Re: Comments on elections

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Wed Nov 08 2000 - 08:39:04 MST


Well in other news, the idea futures market badly missed. Any ideas why
they were so off? Actually it would appear the old "wall street" predictor
came through- Dow Jones has been up lately, and I wager this tipped the
popular vote more towards Gore. Oddly enough the stock market's anticipation
of Bush may have given the popular vote to Gore.

Robin Hanson wrote:
>
> I wrote:
> > You might want to revise your views in light of *data* we have on
> > how previous markets have done. They have consistently done better
> > than opinion polls and do not show a bias toward conservative candidates.
> > See: http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/references.html
>
> Harvey Newstrom responded:
> >No offense, but I reviewed the data. At first glance, it did not seem to be
> >that predictive, and all the races I reviewed showed a clear Republican
> >bias. ...
> >Do you have any specific data comparing this market with opinion polls? Do
> >you have any specific data comparing this market with the actual outcomes?
> >My quick glanced seemed to find that it failed on both counts.
>
> The URL I gave includes this cite:
> Forsythe, R., F. Nelson, GR. Neumann and J. Wright (1992) "Anatomy of an
> Experimental Political Stock Market." American Economic Review, 82:1142-1161.
> at http://www.jstor.org/cgi-bin/jstor/printpage/00028282/di976316/97p0164c/
> and now temporarily at http://hanson.gmu.edu/iem.pdf
> This describes in detail the market during the 1988 presidential election.
> Traders were indeed more republican than average, but consistently estimated
> a lower share for the republican than opinion polls were suggesting.
>
> Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
> Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
> MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
> 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323

-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/



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