On May 7, 2008, at 8:53 AM, Julio Huato wrote:
> No, no. I don't mean the trend in the polls. As I said, they are
> noisy. People overreact to news in the short run. I mean the trend
> in the overall political conditions. That's why I refer people to the
> markets, where people's expectations are more stable.
The markets? Stable? I'm assuming you mean this about Intrade (and Iowa) only, and not as a general proposition. But it's not even true about Intrade.
PollingReport.com has the Gallup daily tracking polls since January 24. Below are some descriptive stats comparing Obama's daily support with the Intrade Obama price. The poll has been a lot more stable, both since January 24, and since March 1.
correlation
-----------
full 0.86
since 3/1 0.55
Gallup Intrade
std dev
-------
full 4.4 15.3
since 3/1 2.3 4.4
average
-------
full 46.1 72.4
since 3/1 47.9 79.4
CV
--
full 0.095 0.212
since 3/1 0.048 0.055