Gore pulls even with Bush

September 1, 2000 3:44 PM

Gore pulls even with Bush in the Iowa Electronic Markets.
posted by dhartung (10 comments total)

The IEM is a real-money market where you can, among other things, forecast first-weekend boxoffice for movies, or various political elections in the US and around the world. I'm posting this because johnb used the same graph a few days ago, describing what he saw as "but he has fallen further behind, and indeed the rate at which he is falling behind is accelerating". In fact, the Democratic convention had barely finished and the IEM was lagging behind the scientific polling data which had yet to be released showing a post-convention bounce for the Dems, though clearly not as dramatic as the GOP managed.

Yes, I'm noting this a bit smugly because I am a rank-and-file Dem, but most of my smugness is due to an inherent skepticism about "snapshot" data in presidential races.
posted by dhartung at 3:50 PM on September 1, 2000

This is the information page for the winner-takes-all presidential market. There's also one based on predicting vote share by party.

Basically, right now you could buy a share in the WTA market for 50 cents that might be worth $1, or jack. You can buy VS shares for something closer to a guess at the eventual vote, i.e. 49 cents, hoping it ends up being worth 50 to 60 cents, and not 40 cents.

Anyway, these markets were very accurate early on; at this point in the 1992 and 1996 races, they showed Clinton with a substantial lead over Bush, Perot, and Dole and Perot respectively. It's quite interesting that the race is so close this "late" in the game.
posted by dhartung at 3:55 PM on September 1, 2000

I stand corrected. I was actually just going to post the same thing; Gore apparently closed the IEM gap on 8/31. And from the Guardian: further encouragement for the pro-Gore folks.

I want Nader to do as well as possible. That's my only real concern. Beyond that, I suppose Gore is preferable to Bush, but this preference is far too weak to justify voting for Gore.
posted by johnb at 4:35 PM on September 1, 2000

Thanks for that, John. I'll use it over at my political forecasting blog.
posted by dhartung at 9:19 PM on September 1, 2000

The problem with the forecasting johnb mentions is that they presume that absolutely nothing can possibly happen in the next 2+ months. No screwups or major strategic victories on either candidate's part, no change in the economy, no scandals, no war, no stock market crash, no health problems on the candidates' parts, on and on and on. All in all, they're not much more meaningful than the old belief that every president elected in a year ending in 0 ended up dying in office. It was really easy to point to how perfect the statistics were, until Reagan happened to not die.
posted by aaron at 9:41 PM on September 1, 2000

Reagan died in 1985, aaron: it's just no-one's letting on that he's been radio-controlled ever since.
posted by holgate at 9:45 PM on September 1, 2000

Oh, by the way, Sepember 1 poll by Rasmussen/Portrait of America: Bush 43.7%, Gore 40.5%.
posted by aaron at 9:45 PM on September 1, 2000

i know a lot of people on here like nader, but a vote for nader is a vote for bush...unfortunately

gore needs to win...do you really want the country making it illegal for a woman to have control over her own body?

and just look at GW Bush, the guy doesn't even want to be president! he's a little prick that was made to run because his party had no one else that could win...he's being controlled by his father who is still hell bent over the whole gulf war....

if bush wins it will go down as one of the greatest mistakes of man kind...
posted by physics at 11:47 PM on September 1, 2000

GREATEST MISTAKES OF MANKIND?!?! Worse than the Taft administration?
posted by thirteen at 7:48 AM on September 2, 2000

Physics, it looks as if you haven't been paying attention. A vote for Ralph Nader is certainly not a vote for Bush. Think a moment, see if you can figure out why. If you need help, see the article by Michael Albert, contained in the last post on this thread. If you disagree with the reasoning, explain why. A simple rehersal of the conventional "wisdom" is not very illuminating.
posted by johnb at 1:46 PM on September 2, 2000