[extropy-chat] Looks like a Kerry victory

[Hal Finney]

Brett Paatsch writes:
> Looks like a Kerry victory may be about to happen after all.
>
> I've been watching this site for a few weeks.
> http://www.electoral-vote.com/ in the last couple of
> days there seems to have been a heck of a lot of polls
> and the trend of electoral-votes has been tending ever
> so slightly towards a Kerry win.

The betting markets are still pretty split.  IEM has 51%/50% for the two,
http://128.255.244.60/quotes/78.html (based on adding the two DEM04 and
REP04 average prices).  Tradesports has it 54%/48% for Bush v Kerry,
http://www.tradesports.com/ .

Keep in mind these are estimated chances of victory, not margins.
The markets are still saying that it is essentially a coin flip which
one will win.

BTW adding the _G52 prices for the IEM gives the odds that one candidate
will win with greater than 52% of the popular vote, which would be a
relatively decisive victory.  IEM estimates 32% for this, so it certainly
can't be ruled out.  In other words, the markets are NOT predicting
razor-thin margins, but rather that there is too much uncertainty to
know who will win.

In 2000, changing fewer than 1000 votes in one state (Florida) would
have changed the outcome.  I predict that will not happen this time;
that in the final results, no single state will be such that changing
< 1000 votes will change the overall victor.  This is just based
on probabilities; with many millions of voters in large states, it's
unlikely that the result will be that close, and when you combine it
with the need for the overall electoral balance to be so close that one
state could tip it, the odds seem low.

Hal