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Prediction Markets and the 2008 Electoral Map
Electionwatch submitted a predicted electoral map of the 2008 US Presidential election, based on the bets made by the intrade prediction markets. I'm always interested in these markets and how accurate they end up being. This one calls it for Obama, but then again you probably could guess that by just watching 10 minutes of any TV "News" channel.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/10/electoral.map/index.html
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
McCain 70-80% likely to pick up Florida? Obama 70-80% likely to grab Pennsylvania? Everyone is expecting those two to be big battleground states. Those probabilities seem pretty lofty to me.
My favorite political predictor site is electoral-vote.com
They use an amalgamation of national and statewide polls to show the current feeling of Americans on a wide variety of races. Including a national map with a current tally of the electoral votes right at the top.
--why?
At this point, the map might be accurate. However, I think it underestimates the appeal of Obama, and the ick factor of McCain. In a few months, this map will be mostly blue.
Although it's not politically correct to say so, anyone who doesn't think Race is a factor need only look at this map. It looks like the North vs the South (with the West Coast siding with the North and all the plain states siding with the South)
Number of houses lost to predatory lenders - this is what deregulation is all about
Please provide some concrete numbers differentiating the people who are the victim of "predatory lending" from those who were greedy and signed up for too large a house (along with the two SUVs and the new 52" flat screen they couldn't afford either -- all while saving nothing) -- I'm sure we'd all really like to see those.
When people with no / bad credit can't get mortgages, they sue the government. When the government allows / cajoles / forces banks to give the these subprime borrowers loans they can't pay anyway and they inevitably default, guess what? They sue the government. Those of us who are responsible borrowers are sick of this crap, and sure as hell don't want our tax dollars paying for it. Let the banks and borrowers work it out amongst themselves. Bailing out mortgage defaulters is wrong, just like bailing out Bear Stearns was wrong. Let the market forces work, and the financial and housing industries will be much better off. This is a prime example of how government meddling with markets makes things worse for everyone.
Unfortunately, on this issue the choice is between how many billions of dollars will be spent on this by each candidate (at least a few billion from McCain versus ten billion from Obama so far). I'd love a third option which is, "none -- go back to renting for a few years and maybe next time you'll make smarter decisions with your money."
Don't underestimate the importance of a strong Dollar for the US. With the USD losing value by the hour now, a lot of countries are pondering aloud whether they should accept other currencies in international trade.
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm amazed your nonsense got +5.
I do too, actually. His editorial comments are interesting, touching on statistics, politics, and the quirks of our electoral college. He's also a tech guy, and had to fend off some pretty serious DOS attacks during the last election cycle. I suppose you could argue that his commentary tends to lean left (after being anonymous for awhile, Votemaster came out as a democrat). In my mind, though, he seems fairly centrist and explains his methodology so that when the map shifts one way or another, you can see the details as to why. Works for me.
Welcome to American politics. I've been a voter for ten years and very rarely have I ever truly voted FOR a candidate rather than AGAINST the other guy. That goes from presidential elections down to my local alderman.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Don't underestimate the importance of a strong Dollar for the US. With the USD losing value by the hour now, a lot of countries are pondering aloud whether they should accept other currencies in international trade.
Let them. Let the price of European and Japanese goods rise so high that they do not export to the USA any more. I've got ten million US manufacturing workers ready to go back to work, and the unions to back them.
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
If worse comes to worse, the USA has 150,000 men sitting on top of 200 billion barrels of oil in Iraq. Do you really think it prudent that they leave at this time?
But, be that as it may, its US corn and US wheat and US coal that are really driving exports right now. If the asian countries do not want to accept US dollars, than, certainly, we can demand that they pay for food in gold.
This is my sig.
You mean like that PRO-IP Act a few stories down, the one that turns a civil matter into a felony and gives the feds the right to confiscate your computer if they think you might have maybe downloaded something illegal? The one that was introduced by a Democrat and voted against by only 4 Democrats (and only 7 Republicans, don't worry, I fully acknowledge that they BOTH suck)?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
According to that election map, 21 states will override the will of 29 states. Those 21 states are mainly in the Pacific west and the Northeast.
The South, the Plains states, and portions of the Midwest and Southwest states do not believe in Obama. These are mostly rural and farm states.
Could it be that the data is skewed by the availability of net access?
Also, is this an indicator that those who grow most of the food do not believe that Obama will do what is in their best interest?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Is it just me or is McCain one big senior moment away from totally blowing this thing for himself? 'Beer' instead of 'bill', 'Shiite' instead of 'Sunni', the overall creepiness of his speech delivery ("That's not change we can believe in.... hehehe"), blah, blah, blah.
If he falls off a stage this thing is over with.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I also find him very objective and non-biased, but I think he strives for that. His style really leaves one with the feeling that he's just an impartial observer who doesn't care one way or the other.
