At the University of Iowa Tippie School of business, they run markets where you can buy "contracts" on the outcomes of upcoming events -- political events, business events, etc. -- to gather data about how market participants react over time. The participants use real money, so they have an incentive to be sincere in their bidding. "Experimental economics", I believe the term is. (There's also one run by "Popular Science" magazine, but it is about science and technology and products, with any governmental connection being secondary, and the money is less real than that used by the IEM. Insert own fiat money joke here.)
These sorts of markets can be surprisingly effective at predicting events. According to a recent IEM news release, more so than polls. As things stand now, it looks like our next president will be a Democrat named Obama. 'Twas not always so ... and may not stay so. The graphs show volatility, sometimes quite a lot of it. Links to the main site, the news release and graphs, below. -Eric http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ Iowa Electronic Market Home Page http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/news/displaystory.cfm?id=1830 News release: "Analysis: IEM More Accurate at Predicting Elections Than Polls from 1988 to 2004" http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_PRES08_WTA.cfm Presidential race (D v R) (about $0.63 v $0.39) http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_DConv08.cfm Nomination - D Obama (about $0.78), http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_RConv08.cfm Nomination - R McCain (about $0.92),
