GOP faces a tough battle to win White House
2 political futures markets see Democrats winning at least the popular vote. Ireland's Intrade puts the odds of an Obama win at nearly 60%.
The Republicans may have started the presidential campaign thinking it would be easy to defeat Barack Obama. Money -- real money -- thinks the GOP has its work cut out for it. Two political futures markets see Obama winning the election. But Democrats shouldn't get too cheerful. They may not retain the Senate and probably won't win back the House of Representatives.
According to Intrade.com, the Irish company that lets investors speculate on just about everything, including elections, Obama has a 59.7% chance of winning the election. That's down from 59.9% on Monday and 61.4% on March 12.
The Iowa Electronic Markets looks at popular votes and sees the Democrats winning 51% of the popular vote vs. 48.3% for Republicans. In a separate look at the election -- the chances of winning the most votes outright -- Obama has a 62% chance.
Both markets require you to put cash in to vote. Intrade won't take credit cards because the government regards speculating on political elections as gambling. Iowa gets around the problem because its sponsor, the University of Iowa's College of Business, uses the information for research purposes.
What makes both interesting is that they do come quite close to accurately predicting electoral outcomes. Intrade, for example, came closer to predicting the outcome of the Ohio Republican primary -- a narrow Mitt Romney win -- than nearly all pollsters.
It does give Romney a 96% chance of winning the Illinois primary and a 90.2% chance of winning the Republican nomination.
Intrade does not have a perfect track record. It wrongly predicted Romney would win the Iowa caucuses and Colorado.
Intrade has been in business since 2001 and opened its political markets in 2004. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the site has been a go-to source for reporters and political junkies since the 2008 presidential race, when it predicted Obama would win 364 electoral college votes. Obama ended up with 365.
The two markets graphically show how Obama's fortunes have changed. After the death of Osama bin Laden, the Intrade saw the odds of an Obama win soar to about 70%. The budget battle and financial turmoil last summer and early fall cut the odds down to maybe 46%. But the markets began to see Obama's chances improve as the caucuses and primaries got under way.
By early February, the odds of an Obama win hit 60% and haven't changed much since.
IEM's daily market data show a similar trendline.
I can understand the futures markets favoring the incumbant before there is even a GOP nominee muchless the first debate with Obama. If Romney (or whomever) makes issues of the record of this administration, it will be a very close election. My hope is that we can have a fair and honest election (I know this won't happen) and that we can unite behind our elected leadership (this won't either) but we all know the chances of those things coming to pass.
Now that Obama has nearly a complete term under his belt he is probabaly qualified to be president - unlike 2008. His inexperience can't be the key issue this time around. His record will be and in that arena, he may have trouble. He has boosted the national debt to the stratisphere and the only way out now is for the debt to be monitized. How can someone be re-elected when that is the record on which the incumbant has to run? Time will tell.
I'd like to see any candidate say "if elected over the next four years I will work on nothing but the economy, and will veto any bill that does not apply to the economy." I think he/she would win in a landslide. Now is not the time to talk about porn, guns, pro choice or not, time to get our jobs back!
People, It wouldn't matter who was President either the right or the left the debt was going to skyrocket, we were broke when President Obama came to the Office of the President of the United States. Let's face it people,either way whoever was President was going to have to pay the bills acquired by the Federal Government, and just to keep the everyday occurrences functioning. I don't know about you, but I know my bills keep coming even if I don't have the money. So, the same thing occurs with the Government. Broke or not we owe people, and let's not forget the wars. The President no matter the party would have been in an unknown situation, going threw trail and error. The Government is not a business it is to big, so just because you ran a company may not be enough to help you thru the many facets of the Government. That's why they have Advisors.
This country is really in poor shape...unintelligent, lazy, entitled, and a ton of other adjectives that explains why unemployment is high and other reasons that "we" as americans are in bad shape. To blame Obama for decades of bad trading patterns and lack of saving in bank accounts is not right. Take it upon yourself to help fix our current situation.
Don't blame Obama for American entitled attitude. Our society is lame!! Corporations run this country. The middle class is getting smaller and smaller...this has been happening since the 60's.
At least Obama represents Americans as an intelligent figure. He will get my vote above these silly REpub's.
Hello - the debt we are in now shatters ALL record highs for the USA.
It's never going to be paid back by raising taxes.
We are BROKE and you can't tax or borrow or spend your way out of it
let that sink in before you get on your milk box again and -- just to give you a reality check-- dear leader , Obuma INCREASED THE DEFICIT BY 4 TIMES WHAT IT WAS IN 2008
now what?
Tour guy.....your numbers are mostly right. No president SINCE ROOSEVELT has been re-elected with unemployment higher than 7.5%.
Probably because since 1944, the unemployment rate has only been higher than 7.5% ONE TIME leading up to a presidential election, and that was in 1976 when it was 7.9% in October.
per BLS unemployment statistics
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