This paper provides an interpretation of the uncertainty that exists at the beginning of the day of an election as to who will win. It is based on the theory that there are a number of possible conditions of nature that can exist on election day, of which one is drawn. Political betting markets like Intrade provide a way of trying to estimate this uncertainty. It is argued that polling standard errors do not provide estimates of this type of uncertainty. They instead estimate sample-size uncertainty, which can be driven close to zero with a large enough sample. This paper also introduces a ranking assumption concerning dependencies across U.S. states, which puts restrictions on the possible conditions of nature than can exist on election day. The joint hypothesis that the last-day Intrade ranking is correct and the ranking assumption is correct predicts the exact outcomes of the 2004 presidential election and the 2006 Senate election. Although not a test of the ranking assumption, there is evidence that the Intrade traders used the ranking assumption to price contracts in the 2004 presidential election. This was not the case, however, in the 2006 Senate election. Finally, it is shown if the ranking assumption is correct, the two political parties should spend all their money on a few states, which seems consistent with their actual behavior in 2004.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 29 pages Date of creation: Sep 2006 Date of revision:
May 2007 Publication status: Published in The Journal of Politics (2009) Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1579
Find related papers by JEL classification: C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: