Aujourd'hui - tour 2

As we have advised elsewhere, the best indicator of political fortunes is commoditization, or put more plainly:

Historically, money is the single most reliable forecaster of election outcomes.

BETTING MARKETS SAY SARKOZY IS NEXT FRENCH PRESIDENT

May 4, 2007 (bettingmarket.com) - In Information Efficiency in Financial and Betting Markets, Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams of the Betting Research Unit at the University of Nottingham, and others, examine the existence and extent of information efficiency in financial and betting markets. One of the more interesting chapters in the book covers the subject of the predictive ability of betting markets in general elections.

It has long been the contention of Vaughan Williams that betting markets are a more accurate and cheaper predictive tool when it comes to elections compared with traditional methodologies, for example, econometric models or opinion polls.

... Below we provide a print of Betfair's French presidential prediction market, as of 21.00 GMT on Friday May 4 2007.

The graph shows that the market has priced in the likelihood that Sarkozy will be elected the next French president at 91%. In other words, it suggests that Ségolène Royal has no hope of overturning Nicolas Sarkozy's lead in Sunday's decisive second-round vote for the presidency.

Sources: Chris.F.Masse at the world's leading prediction market information portal MidasOracle.Org

[Emphasis added.]

PFFT (What is this?): Betting chalk 5