Intrade vs. the polls

Four-and-a-half years ago, I did some work on the predictiveness of polls versus prediction futures; specifically, Zogby versus Intrade during the presidential primaries.  I found the pollster to not only be less predictive, but that its data coverage and timeliness to be lacking, against the continual trading and pricing features of Intrade.

While my new job has kept me from choosing a different pollster to measure against Intrade (back then, I thought about Rasmussen, but I think now it might have been FiveThirtyEight)*, I've been checking out the action on Intrade's Obama Ohio futures trading throughout the day.

While Romney has a mathematical shot at winning the election while losing Ohio, I think that scenario is highly unlikely.  As you can see, it looks like Ohio is slipping away from him.

May the odds be ever in your candidates' favor.

*As of 740pm EST, Rasmussen is calling "Obama: 237 - Romney: 206 - Toss-up: 95" while Nate Silver forecasts "Obama: 313 - Romney: 225".  As far as Ohio goes, FiveThirtyEight is saying its 91% for Obama, while Rasmussen says 49% vs 49%.