New Tradesports rankings

[elcorazon]

Here are the numbers on winning in the general election right now:

McCain - 27.0
Clinton - 26.0
Obama - 13.0
Giuliani - 11.0
Romney - 9.4
Gore - 6.0
Edwards - 5.0
all others are under 1.0

[elcorazon]

Obama near record high.

And yet still nowhere near impressive.

Well I guess you don't find Giuliani's numbers impressive either right?

and Romney's are downright crappy.

[elcorazon]

A question about tradesports: How do you bet against a candidate? Are there futures contracats like on the stock market, or is there some other mechanism for betting that a contracts price will decline?

The part of Tradesports not related to sports is now called
Intrade

You are actually making a bet with another individual.  Tradesports/Intrade is not a bookmaker where you bet against the house, but more of a broker.

If Edwards is at 7.0, it means that the last trade, someone bet 7.0 that Edwards would win, and someone else bet 93.0 that Edwards would not win.  The winner of the bet will collect 100.0.  In this case the contract value is $10, so the above bet would be $0.70 vs. $9.30.

Let's say that you ask 7.0 for Edwards (you are seeking someone willing to bet 7.0 that Edwards will win), and later the value of Edwards declines.  You might be able to bid 5.0 on Edwards at a later date, and close out your position, giving you a net gain of 2.0 (you have bet a total of 98.0 with a guarantee of 100.0).

I'd think if you were wanting to make money this far out, you would be trying to anticipate price shifts, rather than predict the ultimate winner.

Though you would need to first buy Edwards, correct? So if I think that Edwards will drop from 8 to 4 in the next week, I would first have to buy Edwards contracts at the current price, and couldn't make any money, right? I'd have to wait until I think he's undervalued, buy, wait till he's overvalued, and then sell. But if you think someone will make a steady decline and end up not winning, (such as Clinton, who I'm really thinking about), is there a way to make money?

you want to "sell short".  not sure if that's possible or not.  Basically that is just selling shares you don't own, leaving you responsible to "pay them off" if they ultimately become worth something.  Theoretically, you can later buy them for less if you turn out to be correct that the shares will go down, thus eliminating your ultimate downside, but also capping your profits.

[elcorazon]

nah.  Edwards is selfish for not hanging with "the love of his life"  thompson is selfless for using what could be his latter days to do good things for his country and the world.

[elcorazon]

I believe Clinton once said that if she were President in 2002, we would not have gone to war. Of course, I don't quite see how that makes any sense. So she authorizes the war as the Junior Senator from New York, but would not have authorized it if she were President?

I think I've heard her say that too, and it doesn't make any sense.  It's an "I want it both ways" answer.  It's like saying that the decision to invade was a mistake, but she didn't make a mistake by agreeing with it.  That seems a bit ridiculous.

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I honestly think this might make some sort of sense.

Congress "authorization" was not really a declaration of war so much as it was a decision that we believe there is reason to suspect that war might become necessary and as such, we will give the authority to our president to make that decision based on the facts at the time, without having to deal with an emergency resolution that might not occur in a timely manner.

Now having said that, I still think Congress was dumb to go along with it, but I also think it's not crazy to say, that while one might have been willing to say that the resolution was worthy of passing, even with the resolution, a better commander in chief might have been able to avoid the war that of course we are still mired in.

I'm not fully buying it, but explain to me why that logic is nuts.

[elcorazon]

problem is that they are independent markets and they are not that heavily traded.  This is why the numbers aren't as logical as they might be.

[elcorazon]

has anybody ever done an analysis of these markets with respect to their accuracy historically?  I know it's hard to actually determine what is accurate, but I have this running debate with someone. 

I contend these markets are inaccurate and don't have much bearing whatsoever on actual possibilities, and that the idea that they are helpful tools in analyzing the race is mostly a myth.

Anyone ever see an analysis of them... or compare them to polls in terms of accuracy.

I think they follow the polls, mostly.