That is from ONE poll jem,the final poll before election day Intrade was predicting Obamas victory long before that.For instance in April Intrade had Obama winning the entire month while there were days Rasmussen had McCain winning by 7
No you have not shown that jem.Your claim that you could bet a few thousand dollers and put Romney in the lead is pure BS.I explained to you that Inrade ties into the entire betting market including other betting sites and Vegas Casino betting that would quickly adjust any attempt at market manipulation
So what is your point. If the betters were correct there would not be bookies or casinos. If the public was correct the nasdaq 100 would not have been at 5000 while on the whole there were losing money. intrade is not poll in any real sense of the word... it is a bet. I think all it is proving right now is that its market is not efficient.
Both Intrade and the polls are fluid, so The polls can be an accurate representation of where things are at the time, even though it proves to be wildly inaccurate with what happens on election day, and vice versa. It is true that Intrade proves to be accurate where it finishes right before the election, but it also moves around until the night of the election, since the inevitable outcome of most elections is known the night before the election, its not all that surprising that Intrade is incredibly accurate. For all you know a guy like Billy Walters Is out there manipulating the line, which he has already said he does regularly with sports betting in Vegas. There is only an open interest right now on the contract of 125k, which means it would only take 1.25 million to buy everything out there. Jem is right until there is more volume in the contract when it gets closer to election day it doesnt mean much, as it is easy to manipulate. Also there could be a heavy hitter willing to bid up to get as much volume off as he possibly can until election day, so he knows hes paying up but he is just absorbing as many contracts as possible in order to get as much money as he can on the line. The fact is we dont know. For the record i still think Obama has the edge right now, but its awful tempting to lay down a bet on Romney when he is paying out 3-1 right now, i think that both contracts are slightly mispriced id have Obama at 52-53 right now and Romney at 45-46.... <embed src="http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf" scale="noscale" salign="lt" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" background="#333333" width="425" height="279" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" FlashVars="si=254&&contentValue=50098913&shareUrl=http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7253011n" />
also, having thought about this... if I think it is a close race but as the incumbent Obama has an edge... why would I take the other side. it would take a really big slant in the payoff to induce me to take a bet with a binary result. it would be different if you were giving me points. So all intrade can tell you is that obama is favored to win by a little bit of money... you can't infer anything more.
Disagree Romney to win contracts has 102,000.There is also the democratic vs Republican to win contracts which is essentially the same and has 70,000 shares.Then there is the state by state bets that you would have to bet on to make Romney the winner,thats just intrade After manipulating the intrade markets then you would have to do the same for the Casino and other betting sites which all mirror intrade odds or they would just arb intrade putting the odds back in line
The Romney contract is basically paying 3-1 right now, id say thats pretty good odds if you think Romney is going to win, if he does you get a 300% gain.
When we used to push stocks around it took a surprisingly little amount to get a stock moving, and you dont have to move every single state election, just like you didnt have to move an entire sector, you could move a 30 dollar stock that trades a couple million shares a day 50 cents with only a million or 2 buying power, and often only taking on a 500k position...... and thats the stock market with all the big money in the world watching. According to intrade the contract traded 642 shares today, so for all of 6k you could have held the contract where it is, and thats if you are forced to purchase every single one.....
Those resulsts are from Rasmussens final poll Intrades final poll before the election,Obama 364 ,Mccain 174 Final results Obama 365 ,Mccain 173 Rasmussen final state polls didnt predict Ohio,Fl or NC ,Intrade had Obama winning all 3 of those states making Intrades final prediction better then Rasmussen.Leading up to the election intrade also had Obama ahead for a much longer period of time then Rasmussen