Intrade - Markets

It looks like they improved the style of Intrade - Markets. I'm not sure I like it. They may have compromised the substance. The new format doesn't display the volume or spread of trading in any way I can easily see. Thus it fails to give me an immediate idea of whether or not the percentage chance of a given event should be taken seriously. Under the old format, if there was a huge spread between the bid and ask price or volume was low, then you knew not to take this as a serious prediction.

In any case, it looks like the predicted results of the 2012 election haven't changed that much. Barrack Obama is still expected to retain the White House, the Republicans are predicted to hold on to the House and take the Senate. Of these predictions, betters have more confidence in the Republicans taking the Senate and less in them retaining the House. The probability of the Democrats retaining the White House is somewhere in between.

I'm not sure what this means in terms of the best strategy for producing divided government. The government is likely to be divided in any case. I suspect that since the Republicans are most likely to take the Senate, then divided government could best be produced by supporting the Democrats for the House.