Oddly Enough

So, I'm a bit of a junkie for reading the tea leaves of 2004. In fact... I have a spreadsheet ... which I use to track movements in the state-by-state prospects for November. For a free digest of state-by-state polls, I can't recommend anything more strongly than this. Right now it looks like Wisconsin is solidly red, so we can't say all polls consolidated on the site are equally plausible... but the most heartening indicator is the suggestion that Ohio and Pennsylvania, and maybe even Florida, might be tipping decisively blue...

However, the other site that interests me is an online gambling site called Tradesports which sells futures on various outcomes, including contracts for every state in the Union going Bush or Kerry. It's kinda' like the free-market version of DARPA's much derided website... you can even bet on terrorism futures...

So, anyhow, I keep track of movements in the tradesports prices, so I might as well update this each week so you don't have to.

The trend to date has been heartening for Bush-haters, as many states have shot downwards to lifetime lows. But the electoral college trend still favors Bush strongly, overall. If one were to assume that every state where Bush is given greater than 50% on futures prices goes Red, and the rest blue, then Bush would presently win the electoral college by 304-234. Swing states where Bush is getting more than 50% odds but lower than 60% would be New Hampshire (59%, 4EV), New Mexico (57%, 5EV), Ohio (53%, 20EV), and Pennsylvania (58.5%, 21EV). Swing states for Kerry (between 40%-50%) would be Iowa (42%, 7EV), Oregon (43%, 7EV), and Wisconsin (45%, 10EV).

If you summed all those probabilities (giving you a total score of 50*100=5000 points), then Bush scores 3004.5 - 2095.5. This is obviously a distorted statistic, as Bush tends to attract high margins of support in a lot of smaller states, giving him a higher "popularity index" than would be reflected in the electoral college. But the aggregate figure is useful for watching confidence level in solid Bush states (or solid Kerry states, for that matter) plummet. Ohio today trades at 53, but enjoyed a lifetime high of 80. West Virginia had a lifetime low of 49, but today trades at 67. Presumably, if one sees a sharp spike in values among "Blue States" or a sharp plummet in values among "Red States", this would indicate a widespread erosion of confidence that would appear in the aggregate figure.

We'll see. For the most part, futures markets seem to be backward-looking (which is ironic). But it'll be interesting to see how well the market prices the ultimate electoral outcome. A brief look at Dean's futures past shows that speculators may not be the best prognosticators after all...

So, a curiosity for those of us who are made curious by these sorts of things...

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