Senator Obama got no bounce in the polls from the Biden announcement:
Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama's Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week's standing for both candidates. This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
The real bad news for the Big O is that this isn't even "likely" voters. It's only registered voters, which generally overstate support for the Democrats (because Republicans tend to be more likely to vote than Democrat leaners). If it's tied among registered, t will be interesting to see what the likely voter numbers are.
Still trading around 60-40 Obama-McCain on Intrade.
Sam, I don't trust those Intrade numbers. An election outcome is not at all like a market outcome.
In the stock market each party buys a stock based on what he thinks the stock is worth. There's an objective set of facts out there that are subject to measurement. At Intrade you are betting on what you think everyone else is going to do on November 11 - it's future subjective, as opposed to present objective. I don't think the average Intrader is any better at guessing who will win an election than the average day trader is at guessing where the top or bottom of any given market movement is. You simply can't know until it happens (becomes present and objective).
Brock,
Consider intrade an options or futures market, not just a stock market. And, like most other futures markets, it gets more accurate as you move closer to the event.
The real usefullness of Intrade and other futures markets is that they remove the bias and subjectiveness of public opinion polls and the organizations who perform them. When there's real money in play, you find out what people really think.
I was car shopping and walked into the dealership's waiting room and saw the announcement about Biden for VPN. In a torrets fashion I said outloud, "He picked Biden, THAT'S TERRIBLE". The people in the waiting room looked over their shoulder at me and then nervously glanced around. My fiance said, "Why?". I then blurted, "Cause he's an idiot!" One person jolted at the I-word.
Consider intrade an options or futures market, not just a stock market. And, like most other futures markets, it gets more accurate as you move closer to the event.
The real usefullness of Intrade and other futures markets is that they remove the bias and subjectiveness of public opinion polls and the organizations who perform them. When there's real money in play, you find out what people really think.
If a person's only motive with Intrade was to express their views (or make money), then perhaps. However, people can manipulate the trading value of options at Intrade or other places if they have other motives than simply making money. For example, if someone decided that making Obama's support look stronger than it actually is is an important objective, they can buy options to boost him artifically. In another sense, Intrade only reflects those who're willing to play, not the electorate as a whole. In that regard, it may be no more accurate than an Internet poll.
My dear sister, bless her heart, saw the Biden pick as a signal that Obama is following a template laid out by the Kennedys -- as in, Obama is to JFK as Biden is to LBJ.
Which put me in mind of Lloyd Bentsen's infamous putdown of Dan Quayle....
BBB
My dear sister, bless her heart, saw the Biden pick as a signal that Obama is following a template laid out by the Kennedys -- as in, Obama is to JFK as Biden is to LBJ.
I don't see the parallel. Kennedy didn't select Johnson to make up for a perception of lack of experience. He did it to heal the party after the primaries, and to win Texas and the south. It would be a better analogy had Obama picked Senator Clinton.
I'm sure Obama's poll numbers will improve after he makes his entrance into Denver riding a donkey, heals the sick, raises the dead, and, after giving his acceptance speech in mile-high stadium, ascends to heaven on a beam of blinding white light.
I don't see the parallel. Kennedy didn't select Johnson to make up for a perception of lack of experience. He did it to heal the party after the primaries, and to win Texas and the south. It would be a better analogy had Obama picked Senator Clinton.
Yeah, I'm a little puzzled, too. But I think her meaning was that both LBJ and JRB represent 'old hands' in the Senate. Remember that JFK's resume was pretty thin, too, and that his appeal was being a newcomer, while LBJ was the deal-maker and head-knocker. But that seems to be where the analogy gets pulled up short. But who is Joe Biden? At least LBJ was majority leader. And Texas was a big state that JFK needed in his column.
To his credit, and unlike HRC, Biden has a number of pieces of legislation to his name (not all of them well-crafted, but hey, we're talking Congress here). But he is a miserable campaigner and bombed in his two presidential bids. OTOH, he egotistical to a fault ;-) and one can picture a certain chemistry between Biden and BO.
Then again, it has been conventional Beltway wisdom for longer than I've been alive that a winning Democrat ticket requires a Northern liberal and a Southern conservative (preferably P/VP but sometimes reversed) [Yes, I know Clinton-Gore broke that pattern, but then, they never got a majority of votes, either]. Perhaps the Biden pick is simply more evidence that BO is geographically challenged.