The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 88, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 12.8 (compared with 86.9 and 13.4 respectively as as reported in my last update on October 25).

The state-by-state contracts continue to imply that Mr. Obama holds a 375-163 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes), with none of the 50 states or the District of Columbia falling into the “swing” state category.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 351.2 to 186.8 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 26, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (375): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Indiana (11), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (163): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 86.9, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 13.4 (compared with 87.1 and 13.8 respectively as as reported in my last update on October 23).

The state-by-state contracts imply that Mr. Obama holds a 375-163 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). None of the 50 states or the District of Columbia fall into the “swing” state category. Since my last update, Indiana has been nudged from swing state status into Mr. Obama’s column.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 348.4 to 189.6 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 25, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (375): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Indiana (11), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (163): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 87.1, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 13.8 (compared with 84.1 and 16.1 respectively as as reported in my last update on October 19).

The state-by-state contracts continue to imply that Mr. Obama holds a 364-163 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). Mr. McCain’s point total is 11 lower now because Indiana (11 Electoral College votes) has moved out of his column and into “swing state” status.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 344.3 to 193.7 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 23, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (364): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (163): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 84.1, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 16.1 (compared with 83.6 and 16.1 respectively as as reported in yesterday’s update).

The state-by-state contracts continue to imply that Mr. Obama holds a 364-174 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). Since there are no longer any state contracts that are trading in the 45-55 range, this means that As was the case yesterday, there currently are no “swing” states left (according to this pricing criterion, anyway).

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 343.9 to 194.1 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 19, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (364): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (174): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

Yesterday, newly minted Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman pointed out in his New York Times article “Manipulating the future” that evidence had surfaced to the effect (for the 2008.PRES.OBAMA and 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contracts anway) that

“… someone … was manipulating the Intrade presidential odds, trying to drive up the price of a McCain win and thereby influence political perceptions.”

This brings to mind a similar controversy during the 2004 election. As is documented here and here, an apparent manipulation effort took place in the Tradesports 2004 presidential markets. According to Donald Luskin’s account at the time,

“There have now been four separate “speculative attacks” on the market in futures contracts on Bush’s reelection probabilities… The attacks on the Bush futures have involved massive sell orders placed by a single individual — the same individual all four times — according to a spokesman for Tradesports.com, the Dublin-based futures-trading website. Each attack caused a massive temporary drop in the price of the Bush reelection futures. The most recent attack came last Friday at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. It whacked the Bush futures from a price of 54 (indicating the market’s estimate of a 54 percent probability of a Bush reelection) all the way down to 10 (indicating a 10 percent probability of reelection) in just eight minutes. Six minutes after the attack the Bush futures were back to 54. That’s the equivalent of an 8,000-point crash in the Dow Jones Industrial Average followed by an 8,000-point recovery. All within 14 minutes.”

I recall at the time thinking that I wished that I had opened a Tradesports account and put in a “limit” order to buy Bush at 10 :-). More seriously, what impressed me about the incident is how quickly the prediction market price recovered. I highly recommend Alex Tabarrok’s posting from earlier today entitled “Manipulation of Prediction Markets” for more information about this topic.

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 83.6, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 16.1 (compared with 77.5 and 23.0 respectively as reported on October 12, which was the the last time I posted an update on the Prediction Markets).

The state-by-state contracts imply that Mr. Obama holds a 364-174 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). Since there are no longer any state contracts that are trading in the 45-55 range, this means that there currently are no “swing” states left (according to this pricing criterion, anyway). Missouri was previously a “swing” state, but the MISSOURI.DEM contract has rallied substantially and is currently trading at 66.9.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 349.2 to 188.8 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 18, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (364): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (174): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 77.5, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 23.0 (compared with 77.2 and 23.9 respectively as reported on yesterday’s update).

The state-by-state contracts continue to imply that Mr. Obama holds a 353-174 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). At this point in time, Missouri (11 Electoral College votes) is the only “swing” state.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 349.4 to 188.6 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 12, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (353): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (174): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 77.2, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 23.9 (compared with 78 and 22.6 respectively as reported on yesterday’s update).

The state-by-state contracts now imply that Mr. Obama holds a 353-174 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). Since yesterday, what’s changed is that Indiana (11 Electoral College votes) has moved back into McCain’s column, leaving Missouri (11 Electoral College votes) as the only swing state.

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 349.4 to 188.6 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 11, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (353): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (174): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 78, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 22.6 (compared with 76.6 and 23.4 respectively yesterday).

The state-by-state contracts now imply that Mr. Obama holds a 353-163 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). Since my last update (on October 8), North Carolina (15 Electoral College votes) has swung over to the Obama column, whereas Indiana (11 Electoral College votes) and Missouri (11 Electoral College votes) have dropped out of the McCain column and moved into swing state status.

Addendum: October 10, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (353): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (163): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA Intrade contract now trades at 73, whereas the 2008.PRES.McCAIN Intrade contract is currently trading at 27 (compared with 70.1 and 29.8 respectively as reported on yesterday’s update).

The state-by-state contracts continue to imply that Mr. Obama holds a 338-185 “lead” over Mr. McCain (based upon my cutoff price point of 55 for allocating Electoral College votes). While North Carolina (15 Electoral College votes) remains the only state still “qualifying” as a swing state according to my criterion on contract pricing and the allocation of Electoral College votes, Indiana (11 Electoral College votes) and Missouri (11 Electoral College votes) are very close to dropping out of the McCain column and into swing state status (note that the last price for INDIANA.REP was 57, and for MISSOURI.REP it was 56, whereas INDIANA.DEM and MISSOURI.DEM last traded for 45 and 44 respectively).

FiveThirtyEight.com currently gives Mr. Obama a 346.8 to 191.2 advantage over Mr. McCain.

Addendum: October 8, 2008 Electoral College Vote allocation

Barack Obama (338): California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (11), and Wisconsin (10)

John McCain (185): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Missouri (11), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3)