Election Forecast

Obama, according to bettors on Intrade, has a 78% chance of becoming the 44th President of the United States. This is a perfectly fair valuation of the current situation. I do admit that I am an Obama supporter, but I do not believe this has any effect on my analysis.

By now it has become clear that Obama will likely carry all of the 2004 John kerry states. There remain around five swing states that could go either way. Right now Obama is leading, albeit not by much, in nearly all of them. What this means for John McCain is that while Obama has to win only one of the swing states, McCain has to win them all. Current polling suggests that this is a nearly insurmountable task.

In the national polls, Obama holds a very telling lead of at least six percent. There is historical precedent of a candidate overcoming such a lead in less than a month, but since 1936 it has been done only once, by Ronald Reagan.

There are some valid reasons why Obama is not trading at 90, all of them stemming in one way or another from the lack of historical precedent for the events of this election. The possibility of an african-american president has brought focus to the phenomenom known as the Bradley effect. It essentially postulates that a black candidate will underperform due to the social stigma of appearing racist in public. There is no clear evidence that the Bradley effect had a significant impact during the primaries and likewise there is no evidence that it will have effect in November. In any case the Bradley effect will negated by the record number of african-american voters expected to cast their vote, many for the first time.

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