The votes of traders in political futures have been pouring in for months, and they said President Barack Obama would land a second term in Tuesday?s election.
The chances of an Obama victory stood at about 71 percent early Tuesday on Intrade, near a one-month high and up about 3 percent for the day in early trading. The chances that Republican Mitt Romney would win the presidency were about 29 percent, close to a low for the past month and down about 4 percent.
Most people buying political futures on the site also apparently believed that Republicans would retain control of the House and Democrats would hold on to their majority in the Senate.
Intrade?s futures have an excellent track record. They accurately predicted the result in every state in the 2004 presidential election, and all but two in the 2008 contest, according to CNNMoney.
This year, Intrade gave Obama about a 70 percent chance of winning the crucial battleground state of Ohio as of early Tuesday.
The market was to remain open all day ?until a winner is clearly known,? an Intrade spokesman said.
Intrade bettors correctly predicted in January that Romney would win the Republican nomination, but at no point in the 2012 presidential campaign did the political futures traders have Romney beating Obama.
That?s somewhat surprising, given that Obama?s odds of winning plunged in the summer of 2011 to about even money after the contentious battle over raising the nation?s debt ceiling and the Standard & Poor?s credit downgrade that followed.
But Romney has closed a huge late-September gap on Intrade?s presidential election market, when Obama?s re-election odds neared 80 percent.
Source: MCT Information Services
