Predicting Electoral College Victory Probabilities from State Probability Data

Ray Fair ()

No 1496, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation, Yale University

Abstract: A method is proposed in this paper for predicting Electoral College victory probabilities from state probability data. A "ranking" assumption about dependencies across states is made that greatly simplifies the analysis. The method issued to analyze state probability data from the Intrade political betting market. The Intrade prices of various contracts are quite close to what would be expected under the ranking assumption. Under the joint hypothesis that the Intrade price ranking is correct and the ranking assumption is correct, President Bush should not have won any state ranked below a state that he lost. He did not win any such state. The ranking assumption is also consistent with the fact that the two parties spent essentially nothing in most states in 2004.

Keywords: Electoral College victory probabilities; political betting markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
Date: 2004-11
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d14b/d1496.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1496

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation, Yale University
Address: Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Glena Ames ().