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

:-)

After reading the ABCnews.com page itself, I had to add some less inspiring details to the post about the ABC poll, though. That makes for two polls (ABC and CBS) that have Kerry winning the debate, but not actually improving on the gap in voting preferences.

Finally, the least reliable of polls ... the Internet polls on the news sites.

Current scores:

MSNBC.com, 1,341,024 votes in:
Kerry 63%
Bush 37%

CNN.com, 66,470 votes in:
Kerry 86%
Bush 12%

Foxnews.com
Still can't find it! But Jespah said an hour ago that there were "about 53,000 votes so far, and the results are very close. Bush leads in that poll but not by a lot."

What I did find on Foxnews.com:

I'm not sure how indicative the stock market is to elections, but the DOW was over 100 points in the first hour.

Among unscientific straw polls, AOL as of this hour with just over a million votes cast:
Kerry 53%
Bush 47%

Did the debate change your voting preference?
No - 78%
Yes, I wsill vote for Kerry 18%
Yes, I will vote for Bush 10%

The last straw poll showed Bush ahead in every single state including Massachusetts - Kerry was ahead in the District of Columbia.

Oh, c.i., that reminds me - what's the IEM political stock market say?

Well, no graph for today yet, but the numbers show,
a) a turn towards Kerry, but
b) still a huge lead for Bush.

In the Winner Takes All market, Bush stocks had already dropped ever so slightly from Monday, when they were at 0.719, through yesterday, when they were at 0.681. (If they'd be at 1.000 it would mean everyone is sure he will win). Right now, they're at 0.636.

Vice versa, Kerry stocks last Monday were at 0.285, yesterday at 0.333 and right now at 0.362.

c.i. where the hell have you been? You dropped off the face of the Earth there for awhile.

Oh, and the IEM WTA market today appears to be ticking favorably for Bush; the 19:15 GMT Last Trade Composit numbers (they're updated every 15 minutes) were 38.5 Kerry, 62.8 Bush, with the running average currently standing at 35.9 Kerry, 64.0 Bush. The Vote Share Market continues to favor Bush as well, with current Last Trade and Daily Average both standing at 48.3 Kerry, 51.7 Bush, though that 3.4 point spread is narrower than last night's 6.1 closing spread. Tradesports is showing Kerry at 35.3, off a point from this morning's open of 36.3, while Bush at 66.0 is up 2 points from this morning's open of 64.0

The Debate appears to have had no noticeable Kerry-boost effect on the Real Money crowd.

And you were called on as that being an "out", timber. You have a bunch of mainstream media headlines saying it's a draw. You can't have it both ways. Are those mainstream media "correct", while mainstream media that says he won are just desperately capitulating to the leftist tide?

Yep, and they must be pretty desperate about wresting that Kerry spin together, what, with four different post-debate polls showing Joe Public judging Kerry to have won by only an average 12.5% ... <winks>


If "ticking favourably" means gliding slowly downward, yeah ... as I pointed out two posts above yours, IEM still favoured Bush by 71.9/28.5 last Monday. Last night it closed at 68.4/32.5, and right at this moment it's 62.1/39.9. Yep, the Kerry stocks right now are doing better than they've done all day, and the Bush stocks almost as badly as they've done all day.

No doubt, Bush still has a very comfortable lead there, no need to worry for you yet - but I wouldn't quite call a downward slope like that, resulting in the "Real Money people" putting a higher current price on Kerry than at any moment in over a week "ticking favourably" ...

I was rethinking my initial response to the debate - you know, that I thought Kerry defended his positions well, better than expected, but that they were positions that Soz and I may agree on, but might actually go down very badly with your average Missourian no matter how eloquently and straightforwardly presented - and I was thinking, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next batch of state polls show some advances for Kerry in the blue states - and a further deterioration of his numbers in the red states.

Think about it. Kerry has been faulted for lacking a coherent message, for being personally unappealing, for not being steadfast and aggressive enough in the face of the Bush and SVFT machines. He now showed a good deal of compensation on those things. So those who actually do share his general kind of world view, his multilateralist, deliberate approach to world politics, but were unconvinced by him personally, might just fall back behind him now after all. Same with those who highly value having a knowledgeable man in office, but were thus far turned off by Kerry's waffling and lack of focus, they might now think, OK, he can do it.

On the other hand, the rural and factory town voters that have voted Democrat in the past - just to speak in broad generalisations - they didn't do so because they share a multilateralist world view or get exasperated by lack of apparent intellect; they do so when they feel that's the party that cares most about them and is most in touch with the troubles they face. Talk of the UN, on the other hand, will still most likely turn them off, no matter how articulately presented. (Scheiber, I see, makes something of the same point).