A few days ago there was one line on his page that hinted at who he had preferred for the Democrat nominee (after Obama had already won) and it struck me that through all these months of coverage I previously had no indication of who he was going for.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Prediction markets are still very "new" and participation is low. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. Primarily, prediction markets only work when there are arbitrage opportunities for individuals who actually know what's going to happen. They'll buy the security in question, and it's price will rise to the expected level. In any event - if insiders aren't controlling the price of a security then it's price won't reflect its real value.
The problem comes in when no one really knows the answer. People will buy and sell these prediction securities on hunches or what not, but the actual price will not truly be reflective of the outcome of, say, an election. Case in point, a month after John McCain had secured the Republican nomination for President, his likelihood of becoming President was still trading at around $.39 (Intrade works on fractions of a dollar). Any reasonably intelligent person should have been able to forecast this price would shoot up to at least $.45 or better once the Democrats chose a candidate - Consider that presidential elections are usually around 50/50.
The question was: why weren't people snatching these securities up like hotcakes? I still haven't been able to figure that out. But personally I think it proves the notion I heard someone else mention a while back. To paraphrase: these aren't prediction markets, they're extremely recent history markets.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I was just out collecting signatures yesterday to fight RealID and the concessions we're making towards it in maine.
let me tell you; people in rural maine are still afraid of terrorists. I got my sigs because many rural mainers are also damn near libertarians and luckily this time around realID is an unfunded mandate and mainers hate taxes, but I lost plenty to people who want the government to be covering us all like some big, faceless security blanket.
The book explains that people are not rational or logical especially when it comes to risk assessment. The best recent example (the book was written in 1989) is America's reaction to the 9/11 attacks. More people died of hunger that day than were killed in the attack. The US response to the attacks was totally illogical because people felt threatened and this caused them to stop using the higher levels of their brains. They instead, reverted to their reptilian "flight or fight" instincts.
Another similar (or worse) attack will most likely produce a similar response from the American people. They will stop thinking rationally, which is probably the only way the Republicans can beat Obama on November 4th.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I can't say I completely agree with the prediction that the GOP is going to have its usual steamrolller victories in the south. Most southern, hell, all republicans aren't all that enthusiastic about McCain. He is a hard candidate when it comes to polarizing your voter base. Simply put if the commies and pro-Antichrist liberals decided to take over America and turn your children into gay socialist, they don't believe he would do a whole lot to turn the tide.
Also, no one seems to notice that there are plenty of black voters in the south. Contrary to what many in the media would have you believe, black voters aren't afraid to go to the polls; Sheriff Cracker hasn't been at the polls with his shotgun in a long, long time. The problem is that they, like every other voter group, seldom have a reason to go.
The human party?
Vote Zombie in 2008 to get them on the ticket in 2012!
A donation has been submitted in your name to The Human Fund!
I'm not sure if it was from the Pentagon papers, but Chomsky gave a talk where he discussed the CIA's incompetence and outright idiocy while they were trying to figure out if China or Russia was sending Ho Chi Minh orders in the 60s.
They chased down every lead, and the most they ever found was a Russian newspaper in a Vietnamese embassy. Their conclusion? Ho Chi Minh was such a dedicated communist client that they didn't even need to send orders. Ho Chi Minh just "knew what to do."
I also recently finished watching "RFK Must Die," and at this point, we just need to wipe the whole intelligence community out the door and start over again.
Indeed, however tobacco killed over 10 times more people than terrorism in the USA alone in September 2001. In the first week of July 2005, 52 people died on the London Underground. 61 people died on UK roads. One of those events had wall to wall media coverage, and people decided to commute by road rather than tube as it was "safer". An order of magnitude more people died on London roads in 2005 than on London public transport. The more bombings you get, the less people are bothered, its when something unsual happens -- like when the IRA murdered two kids in Warrington in 93, that people are shocked and will change their lives slightly. Everyone I knew was back in Manchester the week after the 96 bomb, it was just one of those things that had was a (not so) slim chance of happening to a given person, like car crashes or smoking.
In a libertarian country, who would prevent the Mafia from taking over? Certainly not the government, which would be so tiny it may as well not exist. Most libertarians have never even considered this vital question. The question is of primary importance because it directly addresses the stability and therefore the durability of a libertarian society.
A few might offer up the feeble answer, "hire a private security firm against the Mafia", but this is not looking far enough ahead. Nothing would prevent these firms from merging with each other or with the Mafia, and growing ever more powerful. And as history teaches us again and again, power corrupts. Eventually, some sufficently merged security firm would become your lord and master, and you would be at its mercy.
Isn't it obvious how easily a libertarian society could descend to feudalism or fascism?
Count Them
Though this isn't meant to take away from your comment, just to clarify.
Bullish Machine Tzar