If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

Ta.

More interesting (though unpromising) stuff in Tarantulas' thread where I got this from.

Yeah. I was a happy gal for a minute there. A brief, shining minute... sigh.

Thanks for bumping this up! My favorite site in this department are the Iowa Electronic Markets, hosted by the research group that pioneered the idea. The current quote in the vote share market is that Bush will win over Kerry by a margin of 52: 48 percent. The chances of Bush winning will be a bit larger than this, but not much. There will bee too many surprises happening between now an November 2.

[Edit: fix broken link]

Oh, of course! Cool, yeh. The IEM software is extensively used in Dutch elections, where the national newspaper de Volkskrant sets up similar markets for "political stocks" in co-operation with them, ahead of national parliamentary elections.

It works pretty well, at least no worse than y'r average poll - many people invest in these political "shares", and since they're playing with real money, it really gets to reflect people's expectations well.

The only problem, especially last time round, is that opinion polls have become such a media event of their own in the Netherlands, and there's only 2-3 pollsters around, so the users of the IEM-based stock market often just ended up correcting their rates to fit whatever the polls were saying - so there wasnt much of an 'autonomous' prediction going on anymore. But the rates were still taken quite seriously.

Oh I see that your link doesn't work, here's the "real" one:

2004 US PRESIDENTIAL VOTE SHARE MARKET

And here's a current graph:



The green line represents the price of a "Kerry will be the next president" stock. Its, like, 48 cents now - i.e., the investors are assuming a 48% chance Kerry will be the next President.

The blue line represents the price of a "Bush will be running against Kerry for President and win" stock. Its at 52 cents, i.e. investors estimate the chance Bush will win against Kerry 52%.

Up to Jan 04, both rates were very low (and falling), because the investors didnt expect Kerry to become the Dem presidential candidate (anymore), let alone President - and thus also didnt expect Bush to be winning against Kerry. Early December the highest price was still for a "Bush will be running against Dean and win" share.

Thanks for the correction! I fixed it.


Not quite -- excuse my nitpicking. We're talking about a "presidential vote share market" here. This means that if Bush gets X percent of the popular vote and Kerry is the challenger, the "Bush|Kerry" stock will be worth X cent after the election. This tends to underestate the chances of the poll leader to win. For example, if the market expected Bush to win by a margin of 70:30, his chances of winning another term would be close to 100 percent.

Ah, OK.

So, err - then the green line indicates that at the moment, the investors, on average, expect Bush to get 52% of the vote and Kerry 48%?

Well, sorta nimh. More or less it equates most closely to what in betting circles is known as the "Spread"; in this instance, Bush is the favorite by 4 points.

Current Odds to win Presidential Election 2004 as per ADVFN oddschecker:

Republican Party:[/u] ( 4/6 )

Democratic Party:[/u] ( 13/8 )

Will keep an eye on it for updates.

Interesting, Fedral ... solidly 3-to-2 For for the Rebublicans, a bit worse than 3-to-2 Against for the Dems. As with any tracking sample, what is of most interest, and use, however, is the trending, not any one individual snapshot. It does seem in line with similar prognostications at this point.

I plan to keep a running track of the odds and will update here as regularly as I can. Nice to know which way the odds are going.

People who set odds are as non partisan as they get because you loose money if you bet your heart instead of your head.

Will try and keep the running odds as up to date as possible.

I just updated this graph that I posted on some other threads here a few months ago ... about the job approval/disapproval numbers Bush has been getting. It was interesting both to look at the long-term development of the numbers - it looks like a Christmas tree, somebody said - and to compare the results from the different polling agencies with each other.

Basically, Bush got a huge jump after September 11, then started sliding down, until the start of the Iraq war gave him a new, smaller boost. After which he gradually slid down again, until Saddam's capture provided a new mini-boost - after which he slid further down still. There's a distinct trend there <winks>. Going only on this pattern, you'd say only Osama's capture or a new terrorist attack would get Bush to win.

Notable among the polls is that Fox systematically has Bush's disapproval numbers lower than the other pollsters - and AP/Ipsos and the American Research Group systematically have them higher. With the approval numbers, it's the ABC/WaPo and University of Pennsylvania polls (and to a lesser extent, those of Fox) that deviate from the average in Bush's favour - and the American Research Group polls (and to a much lesser extent those from Pew and Quinnipiac) that make him look worse off.

