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Bringing it all together

October 31st, 2004


http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/presprobs.html

As we move into the final thirty-six hours can we recommend this site which brings polls, electoral vote predictions and Tradesports prices all together.

Everything is moving so fast and Betfair alone has now seen more than £4m of matched bets on the race.

Bush 55.5 Kerry 44.5Iowa Political Futures Market
Bush 54 Kerry 46 Tradesports exchange
Bush 1.71 Kerry 2.38 Betfair exchange
Bush 3/5 Kerry 5/4 UK bookmaker best price

Polling round-up showing variance of margin on last poll
Bush 46 Kerry 46 Fox
Bush 47 Kerry 48 DCorps
Bush 48 Kerry 48 Zogby tracking
Bush 48 Kerry 48 ARG
Bush 49 Kerry 48 ABC

The big change has been Fox which has moved from a Bush 6% lead to them level-pegging.


Will the election be a tie?
There’s been a lot of speculation that this could be the outcome and the latest prediction is that there is a 3.25% chance of this happening - or 35/1. So the current William Hill price of 12/1 is not good value.



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8 comments to “Bringing it all together”

  1. Even RealClearPolitics, with its Republican bias (selective choice of polls and how far back to continue to use them), now only puts the race at 50/50. I think Kerry should probably be \’favourite\’ right about now. But this has been a truly extraordinary race, and with 48 hours to go there could be a couple more twists to come.

    I\’ll stick my neck out and say that whoever wins will get at least 300 Electoral Votes; I think what\’s likely is that the winner will just eke home in most of the key battleground states to have a relatively comfortable EC result even if the popular vote is closer.

         by Anonymous October 31st, 2004 at 7:27 pm

  2. I\’ve gone back in again backing Kerry. The momentum is there and the numbers are starting to look good.

         by Mike Smithson October 31st, 2004 at 7:32 pm

  3. I\’m with Anon; I think whoever takes it will probably do a lot better than we expect. Except for \’00, there have been very few \”close run things\” when it comes to the electoral college. My feeling is that betting on the most marginal states (Pennsylvania to go Bush, Nevada to Kerry) is the best strategy. (Well, I would say that, those are my positions!)

         by Robert October 31st, 2004 at 8:39 pm

  4. Good point made by Robert re. the Electoral College. 2000 was the exception - even in 1960, when Kennedy won by just 118,574 votes (out of an electorate of over 50 million), he won by 303 to 219 in the electoral college.

         by Richard October 31st, 2004 at 10:33 pm

  5. If the swing states all go the way the various Tradesports state-by-state markets are currently suggesting the result would be Bush 290, Kerry 248.

         by villan October 31st, 2004 at 11:06 pm

  6. Re: Richard

    Yes but the two closest races in 1960 (and both probably rigged) were Illinois and Texas which accounted for 51 electoral votes so the election was effectively decided in two states.

    Good question regarding volaility tomorrow, the last polls will be out tonight and then it will depend on (probably misleading) reports from the field.

         by pregethwr November 1st, 2004 at 2:14 pm

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