Prediction markets

[Tom Johnson (via Google Docs)]

  Slate is Aggregating Prediction Markets for 2008 US Presidential
race<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/oreilly/radar/atom/%7E3/125889130/slate_is_aggreg.html>

Posted: 18 Jun 2007 04:01 PM CDT

By Brady Forrest

[image: democrat candidates]

Slate <http://specials.slate.com/futures/2008/> is aggregating four
<http://specials.slate.com/futures/2008/>prediction
markets<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market>as a part of
its 2008 US Presidential race coverage. As they say:

The thrill of prediction markets for political junkies is that they harness
"the wisdom of crowds <http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/>."
A single person's bet on an election outcome isn't very good, but thousands
of bets, with real stakes, are more likely to predict the correct result
than even the best pundit. The Iowa Electronic
Markets<http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/>,
the big daddy of the political prediction markets, is consistently better at
forecasting winners than pre-election polls. (Read a 2003 Slate "Explainer"
about prediction markets here <http://www.slate.com/id/2086316/>.)

If a single prediction market is wiser than the pundits and the polls,
imagine how wise all the prediction markets are together. That's the idea
behind Slate's "Political Futures," which offers a comprehensive guide to
all the big political prediction markets. From now until Election Day 2008,
we'll publish regular updates of the key data from Iowa Electronic
Markets<http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/>,
Intrade.com<https://www.intrade.com/aav2/trading/tradingHTML.jsp?evID=23190&eventSelect=23190&updateList=true&showExpired=false>,
Newsfutures.com <http://news.us.newsfutures.com/showmrkts.html?catId=9>, and
Casualobserver.net <http://www.casualobserver.net/>. (Casualobserver has not
yet launched its 2008 political prediction market, but we will add it as
soon as it goes up.) In these early days of the campaign, we are tracking
four markets: 1) Democratic nominee for president, 2) Republican nominee for
president, 3) presidential victor, and 4) party control of the presidency.
We'll add Senate and House races as they heat up next year.

[image: 200706181247] <http://radar.oreilly.com/200706181247.jpg>

I appreciate Slate's aggregation and clean graph, but I have to say that
NewsFutures <http://news.us.newsfutures.com/election2008.html> displays
their results in a much more eye-catching way. How long till we can't even
see Bill Richardson<http://news.us.newsfutures.com/market/market.html?symbol=PRZNMBRY>'s
head?

I hesitate to say that this is a sign of prediction markets breaking into
the mainstream. I don't actually see prediction markets doing that anytime
soon (or perhaps ever), but it is very cool and interesting to see them
being incorporated into a mainstream news site. Their inclusion does show
the continuing shift of media companies towards listening to their readers.

*For more reading on prediction markets, **Dave
McClure<http://500hats.typepad.com>
** recently wrote a piece on prediction markets for **Release
2.0<http://radar.oreilly.com/r2/>
** (**excerpt<http://500hats.typepad.com/files/ChannellingCrowds_DaveMcClure_Release2.0_April2007.pdf>
**) as well as an accompanying **blog
post<http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/prediction_markets/index.html>
**. *
 <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=ZFk9jKKI>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=wWw7f58x>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=qQcwNTpL>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=4hVQt4ka>


==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.us

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                   -- Buckminster Fuller
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