11.06.2006

TECHNICALS-SENATE ELECTION


Time for some political trading - Currently the Democrats need a pickup of 6 seats to take control of the senate. In order to take over the majority, they need to win all but one of the "contested" races. Here is the current betting on tradesports.com.

Maryland- 75%-30% that the Democratic candidate wins.

Missouri- 56%-44% that the Democratic candidate wins.

Rhode Island- 78%-22% that the Democratic candidate wins.

Montana- 69%-25% that the Democratic candidate wins.

Virginia- 50%-50%- Webb and Allen fighting down to the end and tradesports does not give an edge to either.

I believe the other commonly discussed "toss ups" such as Tenn and New Jersey are not really contested and will be split with Corker and Menendez winning.

So if all goes according to the current odds - and if George Allen pulls it out in VA, we have 50-50 with Dick Cheney running the senate. If Ford and Webb win, which I don't see as likely, then we probably get the 51/49 with the Dems taking control.

Keep in mind that tradesports predicted every single state correctly in the 2004 election.

Interesting how tradesports.com has the republicans retaining power at a 75% probability.

Looks like the best trade on the site is taking the dems for controlling the House of Representatives. The trade there is 20% for the repubs keeping it. I think that is a sell and probably the best bet on the site.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hard to take tradesports too seriously this year. Missouri, Virgina, RI are all basically tossups in lastest polling. i know the poll data looks extremely poor this year, but why the spread in the odds? And the Maryland market assumes the black vote is staying with Cardin. That's a risky proposition. The election could easily break as predicted, but the markets are inexpicable to anyone handicapping the races. RI at 78% dem? Perhaps chafee is considered a dem for TS markets.

12:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Via The New Republic's The Plank:

John Judis and I have been e-mailing about the alarming Pew poll that came out today. It reflects the same trends captured by that earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, except that the trends are, gulp, even more pronounced. Worse, the folks at Pew have graciously posted their cross-tabs, which makes it nearly impossible to rationalize the lousy results. As John points out, the fact that Democrats' 15-point advantage among white women last month has turned into a 2-point disadvantage today is incredibly ominous. Unfortunately, it's not quite as ominous as the erosion in the Democrats' advantage among Northeasterners: from 26 points to 9. The Northeast is, of course, a region where Democrats are banking on roughly half a dozen pick-ups. That kind of dropoff isn't going to get the job done.

Me: in light of what's known, the data, tradesports markets are inefficient this yr. answers in 48 hours, hanging chads aside.

12:53 PM  

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