Osama, Evil Burt, and the Political Futures Markets

First, let's look at the Tradesports political futures markets for the "Bush wins the electoral votes of state X". Using the categories we set up back in February, here's how Bush is doing with just 3 days left:

States where his reelection contract is trading above $80:

25 states worth 212 EVs.

States where his reelection contract is trading between $79-$55:

Six: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Total EVs of these five states: 59

So right now, if Bush carries all the states the bettors believe he will, he'll have....wait for it....wait for it......271 Electoral Votes.

Two states sit right on the bubble here: New Mexico (which barely went blue last time) and Ohio, worth 5 and 20 EVs.

Basically, what has changed has that Bush's support for winning Ohio has gone soft---with it, it puts him back up to 291, the five point range his aggregate contracts have been at for awhile.

BTW, the Florida and Ohio contracts have traded over 30K combined contracts, and the Bush reelected contract went over a million contracts today.

For the record, here's what the general "Bush reelected" contract looked like today. Remember, as this market is based in Dublin the time is five hours ahead of EDT:

Here's the Kerry contract:

What was the effect of the al-Quack Quack late hit story? Here's how the general Bush reelected contract looked like this week:

UPDATE: SATURDAY NIGHT Reverend Pixy reports similar trends down under in the Australian bookie markets.