It's a coin toss on who'll face McCain

Hard to know whether exit polling numbers have leaked yet (it’s coming up to 4pm East Coast US time), but Intrade has McCain an 89% chance of being Republican nominee, and Clinton and Obama both on 50%. Nailbiting.

(FWIW, I’m an Obama supporter. Here’s a review of his two books that I wrote for the SMH a year ago. Funny to think that then he was just a 1/5 chance, and that in mid-2006, he was a 1/50 chance.)

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5 Responses to It's a coin toss on who'll face McCain

  1. Richard Green says:

    There was a massive spike in Obama’s price, and then a sudden drop when results started coming in (and vice versa for Clinton).

    I wonder if there was a bad piece of information that temporarily led the market astray, or whether prediction markets can have periods of irrational exuberance in the short term as well. Without being cynical about intrade’s predictive capacities, I wonder what caused such a massive (and apparently mistaken) spike.

  2. Patrick says:

    Irrational exuberance, it seems.

  3. Dale Bailey says:

    What if the contest remains this close thru the remaining primaries to the Party convention and remains deadlocked there? What price Al Gore being parachuted in as the deadlock-buster? He would then be inevitably elected as President, I venture. I am slightly concerned that Obama vs Clinton being so close plays into the Republicans hands.

  4. Patrick says:

    He would then be inevitably elected as President, I venture.

    Nothing could be less likely!

  5. hrvoje says:

    Both Brad De Long and Robert Reich are Obama supporters, Krugman on the other hand is Hillary fan. He appears to really not like the man. Krugman cannot get over the whole health insurance mandates thing, he things it’s less progressive and has less chance to succeed and turn into a single payer system. Kurgman (whose I’m a great fan, along with De long and Reich) mostly agree that Obama is more progressive and liberal on all issues then Hilary except for the health care. But then again this election will be very much about who can deliver better heath to Americans. Andrew who do you think has a better health plan Obama or Hilary? Also had there not been for the Edwards who basically put the heath on the election agenda, it’s a bit sad that neither of them had the guts to lead and put ideas first on health policies. Both of their policies were reactions based on Edwards’.

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