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Slate is Aggregating Prediction Markets for 2008 US Presidential race
Slate is aggregating four prediction markets as a part of its 2008 US Presidential race coverage. As they say: The thrill of prediction markets for political junkies is that they harness "the wisdom of crowds." A single person's bet on an election outcome isn't very good, but thousands of bets, with real stakes, are more likely to predict the correct result than even the best pundit. The Iowa Electronic Markets, the big daddy of the political prediction markets, is consistently better at forecasting winners than pre-election polls. (Read a 2003 Slate "Explainer" about prediction markets here.)
I appreciate Slate's aggregation and clean graph, but I have to say that NewsFutures displays their results in a much more eye-catching way. How long till we can't even see Bill Richardson's head? I hesitate to say that this is a sign of prediction markets breaking into the mainstream. I don't actually see prediction markets doing that anytime soon (or perhaps ever), but it is very cool and interesting to see them being incorporated into a mainstream news site. Their inclusion does show the continuing shift of media companies towards listening to their readers. For more reading on prediction markets, Dave McClure recently wrote a piece on prediction markets for Release 2.0 (excerpt) as well as an accompanying blog post.
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Comments: 5
Laszlo [18 June 2007 01:47 PM]
The second image with the heads is what Tufte calls chart-junk. While 48 is abt. 50% bigger than 30, because they scale a 2d image, Hillary's head looks 4 times as big as Obama's.
Aaron [18 June 2007 02:07 PM]
I'll take the table graph, Its far more legible. The latter is almost as bad as cloud links.
DinoHorse [18 June 2007 02:25 PM]
The head graph is much more original... but of course the table one is more professional.
Emile Servan-Schreiber [18 June 2007 11:32 PM]
We consciously chose to scale the 2d images in order to make candidates in the rear-view mirror look smaller than they really are. It neatly captures the fact that the race to the nomiation is an all-or-nothing business where coming in second is pretty worthless.
dave mcclure [19 June 2007 01:16 AM]
actually, the real reason Hilary's head is so much bigger is because she only has one, and that's the one she thinks with.
all the other guys (emphasis) have two, and as with icebergs, below the surface & much much bigger. or so they think.
;)