Web gamblers betting on Barack Obama

[clevfan]

Web gamblers betting on Barack Obama

BY HELEN KENNEDY
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, February 15th 2008, 4:00 AM

Gash/AP
Sen. Barack Obama is a favorite of online gambling bookmakers to get nomination and go all the way to the White House.


If you needed one more sign that Barack Obama is on a roll, the futures trading markets have decided he's a very good bet.

According to several overseas online exchanges, Obama is now a virtual lock to win all the upcoming primaries, including Texas and Ohio — the states Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes on.

And he's the even-money favorite to be elected President in November.

"Obama has all the momentum, and the betting odds reflect that," said Steve Budin, an oddsmaker at sportsinfo.com who puts Obama's likelihood of being President at 4-5, with Clinton and John McCain both at 3-2.

And the payoffs can rival any race track.

Gabriel Weil, 22-year-old college student, has made about $1,500, much of it by shorting Rudy Giuliani — selling shares in the former mayor that he did not yet own and assuming he could buy them later at a lower price and pocket the difference.

"I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew some things that weren't. And I was pretty confident that Rudy was not going to win the Republican nomination," he said. "I did get nervous at one point because I didn't expect his national poll lead to last that long."

Betting on politics is a new multimillion-dollar Internet industry — it's a high-tech revival of an American fad that was big in the 1800s — and some experts regard traders as better fortune-tellers than pollsters.

"There are many ways of forecasting elections: polls, talking heads on TV, what have you. In all of the head-to-head comparisons, predictions markets have yielded better answers," said Wharton School Prof. Justin Wolfers.

Indeed, the Pentagon was so impressed with the accuracy of futures markets that it briefly tried in 2003 to set up a market to predict terrorist attacks. In the online political markets, more than $50 million has already changed hands this election.

The Iowa Electronic Markets flipped after Super Tuesday, when Obama won more states than Clinton. It now gives him a 70% shot at the nomination, while Intrade.com pegs his likelihood at 75%.

Obama stands a 50-50 chance of winning the White House, according to line-setters. GOPer John McCain has a 34% shot, and Clinton is looking at a 17% chance.