Apparently, if you want to know who will win a political campaign, you’re better off listening to a local bookie than a famous cable news analyst. According to this article in Slate, “thousands of bets [on a political race], with real stakes, are more likely to predict the correct result than even the best pundit.” The “big daddy” of political “prediction markets” which pool such bets together is the Iowa Electronic Market, which consistently picks the winners of political campaigns more accurately than the major polling organizations and news outlets.
This data shouldn’t be interpreted as saying that political gamblers are exceptionally smart, but rather that the so-called “experts” on television really aren’t significantly more informed than their audience. The gamblers, whose paychecks are riding on the outcome of these races, probably spend more time seriously studying the races’ dynamics than the talking heads on FOX and MSNBC, who get paid no matter how wrong or right they are. Perhaps, for quality’s sake, those networks should hire a Vegas casino employee to provide nightly analysis. Or, even better, link the “experts”’ pay to their performance.
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