With this update, comparing polls has become a little difficult though, because after a long wait, the "christmas tree" has finally gotten its long-awaited star/top! :wink: The "average" graph is very clear on that ...

President Bush, job ratings 2001 - 2004 by different polling agencies



President Bush, job ratings 2001 - 2004, average of polling agencies

Thanks for the update, and welcome back here!

It's nice to see that you that those lines have finally crossed each other. I just hope that this reflects a continuation of the trend, not a blip due to the Iraq torture scandal.

Now for the bad news (but those of you following the polls closely will already know) ... No matter what turn of fortune Bush is experiencing in terms of job approval, Kerry still seems to remain locked in place, unable to profit from it.

According to one theory that's circulated widely recently, this is actually only to be expected. Pollsters have pointed out that Carter and Bush Sr, too, at this time of the year were still ahead of /or/ neck-and-neck with Reagan and Clinton, even though their approval ratings had already plummeted. So according to that theory, the wait is now just for the coin to fall and the echo of Bush's free fall to appear in the Bush-vs-Kerry polls, too. But that all depends on how Kerry will do ... and he hasn't been doing too well thus far, in terms of poll findings (favourability ratings, verbal association, etc).

Oh, methodological note: I've used the Bush/Kerry/Other-Don't know polls for these graphs, not the ones that include Nader. Editorial choice: I don't believe Nader will do anything as well in the real elections as in the current polls. Its not even sure in how many states he'll be on the ballot. So I feel that polls that include Nader give a less realistic indication than those that don't.

Bush versus Kerry, by different polling agencies



Bush versus Kerry, average of all polling agencies



Second methodological note: if a polling agency conducted more than one poll on the same question (Bush job rating or Bush vs Kerry) within the given timeframe, I took the average. (The job rating graph goes by half-months, the Bush/Kerry one splits months into three parts).

Hiya Thomas, thanks for the welcome-back ;-)

I'm sharing your hope ... One comforting thought here is that in all of his three+ years of Presidency thus far, Bush has not recovered from any blip without falling victim to a deeper one shortly thereafter, yet ... but he's also much misunderestimated, of course.

The polls above echo one thing ... if the Democrats end up winning this, it looks like it's going to be because Bush lost the elections, not because Kerry won them.

What should I do about that five dollar bet that Dean would win? Go ahead and pay off?

Yeah. And your punishment will be to pay it into the Kerry campaign fund, with a personal note saying you admire him for being a straightforward, bold yet modest, generous people's man. Heh ;-)

Hehehehe...!

Wow, so great to see those lines cross. I feel like if I sit here and stare at them longer, maybe I can make them keep going. A REAL BIG star!!

Yeah, there was an Op-Ed a couple of days ago in the NYT that I found fairly plausible, that at this point people are trying to figure out if BUSH deserves to stay in office; if they decide "no", then they turn their thoughts to whether they can stomach Kerry, later on. That's the same data as Carter and Bush Sr. were at the same place, etc.

I'm hoping that the VP decision will bring a burst of new attention and new energy and things will be uphill from there. Especially in terms of the VP being able to be a little more controversial/ adversarial. I think either Edwards (trial lawyer) or Richardson (good ol' boy) would be good at that. I don't know what my preference is at this point.

Hilarious...open a thread to see full-color polling graphs and ya just know who's hanging out. Nice to see you nimh.

There's a classic campaign strategy which holds that when your opponent is doing himself in, it is prudent to stand well back from the debacle.

Kerry has managed to build up an amazing war chest too. They've got a lot of dollars left to spend. The accepted pundit wisdom (in this case, it seems valid to me) is that Kerry's campaign has yet to fashion a coherent narrative. Surely he has people on board who understand that, but a present factor working against is precisely the factor working for him - the press is running with the Bush tragedy (it's not really classical Shakespearean, as in this case, it is the fool who dies).

I think soz might have a good point, as she always does. The veep question keeps Kerry in the press for free, and the announcement and subsequent discussion will gain lots of attention. If they are looking to the debates, then whoever is chosen will face Cheney, of course. And that poses some interesting challenges.