Read The Prospectus, Andrew

Andrew Sullivan points to the Iowa Electronic Market as evidence of a non-bounce for Kerry. I would not say it is useless, but the IEM is certainly counter-intuitive (perhaps the designers are still obsessed by Florida 2000).

Andrew linked to ther chart for the "Winner Take All" market. You might think, as a casual observer, that the winner of the election is the fellow who raises his right hand on January 20 and takes the oath of office.

Wrong. The winner, per the rules, is whoever receives the most popular votes. So, people betting on Gore would have collected on the "Winner Take All" if this format had been in place in 2000.

Fine, it's an objective standard, and it is certainly highly correlated with my "right hand held high" standard. It's just not quite the standard people might be expecting.

At TradeSports, the winner is the winner, and they show a similar result to the IEM. Just click on the tab labelled "All Events", and Bush should be there. Or, live feeds at Don Luskin's site (and other sites, too; let me know, please.)

Comments

[Jeff]

A random thought about the bounce. Leave aside for a moment the spin. Prior to the selection of Edwards, wouldn't we have pretty much said that no matter who the selection is, there's likely to be only marginal change? All the polls have the candidates totally split, with 80% of both sides firmly behind their candidate. The undecideds are something like 7% of the electorate. What kind of bounce could Kerry have gotten?

Prediction: The DNC convention will provide Kerry with only a marginal bounce.

Another prediction: The RNC convention will provide Bush with only a marginal bounce.

[TM]

Assuming that you are right about the "Undecideds", your point is very insightful. It suggests, for example, that we will have two episodes of what Kaus is calling "Dem panic" - the curent "no-bounce", and another "no-bounce" after the convention.

Dems will then have a month to stew on the possibility that their guy really is that bad (He is! and Too Late!), with whatever effect that has on morale, fundraising, and other races (where Dems, especially in the South, run from the ticket like kids playing Spud).

But we are talking about Olympic August, so maybe that is no big deal.

Then, we have the Rep convention - if your theory holds up, there is no Bush bounce, and Dems, with confidence renewed, march into Autumn (that would be the autumn of our country, too...).

Hmm. Over time, it is a wash, unless Dem panic (or August Rep hubris) make a difference.

And there is a possible Dem benefit! If Rove is pol-watching (gee, ya think?), he may decide, after the Dem convention no-bounce, that Cheney's ticker is A-OK. Cheney is not dumped for McCain, no Rep bounce, Kerry wins!

Anyway, very interesting. One presumes that the Great Minds in the two parties are aware of this, in which case there should be hints of this amongst the top fund-raisers as they reassure/warn their audience.