Archive for May 23rd, 2008

Money Talks

May 23rd, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics | 2 Comments »

They say money makes the world go around but I am not sure who is attributed to that comment however Publilius Syrus said in 100BC: “Money alone sets all the world in motion.” The same could also be said for the Democratic Nomination, supporters on both sides are still fighting it out however I mentioned earlier on this week, the nomination has pretty much gone to Senator Obama. Today I am going to use two predictive indices to prove this point (Data from the 23 May). The first is a prediction market run by InTrade.com where we can see Senator Obama running at a 92.5% probability of him winning the democratic nomination. These prediction trades are not scientific but InTrade boasts a membership of 73,000 active traders which is a lot of people giving the probability some credence as far as numbers go. Senator Clinton on the other hand has a 6.6% chance of winning the Democratic Nomination and if we we examine the InTrade data closely, we can see her decline started on the 30th of April, a week after the Pennsylvania primary.

The second set of graphs is from the better of the two operations and is run by Bet2Give where people contribute real money and give their winnings from trading to a selected charity. They have Senator Obama’s shares trading at 94 cents per share while Senator Clinton is trading at 5 cents a share.

Senator Obama Bet2Give Graph - May 23rd 2008

Senator Clinton Bet2Give Graph - May 23rd 2008

It is inevitable as the rain in Ireland, Senator Obama will be the nominee but I find it quite interesting that the Senator Clinton as a potential VP talk is back in the media. I think in part because the MSM (Mainstream Media) has been focusing on the difficulties Senator Obama would face going up against John McCain in the general election. They MSM ultimately have fallen into the pitfall of focusing on this election as  tradtional like every other election for the last century but given Senator Obama’s campaign so far, we can say that is far from traditional.