Polls vs. Intrade

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Pekelo, Jul 13, 2008.

  1. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    Disclaimer: This thread is about trading on political predictions and not your wishlist who should be president.

    According to the latest polls they are either closely tied or Obama leads with a statistically insignifficant 1-2%. But in the trading website Intrade Obama is a 65% to 31% favorite.

    2 questions arise:

    1. Why is the huge difference between polls and the people betting on the outcome?

    2. Could not this difference be exploited somehow?

    Now it is either the polls are not that correct or the people making the bets are betting more on their wishes than on reality....
     
  2. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    So you are saying that the odds at Intrade are fairly correct. Then one should just sell McCain and keep buying Obama as much as one can, because it is a shoe in....

    The 5 to 4 (304:234) ratio is still pretty far from the 2 to 1 what the odds imply...