected Vice-Presidential announcement, Obama has the chance to turn things around but it’s likely that any post-convention bounce he gets will be blunted by McCain’s expected announcement on August 29th and the Republican convention, which starts only four days after the Democratic convention ends.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
[...] Here’s how Obama has done since the last time we looked at these numbers: [...]