Watch America’s “Political Futures” exchange

With the big poll swings back to the challenger, John Kerry, all eyes are on the President to see if he can hold on. Will he win a second term when America votes in 22 days time or will he follow in the footsteps of his father and fail to get re-elected.

A week and a half ago it looked pretty good for the President and you could have got 11/4 on Kerry with William Hill. Now, after winning the first two debates, all the eyes are on Kerry. Will Bush stay the pace?

A graphic illustration of how the mood of America is changing is from this price chart from the Iowa Electronic Exchange. This started as an academic experiment by the state University to watch how markets work. Now it’s become a unique trading vehicle as “political futures” such as Will Bush win? are bought and sold as if they were stocks and shares.

All the research on the exchange show it’s much better at showing long-term trends than normal betting prices which fluctuate much more. We’ll be watching Iowa a lot in the next three weeks – currently it is going for Bush 53-47. A fortnight ago Bush was ahead 73-27.

To work out the numbers on this quote just add the two DEM numbers and the two REP ones in the average price box. Iowa investors are buying Bush stock at the equivalent of 53 cents. If he wins each will be worth a dollar.

UK prices have not moved much following the Friday night debate and are a little bit more to Bush than Iowa.

Political betting odds – full round-up.

Picture http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20040928/mdf710217.jpg