Opinion polls can be biased by
wishful thinking, contrarian responses, and even deliberate lies of
participants -- after all, there's no real motivation to tell the
pollster the truth. But as James Surowiecki argues in The Wisdom of Crowds, put
some skin in the game and the responses suddenly get a lot more real.
That's why it's disturbing to see a fairly consistent prediction by the
IEM, the exchange
that bets money on elections and other future events, that the
Republicans will win not only the electoral college this November, but
an absolute plurality of the popular vote for president, and at least
hold and perhaps even increase their control of both houses of Congress.
The first table above shows the real money betting on the presidency,
and while it's still too close to call, the money all along, with only
a few days' exception, has been on Bush to win a plurality of votes.
The second table shows real money betting on the Republicans to keep
both houses (RH_RS) at twice the level of betting on the Democrats
taking back the Senate (RH_NS), with the betting on the Dems taking
back both houses being nearly
non-existent -- more than a 10-1 longshot. Admittedly the amounts bet
aren't large, but as the link above explains, the predictive accuracy
of this market has been uncanny, far better than any of the polls, even
well in advance of the actual event. If it proves to be wrong ten weeks
from now, it will be an almost unprecedented misjudgement, and perhaps
an indication that crowds, even under the best of circumstances, aren't
always wise. We can only hope, and work hard, to see that that happens.
And keep an eye on this chart.
Also this week comes news
that the fairness of the US election will be monitored by a European
team from the OSCE, the first time a US presidential election has been
so monitored. It will be fascinating to read their report, which is
bound to be damning even if a repeat of the 2000 fiasco is avoided, and
also bound, like all the post-mortem reports on the 2000 election, to
be largely ignored. The biggest concern about this election isn't that
it's too close to call, but that the vote-counting system still can't
be relied upon to correctly identify the people's choice.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
