Bettors for Bush
Political futures markets claim they’re more accurate than opinion polls. So, how’d they do yesterday?
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at 12:15 PM PT
The exit polls were way off. The pre-election opinion polls weren’t much better. But how did the markets do at predicting the outcome Tuesday night?
The past few years have witnessed the rise of political futures markets—online trading operations that allow you to bet on (or, if you prefer, “invest in”) candidates. The theory behind the markets is that they ought to do a better job of forecasting elections than polls. After all, if stock investors efficiently factor all available information into the price of a stock, why wouldn’t they do the same for a presidential candidate?