Broad, sweeping generalisation, I know. There was an old woman calling in at C-SPAN last night, she didn't talk too smart, just common folk, but she was sighing in relief, cooing almost, "it made me so happy to hear this man talk, to hear a man talk who knows about things, who is an intelligent man ... I miss President Clinton so ... it was a good thing to hear John Kerry". So ... obviously, all my theories are relative. But still I wouldnt be surprised if the next polls show Kerry winning in, say, Maine and Washington, and losing in, say, Missouri and Arkansas.

Consider these maps below. Last week, Daly looked up what states Gore and Bush were respectively leading in, in the polls, back in 2000, right at this point of the race. They make an interesting comparison with the states Kerry and Bush were leading in now, last week.

Some eye-catching differences. Kerry actually does better than Gore (who was overall in a better position) in WA, OR, NM, ME, NH and MD - all states he's either tied or ahead in where Gore was trailing Bush.

But Gore did better than where Kerry now is at in MN, WI, IA, MO, AR, TN and FL - he was ahead there, at this point in the race, while Kerry last week was either tied or behind - or he was tied while Kerry now is behind..

The states Kerry outdoes Gore in are all in the northeast or in the northwest, plus New Mexico. The states Gore outdid Kerry in are all in the midwest or south. Another slight confirmation that the division between red and blue states threatens to become a class/culture thing - with the Republicans definitively ending up the party of common folk?

ECB Map, 9/29/04


ECB (Classic) Map, 9/29/00

Soz, I don't see that as "coppin' an out" at all ... just a statement of expectation, expectation which so far at least, appears to have been pretty much on-the-mark. My core thesi are that

A) Debates have little measureable effect on voter attitude

B) Nobody hit a home run last night

and

C) Barring dramatic, all-but-unprecedented momentum change, Kerry remains facing a helluva hill to climb.

On the otherhand, with a nod to nimh, "the bookie spreads trend" has continued to narrow as the day has worn on. Maybe somethin' significant is goin' on there, but as the variations have been rather irregular, relatively smooth, gentle, and well inside the standard daily deviation envelope, I sorta doubt it. Applying Bollinger Band moving average overlays to the respective daily, weekly, monthly, and lifetime charts shows no indication of imminent breakout for either candidate, while day-to-day weekly, monthly, and lifetime buy-sell volume ratio analysis continues to show interest weighted heavilly, and continuing to trend smoothly upward so, toward Bush; things appear to be poised to remain pretty much as they have been. Meanwhile, out there in the real world, the US securites markets are up across the board, with the Dow notching a comforting triple-digit gain, the NASDAQ up well over 45, and the S&P climbing nearly 17.

Don't see anything anywhere in any of that to cause me any distress. I feel pretty good about things, and the way they're goin', right now, actually.

Oops, submitted that post too early, wasnt finished yet.

Edited it now to add three more paragraphs, just above those maps. Enjoy (he said, poking fun at himself).

Hope this works ... it should be pretty eye-catchin', too. And if I did this right, it oughtta update whenever the host site does. We'll see.



Oh, and the parent graphics for this are from a decidedly Kerry/Democrat leaning (but otherwise pretty up=front and objective) website: www.electoral-vote.com ... check it out if you care to. There's a buncha useful info and links there if you're a politics junkie.

hey timber. ya allright?

thanks for the link, this looks like a fun site. let's keep an eye on this one.

Thats a cool graph ...

I check out electoral-vote.com regularly too, it's kinda my second choice site when it comes to keeping an eye on state polls and EC numbers ... but they count the Zogby Interactives in their overviews and you can't filter them out like on Daly's site, that's a pity.

They (He?) had this funny warning about putting too much stock into polls in this time of overpolling on the front page yesterday or today ... something about knowing a student in NM who recounted how something like a third of all students there have been polled by now, and how much fun they're having concocting ever new answers ... ;-)

hi nimh. how's things over there tonight?

Eh - it's early again. Or late, depending on how you look at it ...

Doin' just fine, DTOM, and thanks for askin'. How 'bout you?

Yeah, nimh, I'm not all that comfortable with elecotral-vote's methodology ... apart from inclucing Zigby Interactives, he goes with the most recent poll from whomever for each state when he updates, though he says he's working on a solution to average several polls per state as they are uodated ... that could be something to watch for.

Now, don't say I didn't warn ya ... his Final Electoral Vote Projection Map is not, at least at this time, a thing of beauty for Kerry leaners. :wink:

That map is a thing of rare beauty