For once, there’s actually something interesting to look at in the Intrade charts of the Presidential election.
Here’s how Obama has done since the last time we looked at these numbers:
And here’s McCain’s:
Back before the convention, the question is whether that the good summer that McCain had would continue, or whether Obama would have enough of a success from his Vice-Presidential choice and the Democratic National Convention to regain the momentum. What happened instead is that John McCain, picked Sarah Palin and, since then, the entire nature of the race has changed.
Back in June Obama was trading at 61 and McCain was trading at 35.5, even though the polls showed the race to be fairly close and the Electoral College was fairly tight as well. Those numbers remained the same into July on Intrade, in the national polls, and in the Electoral College, and didn’t change all that much as we headed into the convention (see Intrade, national polls, and Electoral College for that period), even though McCain had done fairly well after Obama’s ill-fated trip to Europe. Clearly, the traders on Intrade believed that, notwithstanding the fact that the polls were still close, Obama had a better chance of winning in November than McCain.
Now, they’re even. It’s a whole new ball game.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
[...] there has been significant movement in both the Intrade numbers and the national polls over the past several weeks, that movement has yet to be reflected in the [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
[...] When we last looked at the Intrade numbers for the Presidential race, John McCain was on the rise after what seemed like a successful Republican National Convention and a… [...]